Yars Rising review: "A Metroidvania that's competent in every way, but it's all too forgettable"

It's astounding that Yars Rising even exists. The original Yars' Revenge was one of the Atari 2600's biggest hits, yet it was nearly inscrutable at a glance – a single-screen shooter where you go back and forth across a bizarre energy field, nibbling away at protective barriers to open a path for your cannon to fire at an enemy on the other side. How, then, would you reboot that concept over 40 years later? Naturally, you turn it into a 2D Metroidvania starring a spunky anime girl.

The idea makes a lot more sense when you consider developer WayForward's own history with 2D Metroidvanias and spunky anime girls. This is, after all, the studio that brought us Shantae. Yars Rising doesn't stray too far from genre conventions – you'll be exploring open-ended areas, looking for upgrades, and using uncovered abilities to find new places to explore – but the twist is a hacking component that mixes in classic Yars' gameplay mechanics alongside some other classic Atari tributes.

If that basic rundown sounds appealing to you, you'll probably have a decent time with Yars Rising. But you won't find much that rises above that 'decent' moniker. No part of this game is outright bad – in fact, a few elements are great - but you won't find anything here that would stand out among the increasingly crowded ranks of the best Metroidvania games.

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Computer space

You play as a young hacker named Emi, who's been contracted to uncover the secrets of a mysterious corporation called QoTech. Along the way, you gain access to biotech abilities that let you do everything from shooting and dashing to walking on water. The controls feel great, and there's a nice progression to the upgrades – every time you return to a previous area with new abilities, it feels like you can just destroy enemies and speed past obstacles, which is exactly the sort of power scale a good Metroidvania should have.

The problem is that the areas are far too straightforward. There are just a few diverging paths to explore at any given time, and locked areas you need new abilities to access are all clearly marked on the map. The areas are made up of too many nondescript hallways taking you from place to place, and while there are some solid little platforming challenges in-between, very little of it is memorable. Unfortunately, the bit that stands out in my memory are the frequent stealth sequences, where you've got to squeak by security guards that can knock you out with a single hit. Each of these stealth bits are quite easy and only a few seconds long, but they pop up so frequently that they constantly drag down the pace of exploration.

There's also very little visual variety to lend these straightforward spaces much interest. Much of Yars Rising takes place either in the antiseptic hallways of the QoTech offices or the sleek neon streets just outside of it, and the visuals feel stretched thin over the course of the runtime. There are neat bits of Atari nostalgia scattered about as Easter eggs – the retro Computer Space machines that serve as save points are a particularly nice touch – but there's not enough detail to make any of these places stand out.

Boss fights can be a highlight, as a few of the major combat encounters do a great job of forcing you to use all your abilities in concert, and these battles are just challenging enough to be engaging without being frustrating. But then there are a couple of anti-climactic fights that feel like they're over before they begin, which is particularly disappointing given that Yars Rising sets such a high bar for bosses early on in the experience.

New upgrades and abilities are all scattered behind terminals that need to be hacked open, and while you might be tempted to call this process a 'minigame,' that undersells just how substantial this part of Yars Rising is. At a basic level, the hacks play out like a classic game of Yars' Revenge, taking place on a single screen where you've got to clear a path for a cannon shot to destroy an enemy. But every hack consists of a discrete challenge.

In some hacks, you'll be chased by homing missiles, and in others you'll need to clear obstacle courses full of destructive mines to reach your objective. Still others draw influence from other Atari games – in some cases, you'll have to destroy a Centipede-style wandering bug or dodge incoming rockets that explode in big, Missile Command-like bursts. These challenges are fun and nicely varied, but there are so many hacks to complete that they can wear pretty thin. Imagine grabbing missile containers in a Metroid game, but every single one is hidden behind an additional little challenge – it's a lot.

Most of these hacks get you little upgrades that offer things like increased health, faster shot speed, or more damage. Each of these is shaped like a little tetromino block that you need to slot into a Yar-shaped pixel grid, and building a solid loadout through inventory Tetris is fun. But I hit upon my preferred loadout around halfway through the game, and none of the upgrades that followed were able to convince me to swap out old favorites – which, in turn, made all the hacking I was doing to get these upgrades feel a lot more tedious. It would also be nice to have multiple loadout options – most upgrades apply to the on-foot action, but a few are specific to hacks, and it feels like a waste to split your loadout between items that are only useful half of the time.

The citypop pops

The 5-10 hours it'll take you to finish Yars Rising are punctuated by a fair amount of dialog between a sizable cast of characters, telling a story that – well, you've definitely seen before. The voice acting has the energy of '00s anime dub cast having a little too much fun in the booth, and while it's good, it toes the line of being what I can only describe as a Bit Much. This is a game in desperate need of some extra little spark to tie it all together, and unfortunately the story ain't it.

One piece of unequivocal praise I can heap on Yars Rising is for its soundtrack. It's a fantastic collection of city pop-inspired tracks with often cheesy lyrics that stayed stuck in my head days after I stopped playing. It's fantastic stuff, and does a lot to elevate the game in its duller moments, since it's hard to get annoyed about running through repetitive hallways when you're tapping your toe the whole way through.

I wish Yars Rising had just one or two more aspects that stood out as much as its soundtrack. As it stands, this is a Metroidvania that's competent in every way, but it's all too forgettable. The hacking is a nice twist on classic Atari gaming, but it doesn't feed much back into the game as a whole. A game as weird and wild as Yars' Revenge was back in 1982 demands a little more in the adaptation.