Never underestimate the fun you can have with magnets. Remember as a kid, making paperclips move along a table as if it were magic? And making two magnets fire off in opposite directions when you held them together at like ends! OK, so I was clearly a very bored child, but my youthful fascination with magnets perhaps allows me to enjoy Magnetic Wars for Xbox Live Indie Games a fair bit more than I should.

It’s a twin-stick shooter with both a repellent and attractive (see what I did there?) twist, allowing you to push bad guys away, or accidently draw them towards you. The shooting feels a little off and the action is much too slow for my liking, but there are some lovely magnetic ideas to be found and the multiplayer is ace.

GAMEPLAY

Magnetic Wars throws you into a world of arena blasting on rails. Unlike its obvious inspiration Geometry Wars, the action doesn’t stand still in one place – the screen is constantly scrolling to the right, and new enemies come along for the ride. You can move freely anyway on the screen, but need to keep your eye on the right-hand side to avoid whatever comes your way.

Initially, the shooting doesn’t feel right. You’ll aim with the right stick at a spot and find that your lasers don’t appear to be hitting the target. This is due to a combination of movement and the slower-than-usual firing rate – compared to the majority of arena shooters, Magnetic Wars is veeeery slow moving.

Even the action is slow-paced. Enemies move in from the right slowly but surely, making everything really very easy to dodge. It’s as if someone sat on the playback remote, and the game is not running at 0.75x speed. For an blaster like this, the hectic rush of dodging around bullets and baddies is key to excitement, but clearly Guma Productions missed the memo.

It never really feels fully right, but eventually you’ll get used to the shooting and begin to enjoy the set pieces on offer. There are some clever ideas to be found, mainly revolving around the ability to repel and attract bad guys depending on which button you press and what colour the enemy are.

Pressing left trigger turns you orange, which holding right trigger makes you all blue. Orange bad guys will move rapidly towards you when you’re blue, and away when you’re orange – and vice versa for the blue baddies. Sounds simple enough, but you’ve got problems when both blue and orange guys are on the screen at the same time.

Later levels see you using your magnetic powers in more interesting ways – this game is not simply all about the shooting, but there are slight puzzle elements too. The boss battles in particular are usually good fun – one boss sees you repelling the enemy bullets back at it, rather than shooting it yourself.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the missions on offer, you can grab a friend and play through them again in co-op two player. This is a great deal more fun than on your own, as is the case with most multiplayer XBLIG games, and will provide a good hour’s worth of enjoyment.

STYLE

Magnetic War‘s visuals are quite the mix of yin and yang, with a clear beeline set on being the next Geometry Wars. A grid sits behind the action, spelling out the current level in pixelated block form, while generic shapes venture onto the screen. Radiangames get away with the abstract look, as they add a sprinkling of gorgeous to it all – but here, enemies don’t looks so great.

The swirling background are pretty sweet-looking, however, and the interface is easy to understand and never gets in the way – although quite why your health is measured as a number in the form XX.XX is quite beyond me.

The music all sounds a little… bored. You can imagine the composer sitting at a computer late at night, dropping dull bar after dull bar into the mix and not exactly getting a thrill out of it. At least it’s not a technofest like the rest of the XBLIG appears to be, but try to be a little more lively next time, Guma!

STORY

In a world of magnets, randomly-shaped spaceships and dull tones… but no, there isn’t a story, as you’d expect from an arena shooter.

OTHER

Magnetic Wars isn’t going to blow your socks off, but as a distraction for an evening it’ll do a good job of entertaining, especially if you’ve got a guest around. If you’re used to your frantic blasters, this will probably feel a little boring, but it’s worth sticking it out to see the later, more interesting levels.

Priced at 80 MS Points ($1), you could do a lot worse. Of course, you could just grab a Radiangames JoyJoy for the same price.