Centipede: Recharged

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in the physical-only Atari Recharged Collection 2 bundle, along with Black Widow: Recharged. It is also included in the physical-only Atari Recharged Collection 1 + 2 Dual Pack Edition bundle, along with Asteroids: Recharged, Breakout: Recharged, and Black Widow: Recharged. It is also included in Atari Recharged: Volume One, along with all of the above named games plus Quantum: Recharged.)

Centipede: Recharged is a family-friendly Arcade-style game with similarities to Shmups released in 2021 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. As with other games in developer Adamvision Studios’ “Recharged” line of games, Centipede: Recharged is a re-imagining of an Atari classic, in this case taking the creative and iconic classic Arcade game and updating its gameplay and presentation..

That new presentation is one of the bigger issues I have with Centipede: Recharged. It looks fine, with colorful 2D visuals that evoke the vector-style visuals of many games in the era the original Centipede came out. However, the original Centipede wasn’t a vector-based game, and it had its own unique style that doesn’t feel very well-represented here.

However, even more iconic to the original Centipede than its visuals was its sound – the original arcade game didn’t have a soundtrack per se, unless you count a consistent thumping noise in the background. However, the enemies onscreen frequently filled the game with their own distinctive noises, and those are all gone here. In their place is somewhat bland synthesized music that doesn’t do much to keep things exciting and isn’t at all memorable.

While the presentation in this game falls pretty flat, the gameplay fares pretty well. The gameplay here is at its core pretty faithful to the original game, but this version drops the stages of the original for constantly-spawning enemies, gradually ramping things up over time. In part to offset this, players can also get temporary power-ups from shooting spiders (which no longer bounce as in the original, but slowly crawl onto the screen), such as more powerful shots.

This game doesn’t wait on you to destroy one centipede before introducing another, either – the screen will increasingly fill up with enemies until you’re overwhelmed, making much of the gameplay here about trying to survive as long as possible. Yet between the power-ups and the variety of enemies, the game doesn’t feel too repetitive.

It’s a shame that Centipede: Recharged features such a bland presentation, because the game’s reimagined take on the classic Arcade game’s iconic gameplay is quite excellent, making this one of the better games in the Recharged series. If you’re a fan of Arcade-style games, I think you’ll find this one to be well worth checking out.

tl;dr – Centipede: Recharged is an Arcade-style game inspired by the Atari classic. This version “improves” the presentation, makes progression more fluid, and adds temporary power-ups, but otherwise leaves the original formula largely intact. The result is a surprisingly compelling reimagining of the classic, albeit one with a presentation that lacks all of the charm and personality the original game had.

Grade: B-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}