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"You know, the problem with Geometry Wars?" asks Retro Remakes/Bagful of Wrong's Robert Fearon, "Its name is wrong. What it really should have been called is 'Geometry Run Around In Circles' but I guess that isn't quite catchy enough. So yeah, it's wrong in the face. That's not war. Unless your idea of war is having one foot nailed to a post whilst strange shapes sneak up on you and pop you one up the backside..."

War Twat is Rob's response to the comparably placid Geometry Wars (and it's many, many clones); an intense arena-based arcade shoot 'em up created to capture the true spirit of extreme interstellar combat in low-resoltion pixellated glory, backed by an ear-blasting cacophony of vintage arcade sound effects, air raid sirens, acid house and... Bruce Forsyth? Yes, that's right, War Twat surpasses even Rob's previous (and still WIP) project G-Force in the Minter-esque surrealism department - in fact, I can say hand-on-heart that it's without a doubt the most insane game that I've ever played, and quite possibly the hardest too.

This game is out to kill you from the outset. There is no way to win; death is inevitable and quite often impossible to see coming behind all the pyrotechnics on screen. Even veteran players will rarely survive more than a minute in-game (unless they are like T.M.R and 'cheating' by using a low spec machine). It's not unusual to only last a few seconds when you start out, but you'll find yourself returning to the game time and time again, eager for another dose of punishment because it's fun, fun, fun, regardless of the fact that it's stupidly unfair on so many levels. Only the twisted genius of Rob (or Cactus) could have made this completely wrong game feel so right.

Looking at the screenshots here you're probably wondering what the hell is going on. Well, believe me - that's nothing compared to when you actually experience the game first-hand; the tiny square that the player controls is easily lost amongst the chaotic mash-up of explosions, handbags, UFOs, bulldozers and double-decker buses. In fact, attempting to describe what it's like to play is pretty futile; it may look a bit like the arcade classic Robotron 2084, but playing that will seem leisurely after your optic nerve has experienced the roller-coaster ride that War Twat provides. Needless to say, this is not a game for the feint-hearted or people who suffer from epilepsy.

To conclude, War Twat won't be a game that everyone will love as much as we do - a lot of people simply won't get it, but that's to be expected in the casual take-the-player-by-the-hand commercial gaming environment that we currently live in. This is also evident from the reaction the game received when showcased at the Eurogamer Expo 2008; some players immediately got to grips with it and started blasting away, whereas others just walked off looking confused. However, if you're tired of the softly-softly tutorial-friendly approach to gaming and want a harsh yet entertaining reminder of what it used to be all about, grab your gamepad, load up War Twat, blow your senses and die repeatedly every thirty seconds. Go on, you know you want to.

Indie game developers seem to revel in shoot 'em ups and that's a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned, because there really is no such thing as "too many" when it comes to games that involve twonking aliens. And War Twat is a manic shooter that really doesn't mess about, the controls are simple, it has no levels or even lives, the player is given the firepower to do the job and doesn't need power-ups, there isn't a back story with the edges trimmed to make it fit the game and the difficulty is hardwired to "bloody hell!". The general feel is meant to be along the same lines as classic arena shooters like Robotron: 2084 or later takes on the genre such as Jeff Minter's Llamatron or the now infamous Geometry Wars and it carries that off pretty well whilst managing to be more difficult straight off the bat than any of those influences; the attackers are pretty abstract in a Minterian sort of fashion as well, a motley assortment of buses, bulldozers, grumpy-looking rain clouds and what I'm assuming are handbags all spawn from the five indestructible flying saucers that are always in the play area. And just about everything is armed to the teeth too!

And I bloody love this game!

War Twat is mean... in fact, the word "mean" really doesn't do the thing justice because it's evil, vicious and just plain nasty! Lasting more than thirty seconds on the first couple of goes is a pretty major achievement and getting past the two minute mark is cause for Champagne; there are no pretensions here, the game really wants to see the player broken and has no qualms about releasing CPU-grinding hails of nasties and staggering numbers of bullets in order to get that job done. There's only one thing that can really help the player amongst all this carnage, when the rain clouds are in a certain mood they can be shot to get a Brucie bonus (accompanied by a sample of the entertainer himself singing a few bars of the Generation Game theme) that spins the screen around and wipes out anything that isn't the player or one of the five invincible UFOs.

Because of all that action, it does have to be noted though that War Twat needs a fair whack of CPU grind to keep everything moving because even on something like my (t)rusty Athlon XP 1800+ with it's 1.5GHz clock speed, the sheer amount of stuff moving around will cause the game to slow to a crawl... although this can be used as a "bullet time" to the player's advantage if the background pyrotechnics aren't going totally bonkers. And no, the irony of something that looks like War Twat needing huge swathes of CPU power to keep it moving hasn't escaped anyone, but it can be forgiven because it's so much fun to play. And for those gamers who want to compete against their kids (and what a wonderful way to teach the smug little Sims-playing snot machines a lesson about how good us adults are at games... or is that just me?) there's a "censored" version available too (identical to the original except the title has been changed to War Bus).

Put very simply War Twat is a game of kill, kill, kill or be kill, kill, killed, in the fine tradition the beloved, off-their-heads Llamasoft games of the 1980s and 90s. It makes Geometry Wars look like Geometry Arguments.

War Twat doesn't take the player by the hand at all; it would be against the direct and ultra-shooty nature of the game to do so. Shoot stuff or die. Shoot sad cloud for bonus. There's your tutorial.

At its heart, which I assume to be made of lasers and amphetamines, War Twat is a retro game made awe-inspiring with modern processing power. Which isn't to say that it's just Robotron: 2084 with a makeover; War Twat is a great game, built on a time honoured format which rarely fails to entertain. Addictive, with satisfying game-play and gratifying explosions, War Twat strides through the crowd of similar games a good head above the rest, with lasers shooting from its mouth and bulldozers spinning from its eyes.