Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
Worth it · Shooter · 2007
The verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $3.99.
- Reviews
- 91% positive
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Windows only.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a old school style shooter, but remixed for the 21st century with next generation graphics and deep, modern gameplay. Playing is simple: you are a geometric "ship" trapped in a grid world, facing off against waves of deadly wanderers, snakes, and repulsars.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Shooter game (about 6 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $1.95, set in June 2015. It has been discounted 99 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 7 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 14 percent on value. It is cheaper than 85 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 85 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Beat Hazard ($9.99, scores 93) beats it on value, while it beats Distant Space ($0.99, scores 58).
Critics scored it 76. Players sit 15 points higher at 91 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Of the 330 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 1 comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 87 percent of the 601 reviews written there were positive, against 91 percent overall, and those are 59 percent of everything written about it.
Players
4 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved scores 69/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). Length is estimated at 6 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/8400/geometry-wars-retro-evolvedThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 1, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.