Biology Battle 360

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Biology Battle will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever played Geometry Wars. It's a two stick shooter which seems, on the face of it, to be very similar to the essentially the most popular game of this style, on the same platform, and for the same price. Not much of a pitch? Actually, Biology Battle does have a few cool features, mainly the death mode, but there's also a pretty large range of party games to play.

So, you're a medical nanobot, doing some medical stuff. I think you're in a cell, and the shapes that attack you are antibodies, or maybe viruses (why didn't I pay more attention in biology!). At first I thought that this was exactly like Geometry Wars, except in a cell rather than in space, but there are a few nice differences. First, there are a couple of power-ups. The shield is fairly useless, but the weapon upgrades are neat and so are the ‘things that kill almost everything' pickups.

But as you progress further into the game, the pick-ups are slightly more interesting. You can get the power to unleash lightning, open up a black hole or push everything away from you like a nano force push. But it's when you get to the games bosses that things take on a twist. Beat three of the nuclei thingy's, and you'll get the ‘death mode' power-up. This, erm, changes the mode to death. Things get darker, and the enemies get stronger. But here's were the strategy starts - you'll receive 10x as many points for each kill, but you'll stop getting any more multiplier.

So, if you're looking for a super high score, you have to formulate a strategy. You can stay in life mode for as long as you want, and your multiplier will keep going up and up and up. But what if you die? You'll have fewer lives to take advantage of the 10 times bigger multiplier from death mode, resulting in a lower score. So, the trick to billions of points is switching modes at the right time - stay long enough in life mode to rack up a huge multiplier in death mode, but don't lose too many lives in the process. That's what I'm told anyway, I usually end up around 7000th place on high scores. But, this'll appeal to high score fans as you can set up your strategy more than in Geometry Wars.

I think that the best feature in the game is all the party modes on offer. I definitely had a lot more fun staying as close to enemies as possible, without being able to shoot, with my brother than trying to beat a high score. There's a ton of different modes to play, from straight up survival to running between safe zones, and even an inventive turret mode. Plus, you can set things up so game modes are picked randomly for you, meaning you can sometimes have absolutely no idea what's going on, in a good way.

Biology Battle does bring a few new things to the table, but in the end it's just not as good as Geometry Wars. Sure, there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it just isn't as good. Also, the two are on the same console, for the same price. Seems like a no brainer which one you should choose, however Biology Wars is a pretty neat game. If you're just itching for some two stick action, and you've played Wars to the death, you could do a lot worse.

Written by Rowan Brown

Rowan Brown writes the Teen Gamer column. "I write about my favourite games from a younger person's perspective. It's often surprising how different this ends up to other more grown up reviews."

Rowan Brown's recent reviews:

• Naruto Shippuden Ninja Council 4
• Naughty Bear
• Green Day: Rock Band
• Super Mario Galaxy 2

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