Yars Rising

TL;DR: Although a bright, beautiful looking game with a great soundtrack, the rest of the game is relatively average. The hacking minigame is love it or hate it. There are frequent loading screens. I ended up quitting about 75% through the game due to a persistent, intermittent bug where I would stop moving full speed to the left. To put this up front, I bought this on sale for $9 and it was acceptable for that price. I couldn't imagine spending $30 dollars for it. As far as metroidvanias go, it falls on the easier side of the spectrum. You play as Emi "Yars" Kimura, a computer hacker that gets hired at the QoTech Corporation to engage in industrial espionage for a bunch of money. You've got three friends that are in this, too, somehow? They exist to sprout exposition and drop new waypoints for you to move the plot along. The pay for this high-risk job is being split four ways even though you seem to be doing everything. The story is...weird? You somehow remember meeting alien life partway through your escape from the building. After you escape the QoTech building and get home, your friends have left your apartment and stole some access tokens for the QoTech building, which you have to hunt down during an "alien invasion" that somehow occurred during the five minutes between arriving home and leaving? They mention explosions, but the only mention in conversations. The gameplay is solid if unremarkable. There are only two pickups, health and energy which enemies and objects drop. Your powerups are bio-mods which come in mandatory upgrades and optional, both achieved from the hacking minigame. The optional biomods have to be slotted into Yars icon and run the gamut from super-helpful to situational at best. There are also mandatory stealth sections, which are thankfully short, but don't feel like it adds anything. Emi does comment on a lot of things, which can get grating. I have two big issues with this game; one is every few rooms you have a loading screen that takes about five seconds on my SSD. You have no way of knowing if you're about to enter a room that has a loading screen and later in the game there's one vertical room that EVERY room off of it goes into a loading screen. The other issue is a persistent bug I had that started about halfway through the game where, when using the control stick on my controller Emi would randomly go into a sneak animation while moving left. I had to start using my D-pad. Speaking of sneaking, it's absolutely useless; I never ran into a situation where it was necessary. Staying out of the enemies line-of-sight seemed to be enough.

This game is a competent albeit basic Metroidvania. The core gameplay is basically just Store-Brand Shantae, which is unsurprising given that it's Wayforward at the helm. The hacking game is basically "play Yar's Revenge" with a twist - it mashes up the original Yar's Revenge concept with various Atari throwback stuff - Centipede, Missile Command, and Space Invaders. This is actually done really well and using the Atari game as a hacking minigame is an inspired way to mix it in with the modern metroidvania (except for the final boss). The dialogue writing is utterly horrendous and is already coming across as badly dated despite the game only being two years old. Note to game designers: stop using internet lingo and flash-in-the-pan slang. Voiced dialogue like "On god? I dunno, that's pretty sus..." has absolutely no business being in a retro throwback game. Do you really think putting that crap in your retro throwback game is going to get anyone under 30 to buy it? Come on. Who's the audience for this game? Pros: Fluid controls in both main game and hacking game. Look, the core game is basically a weak Shantae and even a weak Shantae is pretty all right. Neat mixup of oldschool Atari stuff. Cons: Really awful "how do you do fellow kids" writing. Game is quite short and tries to make up for it with a NG+ hard mode and giving you the option to re-play your hacking challenges in the menu. The lack of saved loadout configs is really annoying when you want to switch from a loadout focused on exploration to a loadout focused on combat to a loadout focused on the hacking minigame. Final hacking challenge has literally nothing to do with anything you've done up to this point, and is a frustrating experience. It's the one hacking challenge that isn't mechanically related to Yar's Rising in any way, and it sucks for that reason. Achievement hunters will be annoyed because you can get 100% on your in-game save file despite not having gotten the achievement for hacking all terminals or using all elevators, and the in-game map does not show terminals that do not give biohacks so this will become irritating to chase down after completing the game. I don't really care, personally, but I'm just noting that for those who do. I actually re-visited all the elevators to confirm that I actually exited through all of them and didn't just enter them all, and did not get the achievement, so this may require doing it all on hard mode since that save file is separate. Ultimately, I can't really recommend Yars Rising as a "you should play this game" to anyone. It's ultimately not a bad game, but there's literally no reason for anyone to buy it - the core gameplay doesn't really do anything new and I wouldn't call it a masterpiece of the form. If you really like Shantae, you'll probably have fun with this game for a playthrough, but it's so short I'd suggest you buy it on sale as the standing $30 price point at the time of this writing is far too high.

Quite a lot of really old franchises are getting revived with metroidvania games. Pac man, Adventure, and now Yar's Revenge. for those who don't know, Yar's revenge is a game made in 1980 for the Atari 2600 and at the time it was the best video game ever on a console, especially in regards to the sounds and graphics. That being said, video games were extremely limited back then so what was good back then is awful by today's standards, but honestly? I think the gameplay still holds up. I had a lot of fun with the yar's revenge mini games featured in this game. I am not sure why so many people are complaining about them. I think the biggest mistake this game made was to make this appeal to Gen Z girls. I cannot think of a demographic that would be less interested in Yar's Revenge than that demographic and unsurprisingly no one of that demographic has picked up the game. Anyway, lets list the pros and cons: pros: - Excellent graphics - Very polished - Good voice acting - Good sound effects - metroid-like design - Yar's revenge mini games everywhere - No need to add markers, the game does it for you. cons: - Horrible music - Horrible dialogue - Geared towards a demographic with absolutely no interest in Yar's Revenge or metroidvanias - Too linear - The game always shows you where to go - OVERPRICED Yeah, let's talk about that last one because that is the determining factor in deciding whether or not to recommend this game. The game costs 335kr while the mummy demastered costs half 145kr and is twice as big as this game. Given its 11 hour length this should have costed half the amount and at 220kr it would be worth it if we take into account the voice acting and mini games.... but it doesn't cost 220kr, it costs 335kr. It's utterly ridiculous. You can get far more value for your money with other metroidvanias. The only situation where I would recommend this is if you got it in a bundle or found a 80% discount for the game somewhere (this is what I did).

It's alright, honestly it's simplicity might actually be a breath of fresh air cause so many Metroidvanians now comes packed with so much stuff or combat is sweaty that hitting something straightforward and simple may be what you're looking for. I like the use of Yars as hacking, and the variety is surpringly big so its not just the same thing over and over. That said, the tetris Yars shape for upgrade isn't a bad idea, but i feel like some of the stuff you're supposed to slot in should've been stuff that just upgraded you instead. Generally it's a cute game, it ends before you're getting tired of it. The art design is pretty good, except for the aliens, i mean the 4 you needed to save could've had different designs you know, and the music is on its own worth the purchase. In general, it's sad it didn't do well cause I could see a sequel expanding and doing more with these ideas.

I wanted to like this game. Really. And in the start, I did. But the hacking minigame starts to drag on and really starts to just suck. Yeah, there's an accessibility option to make them easy but the fact that I'm starting to seriously consider using it says a lot to me. Then there's the upgrades. Most of them are okay. But there's a lot of jank. A lot of times where my wall jump just said no. I don't like how that you can't go from a corner grab into a jump. You just go up or down. It's awkward. And there's just how many moves that use the same resource. WHY is my high jump connected to a resource? My drone is too and so are my missals. If you run out of that resource (you only have 10 by default) You just have to go collect more and then come back to try again. Then there's the high jump itself. It really feels shorter than it seems like it should be. Like there's a moment soon after you get it to get an extra thing and you just can't make it at all. It just feels really awkward. It really feels like it could have just been a double jump instead of holding up and pressing A. Some people don't like all the talking but compared to all the ones I play that are either silent or too really serious about their theme it's a really good change of pace. And I find it kind of charming. So it's very much in a weird middle ground for me. The fact you can get around the hacking minigames does bring it back. But with all the jank and such. It's hard to recommend. But I also find a lot of it charming. But when a game makes me be like "Nope. ♥♥♥♥ this. I'll come back later" And it's NOT a part that's supposed to frustrating or whatever. It gets the no from me.

I did not know I needed a game about a teenage hacker girl who can transform into a giant bug to solve puzzles and platform through a corporate conspiracy, and yet here I am, several late nights later, fully converted to the church of Yar. The bug transformation mechanic is genuinely such a fun twist on the usual Metroidvania formula. One second you're sneaking around as a human doing very normal hacking teenager things, and the next you're a massive insect chewing through walls like it's the most reasonable career pivot in the world. No notes. Immaculate use of bug privileges. The story leans heavily into its 80s inspired roots, complete with an evil megacorp so cartoonishly villainous I half expected them to twirl a mustache mid cutscene, and honestly I respect the commitment to just being unapologetically over the top about it instead of pretending to be serious. If I have one complaint, it's that some of the backtracking through previously explored areas drags a little in the back half, and a couple of the platforming sections test your patience more than your skill. Minor gripes in an otherwise wildly charming package.

This is my 2nd favourite metroidvania of all time. The only metroidvania that I think is better is the original Metroid Prime. So that should tell you how much I love Yars Rising. The reason I love it is because it takes Yars Revenge—the best Atari 2600 game of all time—and uses it as the mechanism for your player to achieve upgrades. This isn't a mere gimmick. It works incredibly well. But what seals the deal is the soundtrack. And it provides an *hour and a half* of truly exceptional city pop, vapourwave, and future funk. I place the soundtrack on the same level as Streets of Rage and Hotline Miami, both which defined an era of gaming for me. Alas, it's unlikely we'll ever see a sequel. But what a great game, and I will sing its praises to anyone who will listen.

[h1] Refund Requested and Denied! [/h1] ------------------------------------------- [h3] Warning to Gamers of Average Skill or Less [/h3] Yars Rising is more about platforming then it is about Castle Vania exploration. You can turn off the health penalties for the hacking mini-game, but you [b] CANNOT [/b] get out of wall jumping while lasers are firing at you or get out of boss battles. And you will have played more than 2 hours by the time you reach the bullet hell boss. And as such, you cannot test your skill against the bullet hell boss and then request a refund for this game. Therefore, you need to understand that Yars Revenge is all about arcade skill long before you buy the game. [h3] Summary of Game Elements [/h3] Soundtrack: Truly amazing Graphics: Decent, but you get no graphical options whatsoever in the settings menu Mini-games: Love them or hate them, but at least you can turn off the failure penalty Map Exploration: Mediocre Platforming: Painful In-Game Dialogue: Painful [h3] Another Criticism [/h3] Yars Revenge has [b] NO [/b] RPG elements. You cannot grind to get stronger! The only way you can get stronger is by finding more "biohacks." And most of the "biohacks" that you find are not all that useful. As a result, you will be woefully underpowered when you fight bosses. [h3] The Soundtrack [/h3] Atari and WayForward should be proud of that soundtrack. While many tracks might not belong in a MetroidVania game, they do make for easy listening. As such, I will get my money's worth for Yars Rising by listening to the soundtrack. [h3] The Audience [/h3] Other reviewers have mentioned this, but it bears repeating. Who plays MetroidVania games? Is it Gen Z ladies? Since I can't imagine anyone answering "yes" to that question, I have no idea why the game designers targeted a Gen Z female audience. It's baffling to me.