Yars: Recharged

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

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

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in the physical-only Atari Recharged Collection 3, along with Caverns of Mars: Recharged. It is also included in the physical-only Atari Recharged Collection 3 + 4 Dual Pack Edition bundle, along with Caverns of Mars: Recharged, Gravitar: Recharged, and Missile Command: Recharged. It is also included in Atari Recharged: Volume Two, along with all of the above named games plus Berzerk: Recharged.)

Yars: Recharged is a 2-Stick Shooter released in 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. As with other games in developer Adamvision Studios’ “Recharged” line of games, Asteroids Recharged is a re-imagining of an Atari classic, in this case being inspired by Yars’ Revenge, a game often cited as one of the few truly great games to launch on the Atari 2600 platform.

As I’ve been reviewing the Recharged line of reimagined Atari games, I’ve been playing them in alphabetical order rather than the order of release or the order of the original games’ release. In doing so, I may have saved the best of this franchise for last, because Yars: Recharged is not just a great re-imagining of the original game, it is a truly excellent game in its own right.

This game retains the basic premise of the original Yars game, which was a bit like taking a Shmup and combining it with an Arcade-style Brick Breaker. This time around, the player controls their moth-like spaceship like a 2-Stick Shooter, which already goes a step to making this game immensely more playable. However, it takes things a step further by reimagining the gameplay as a boss rush, where players are trying to take down one boss after another, with each boss consisting of a core surrounded by various turret emplacements and small hex-shaped defensive blocks.

Yars: Recharged is generous in warning players when any given hostile element is about to attack, either with a noise or by showing the enemy powering up that emplacement or weapon. However, there are a lot of these elements active in any given stage, so players need to be observant to ensure they avoid enemy fire.

Players can individually damage most of the defensive blocks and emplacements using either gunfire or a close-range melee attack. It’s usually safer to put some distance between you and the enemy and use gunfire on them from afar, but your melee attack can often be faster and more effective, giving players wanting to take advantage of an opening a great risk/reward element to take advantage of. Making things more interesting, every emplacement you take out will destroy defensive blocks in the area around it, and give you a temporary power-up based on the type of emplacement you took out. Because of this, you may want to aim for these first, and whittle down the enemy’s defenses. However, you do have another option.

The enemy core can only be taken out with two direct hits from a cannon you charge using energy obtained from defeated emplacements or by attacking the core. However, once you have the cannon, you can opt to just blast at the core without bothering to take out further emplacements. While sometimes difficult, this can make for a shortcut to victory in a stage… as long as you don’t miss or get blocked.

The bosses you face here can seem slow and easy at first, but grow in complexity as the game progresses. One boss is surrounded by a maze of unbreakable blocks that force you to go inside it to take out the emplacements blocking your way to the core, making the entire boss a level unto itself. Others have unbreakable walls that need to be removed by attacking their attached emplacements, or are built of multiple pieces spinning independently and creating their own separate firing patterns. Suffice it to say, the boss design in this game is outstanding, really getting creative with the way the gameplay here works.

The presentation here… works. Apart from your ship looking insect-like, I can’t say that I feel it looks much like the original game except in abstract, but given that the original game used the blocky visuals of the Atari 2600, there wasn’t much to work with in the first place. At the very least I can say that this game’s 2D visual style looks decent, and its synthesized soundtrack doesn’t detract from the action, though it tends to get drowned out by that action so you barely notice it in the first place. All in all, this game’s visuals work, but aren’t impressive or distinct in any way.

However, apart from the unimpressive presentation, there’s really not much to complain about with Yars: Remastered. Not only is this an inspired reimagining of the original game it’s based on, it’s a fantastic spin on the 2-Stick Shooter genre that works brilliantly even among other modern entries in the genre. By mashing the two together, we get something truly compelling, and well-worth playing for Action game fans, even if they never played the original game, even if they have zero interest in the original. Plus, at the budget price of $10, this is a no-brainer. Yars: Recharged stands on its own as a great game that is absolutely worth playing.

tl;dr – Yars: Recharged is a 2-Stick Shooter inspired by the Atari classic Yars’ Revenge, but this game far surpasses its inspiration, using elements from that game to craft an excellent boss rush-style 2-stick shooter where players must whittle down enemies’ defenses. Regardless of whether or not you’ve played the original, this is an outstanding Action game, and at only $10 it’s an easy game to recommend.

Grade: A-

^{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!}