Remember when everybody begged and pleaded for a reboot of the 1982 Atari classic, Yar’s Revenge? Neither do I, but here we are. Much like the upcoming Kid Icarus: Uprising, the new title looks like it has less to do with the concepts of its predecessor and has more in common with games like Sin & Punishment, Panzer Dragoon, and Star Fox.

It’s this genre change that had my interest piqued. The move to a third person rail shooter, regardless of its franchise branding, seemed right up my alley. After all, games in this genre aren’t particularly common, especially now. But sadly, the only thing waiting for me in the new XBLA Yar’s Revenge was disappointment.

Yar’s Revenge opens and is interspersed with cutscenes to tell the story. One of the few positive things I can say about the game is that there are some really nicely drawn still frames in these scenes. But each scene is awkwardly silent. The text dialogue uses only colors to signify who’s talking, and everybody seems to refer to themselves in the third person. Needless to say, it’s easy to get confused by this presentation, especially when it blindsides you in the intro.

The stages themselves also look rather nice, containing bright colors and a sense of life. Unfortunately, they get stale rather quickly for two reasons. For starters, every stage seems to last for an eternity with little variation happening throughout. Secondly, there are really only three distinct themes for the game’s six stages. For example, after flying through a level resembling cloud city for far longer than anybody would want to, you get to do it again in the following level for just as overly long.

Perhaps the environments wouldn’t feel so droning if the gameplay wasn’t so repetitive. Much like the stage themes, there are really only three distinct enemy types (aside from bosses) in the game. Aesthetically there are a small handful more, but mechanically describing it as any more than three would be generous. Essentially, you have the turret type enemies on the ground, non-aggressive flying enemies following each other in set paths, and mildly aggressive flying enemies that don’t move around much at all.

To make matters worse, the only enemies that feel like they are part of the environment are the ground enemies. The flying enemies, which make for about two thirds of what you’ll encounter, stay at the exact same place regardless of whatever crazy maneuvers the camera decides to do. This completely takes you out of the game, making the environment seem like a movie playing in the background while unrelated creatures awkwardly ignore it with their unaltered flight patterns.

Bosses don’t fare much better. While they can be amusing to fight initially, you’ll quickly find that these battles are just as drawn out as the levels leading up to them. You’ll find yourself doing the same few repetitive dodges while their health slowly trickles down. The real challenge isn’t whether or not the boss will kill you, but whether or not you will actually stick around long enough to watch them die before you decide to quit the game and do and something else.

Somehow the controls manage to be even less intuitive than the already awkward (but lovable) first Sin & Punishment. While the twin stick moving and aiming controls are similar, the weapons require a lot of button holding. You’ll hold down the primary fire button most of the time, but will want to be able to access the secondary fire and dodge button without moving. The missiles also require holding a button, so at any given time you’ll find yourself holding or hovering over all four shoulder buttons simultaneously while you maneuver two sticks and occasionally press a face button (A, B, X, Y) to power up.

The powerups themselves are mildly interesting, but simply aren’t enough to save your from the game’s boring pace. Each one is assigned to a specific face button and you can activate them at a time of your choosing. The shield doubles as a healing item, another one provides cover fire for destroying enemy bullets, and so on. As far as I could tell, these items, as well as missiles (which are limited and must be collected), are random drops from enemies. Funny enough, the missiles I found to be the most ineffectual weapon in the game despite it being the only one that is limited.

I really thought I’d love Yar’s Revenge. It resembled so many games that I’m fond of. But even as little as a third of the way through the already short campaign, I found myself finishing it, not out of fun, but so that I could fully warn others of just how joyless it is. Yar’s Revenge feels like a chore in a genre that’s usually full of constant excitement. It’s so far removed from the original that I can’t imagine nostalgic fans caring, and it’s not a good enough game to make it worth a purchase to anybody else.

This review is based on a copy of Yar’s Revenge purchased by the reviewer.

Tags: atari, Killspace Entertainment, rail shooter, reboot, xbla, Xbox 360, Yar's Revenge

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 2:30 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.