After 10 hours of play and nearly topping the leaderboard of classic mode I must say that I am torn on whether or not to recommend this game to others.
On one hand,
1. the game looks incredible. The not-quite-3D feel is dynamic without compromising the vibe of OG Asteroids like some *other* re-releases.
2. The new asteroid variations are a natural evolution of the vanilla ones. I'm always keeping an eye out for the crumbling asteroids, and whenever multiple XLs are on screen things can get very tense. The comets are cool - at first I thought that the explosions also killed you, and tbh I kind of wish they did because trying to avoid the AOE damage made things more interesting and challenging in my mind.
3. HYPERSPACE BABY! Warp drive has never felt so good to execute. The way it works now is basically that a black hole opens where your ships is, and where your ship goes, removing all hazards in a small area around you, plus angling your ship in the direction of the nearest hazard (as opposed to the same direction in OG.) This makes warping much less, well frankly, BS to execute, at the cost of a cool-down, which I have not timed, but even a 1 second cool-down is forever in this game. even with the cooldown it is unreal how much better the warp drive is in this game. Whereas in OG I was avoiding ever touching the hyper, in this game I am executing multiple clutch plays a minute with this thing.
All of these things add up to a sleek, enjoyable, and modernized version of Asteroids. Unfortunately I have many gripes with the game, mostly minor things, but they add up a lot, to the point where the game feels almost unfinished.
1. Even though the game looks great, I must say that I am extremely disappointed with the lack of customization options. the colorscheme is on a set rotation, but even then after a certain point it becomes dull grey and white and stays that way forever, leaving me incredibly bored trying to break my high score which now requires multiple hours of investment. I wish that we could choose the color of the ships, asteroids, UFO's and grid. I also think that we should have options for backgrounds, as starry space once again gets pretty boring after a while. And where is Black and White mode? I'm glad the developers added options for color blind people (3 different varieties!) But that shows a color customization option would not only be doable, but easily implemented. Plus it would give colorblind people options anyway so I don't know why it wasn't done.
2. The menu is so bad. Giant buttons that take up the whole screen even though there's only like 4 things to select. Why can't I viewleaderboards from the main menu? I could literally do that in OG Asteroids in 1979. And even when viewing leaderboards, why can't I scroll to the top or bottom to see what other people have? I spent hours playing classic mode, got bored and killed myself, just to find out I was in position to get 1st on the scoreboard, oh if only I had known that from seeing it in the goddarned menu.
3. I Hate the powerups, and I hate how you have no choice over what to use or when to use it. IMO, there should have been an action button added to use the powerups on your own terms, cause using them automatically just plain sucks. Like for example, I am holding down the fire button to shoot my standard bullet, then I get saddled with the explosive bullet powerup - now my fire rate is all off, and i am missing all my shots. Oh, you say, just let go of the fire button, to which I say, something about the game makes the ship continue to shoot automatically even when you lift off the fire button. Another example is, oh I had to start flying really fast to avoid a UFO, then I get the powerup that just puts a giant freaking ring of explosives around your ship, I flew into it immediately and died, thanks game. I can understand a BS death from a UFO or spawning asteroid, what I cannot handle is dying a BS death from something that was supposed to be helping. \
4. We need indestructible asteroids, and we need lots of them. Because the game is too easy. Playing classic mode was basically me farming infinite extra lives forever, and I only stopped because I killed myself. I am certain that if I kept my computer running, and paused the game to complete my daily responsiblilites, I could play one round of asteroids for the rest of my natural life, and then pass it on to my firstborn. This is unacceptable in the grand tradition of Asteroids having gameplay so blisteringly difficult that it was borderline unplayable and yet irresistible. With this in mind, we not only need indestructible asteroids, we need fast ones like from the original game, where shooting a rock at the wrong angle makes the smaller ones go careening through space. All the ones in this game are slow and not threatening. Also, why do the UFO's only enter from the left of the screen? It's too predictable. UFO's should be showing up from the right, and they should be changing y-axis, which again, they did in the original. They're dumbing down a game which should not be dumbed down because it is a game of doing literally 1 thing.
Lack of game modes. This is my biggest issue of all, because with the lack of modes to the lack of custom options and gameplay innovations, this all adds up to maybe 40 percent of a game. The challenge modes are nice, I guess, but most of them are centered around powerups, which I do not like, so I will only play them each once. I am not happy about there only being a one life mode with powerups, and not a one life classic mode. There is a "Classic Recharged" mode which sucks because it is just infinite lives but with powerups. Where is verus mode? the co-op mode is really cool,, but why no competitive mode? Just many many things that would have been very easy to implement.
All in all, I had fun with Asteroids: Recharged because I am addicted to Asteroids movement, and this game has the best warp drive in 45 years of gaming. I will definitely be forcing my girlfriend to play co-op challenge mode with me, and I will for sure one day top the leaderboards. My complaints are many, but while they detract from the experience, there is an extremely tight core here that is commendable, and it is still the best official asteroids release to play in 2025.
5/10
