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Light Wars is best described as Geometry Wars for the iPhone. It shares the same dark, gridded background, brightly colored enemies, and dual “stick” control scheme. Although it’s based on Geometry Wars, Light Wars also has a few unique tricks up its sleeve.
The game has weapon upgrades, but unlike Geometry Wars, getting an upgrade doesn’t mean losing your previous weapon. A weapon menu, accessed by tapping the bottom of the screen, can be used to switch weapons.
Different weapon upgrades can be picked up from defeated enemies throughout the stage. They vary from actual weapons to upgrades that can improve your rate of fire, among other things.
Instead of simply assaulting players with a steady stream of enemies, Light Wars presents them in waves. If there’s still just that one enemy left on the screen from the current wave, the next wave won’t begin until that enemy is dead. I often took advantage of this by wandering around the stage looking for upgrades I missed before firing a bullet at the remaining enemy ship.
The controls in Light Wars take some getting used to. The two circles at the bottom of the touch screen — left for movement, right for aiming — work as well as they could. As with any device that has limited screen real estate, fingers sometimes block your sight of ships and enemies. It’s best to keep your ship moving above that area of the screen.
Shaking the iPhone to detonate a bomb and clear the screen is less than accurate. When I’m in a bind and have to use a bomb, I usually don’t have that half second it takes to shake the iPhone. An alternate button press would be much appreciated.
At first glance, Light Wars looks graphically simple. That’s not a bad thing. The bright enemies stand out against the stark background in an eye-pleasing way, and the plane-warping bomb effect reminds me of Geometry Wars. The indicator arrows near the ship, which point to off-screen enemies, are a great way to deal with the limitations of having a smaller screen.
Light Wars is a worthy attempt at bringing Geometry Wars to the iPhone. It may take a few tries to get used to the control scheme, but once you become acclimated to it, it’s easy to waste ten or twenty minutes at a time aiming for a higher score. The simple but addictive gameplay makes it easy to pick up, but hard to put down.
Isotope and PewPew are also good Geometry Wars-like shooters. This looks decent, but I can imagine the shake-to-bomb mechanic being annoying.