Black Widow: Recharged

This version does [i]most[/i] things quite well. The things it does [i]poorly[/i], though, are so stupid that it makes the overall experience [b]INFURIATING[/b]. For example, you only have one life, and when you die, the programmers decided that you should INSTANTLY see a completely useless gigantic "GAME OVER" blank screen that does NOT include the progress or score you had at the time of death. WHAT THE H3LL?!?!??? Did I [i]almost[/i] make it? I'll never know, because the programmers felt compelled to scream "F U" in my face instead. And some of the levels get so busy that the sound engine just gives up on making sound effects altogether, rather than just throttling the redundant low-priority ones. [i]Come on.[/i] Didn't anyone PLAYTEST this thing??? (I don't have anything too exotic, just a motherboard-mounted Realtek configured for 4-speaker surround) And when using a twin-stick setup (because [i]IT'S BLACK WIDOW[/i], duh), when you push the firing stick in any direction, the first shot it takes is in the direction the spider is facing, NOT the direction you pushed the stick. This seems like a minor nitpick, until you try one of those stupid challenges where you're not allowed to kill a certain enemy type... which becomes VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE because of this ill-conceived control mechanic. Seriously, I have top-10 world record scores in [b]most[/b] of the challenges (I'm not [i]bragging[/i], mind you; it's not a terribly popular game), but a couple of them are just Tourettes-inducing, blood-vessel-bursting, ragefugginquittingly IMPOSSIBLE. Which is maddening because most aspects of the game are pretty well done. (And of course you have to overlook the absurdity of a spider dying instantly if any random passing fly flaps it with a wing...)

Black Widow: Recharged is a mediocre and uninteresting twin-stick shooter. Black Widow is a great, little known arcade game of old, and it's sad seeing this poor shadow as its modern presence. The people who built this game must have been made aware of Black Widow in some sense but clearly haven't played it or paid any real attention, as many aspects of the game are simply missing, and they definitely didn't care about what to do to make a modern or fun rendition out of it, nor about just making the game well in general. Recharged is mediocrity through and through. The game simply doesn't seem to care about scoring in any interesting sense, and I mean both in game design, where scoring mechanics have actually been removed, and in presentation where it doesn't even show score as you perform special actions, both obvious things from even a cursory look at the arcade game. For arcade mode, you lose on a single hit and the run starts with a lengthy boring phase. With so much removed from the arcade game, there's little left to prop up such a basic arcade mode. Challenge mode has a typical variety of tasks, and can pass some time fulfilling them, but they don't hide the fact that the play is simply dull and uninteresting, and they actually accent some of the problems and bugs (like the way you always fire a shot [i]before[/i] turning, since the devs couldn't be bothered to code that right even though they expect you to avoid shooting things in challenges). Sound design is both lacking and outright annoying, with a grating buzzing constantly running. Sounds can also just drop out sometimes for the rest of a run, so you'll have a few hints of noises but the vast majority of the sound is just dead, and it happens pretty reliably in some challenges. That's just embarrassing. Graphics are lazy. With bolder, cartoonified renditions of the original's vector graphics that for some reason use [i]less[/i] color. Seems like everything is fatter and bigger, which also leaves less play space. No doubt the game is [i]less[/i] bad to someone who doesn't care about the original, but that doesn't make this an acceptable effort. There are far better twin-sticks to play. This has nothing interesting to offer and does not do its name justice.

A classic Atari 2600 game revamped (Recharged). It is a twin joystick shooter that must be played with an Xbox or similar controller in my opinion. It is frantic, and awesome for those who have twitchy finger triggers as you are being attacked in every direction and must constantly move and shoot to avoid dying. Graphics are very nice and the sound is menacing. Highly recommended! P.S. Hit me up for some co-op sometime. I would love to try it.

This game is broken. The spider never points in the direction of the mouse pointer. It always fires straight up. Also the menu graphics are from Centipede. Come on, guys! Refunded.

Innovate you boring company, stop living off old glory This one isn't as bad as others

3/10 small minigame its ok + local co-op the game menu videos are from a completely different game, LAZY

Black Widow: Recharged developed by Adamvision Studios, SneakyBox and published by Atari is another remake that was done just right in my opinion, I can remember playing this in the arcade back i the day and this game captures that feeling quite well. The fast paced/keep you eye on the prize approach is a tried and true mechanic and boy howdy does this game offer it and a great addition to my Arcade cabinet! Cheers and great gaming folks!

A great reinvention of an old Atari game. So much is done with a single screen. There is depth in this game beyond what you'd anticipate, and the addition of co-op challenges brings this entry into it's own. Well worth checking out.

Slows to a crawl on Steam Deck when the screen gets busy. For example when you are blasting away at 7*shots the game slows to below 30fps, jittering like mad on a Deck still defaulting to 60fps. In serious need of optimizing, as it otherwise comes across as very fun game indeed - certainly better than the original. Change the Properties for 'Compatability' to the latest community 'GE-Proton' though and it's a whole different ball game - 60fps even with VSync on, even whilst blasting 7*shots. Great fun!

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