Yars Rising [Review]
Yars Rising is a fun Metroidvania marred by unskippable minigames.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
WayForward and Atari’s Yars Rising is a spiritual successor to the Atari classic Yars Revenge, a pioneering space shooter for the Atari 2600. Yars Rising recontextualizes the original game into a sidescrolling Metroidvania. The game’s core action is strong: a polished run-and-gun platformer. However, the rest of the gameplay—hacking minigames and stealth traversal—diminishes the experience.
You are Emi Kimura, a hacker hired to infiltrate QoTech, a tech megacorporation. You get caught, and as you’re forced into the underground guts of the building during your escape, you discover QoTech is hiding secrets darker than you imagined. Soon, you become embroiled in an intergalactic conflict between two alien races, the Yar and the Qotile, threatening to destroy Earth in its wake.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
The game's scope is relatively small for a Metroidvania. The QoTech building comprises the bulk of the map, with limited exploration in the neighborhood next to it and a small environment I won’t reveal. However, the game is short enough that the limited environments don’t get stale. At first, Emi can only run, jump, grab ledges, crawl, and sneak. You’ll find combat and traversal abilities in typical Metroidvania fashion as you explore. They’re not flashy, but they feel good to use overall.
Some combat abilities prove more valuable than others during fights. Outside of the default Zorlon Shot and the more powerful Destroyer Missiles, I rarely used the rest outside of their environmental effects, such as breaking barriers or making certain blocks solid. Traversal abilities include wall jumping, walking on water, a dash, a high jump, and limited underwater breathing.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
Scattered through the game, you also find Biohacks, which are usually not unique abilities but provide buffs to Emi or her existing skills. For example, a Biohack may increase your life or energy capacity, make your Zorlon Shot quicker or more powerful, or give extra altitude to your high jump. Biohacks are represented in shapes made up of one to four tiles. To equip them, you have to fit them into the form of a classic Yar sprite; this forces you to decide how you’d like to build your character. This system feels similar to the puzzle component of Resident Evil inventory management, and it made Biohacks more enjoyable with this added visual representation.
Some Biohacks also augment your abilities during the hacking minigames. Hacking is a significant component of Yars Rising, taking the form of arcade-style minigames based on the mechanics of the original Yars Revenge and other Atari classics. They’re unskippable; you must do them at any console to open doors or unlock abilities and Biohacks. Fail, and you get kicked out of the hacking interface and take damage. Then you have to enter it again and start over. I quickly got frustrated because of the delay to try again and because I was in this to play a Metroidvania, not to play Yars Revenge. Mercifully, the game allows you to turn on invincibility for the minigames, but I would have preferred to be able to skip them entirely.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
The invincibility is useless for a Pong minigame you must endure near the end of the adventure as a boss encounter. And of course, when you fail, you don’t just replay it, you get a game over screen and have to reinitiate the cutscene preceding the minigame. Dialogue is skippable, but you must still go through a loading screen, watch a character walk into the scene, etc. It took me over an hour to get past this, and I was ready to throw my controller through my screen.
The third gameplay component of Yars Rising is stealth. You must avoid guards by sneaking and staying out of their line of sight. If you get caught and don’t get away immediately, you get zapped and must restart the room. These sections are mercifully short and not very challenging. I would have removed them entirely from the game outside of an early section where they are appropriate for the story.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
Yars Rising is a 2.5D game—played in 2D but presented in 3D. The designs of the characters, enemies, and bosses stand out and are memorable. All the animation is excellent, but Emi’s character animation is outstanding and makes traversal feel good. The graphics are 3D, in an attractive, cartoonish style. While I was disappointed by the lack of variety in the environments, the ones in the game look great. I loved one detail—the save console resembles the original Atari Computer Space arcade cabinet.
All the dialogue is fully voiced. The writing isn’t stellar, but the cast does a great job bringing it to life. I particularly enjoyed that Emi often quips during the game, commenting on what’s around her. You can mute this, but no line is repeated twice, and I felt it added a lot of color to the game. I enjoyed the game’s soundtrack. Rather than a score, it’s an original soundtrack featuring various artists.
Yars Rising. Credit: Atari / WayForward
Something I must note with Yars Rising is that the game excessively shows loading screens. The game would halt with a loading screen what felt like 50% of the time I moved from one screen to the next, even within a single biome. The pause to load grinds momentum to a halt and gets irritating as you’re running back and forth through a game that requires backtracking and feels inexcusable for a modern Metroidvania running on a PS5.
Except for the minigames, I enjoyed playing Yars Rising. WayForward successfully reimagined the story of Yars Revenge in a vibrant, exciting way. The idea of bringing back classic Atari 2600 gameplay in the form of required minigames might sound good on paper, but unfortunately, it didn’t work well here, and I would have liked the game far more without them.
Yars Rising is available now on PC (Steam), PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One / Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: PS5
