Yars Rising

This game makes me feel old...and not because it feels like a game I grew up loving. The dialogue is so painfully bad I feel like a 5th grader could write something that makes me cringe less. They tried to make the characters feel cool and completely failed in doing so.

Yars Rising feels like it desperately wants to be quirky and modern, but the writing constantly lands in that exhausting “hello, fellow children” territory. Every conversation drags on with forced humor and awkwardly self-aware dialogue that made me want to skip cutscenes more than once. The metroidvania side of the game is also disappointingly bland. Exploration never feels especially rewarding, the level design is forgettable, and movement/combat lack the punch needed to carry the genre. Instead of getting stronger and more engaged over time, I mostly felt bored. Boss fights don’t help either. A few of them spike in difficulty in ways that feel more frustrating than satisfying, especially considering how basic the combat mechanics are. And then there’s the hacking minigame inspired by Yars’ Revenge. In theory it’s a cute callback. In practice it’s brutally unforgiving and constantly interrupts the flow of the game. What should have been a fun retro homage turns into a recurring annoyance. There’s some charm in the presentation and concept, but overall Yars Rising feels like a game trying very hard to seem stylish and clever without the gameplay flow to back it up.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

shockingly underrated game, found this one day in my discovery queue. I had never heard of Yars until playing this game, and I haven't seen ANYTHING about this game specifically on any social media, which is a travesty tbh. as a metroidvania, its more vania than metroid. it's pretty linear but the map was large enough and there's enough optional areas and such and the gameplay is fun enough that the exploration being a bit lacking didn't affect my enjoyment at all. the level design and puzzles are well done, and the combat is enjoyable. full points the only real complaints I have about this game are: 1) there's no real way to attack enemies that are above you (that i figured out) and yet this game does, obnoxiously, have flying enemies, so you kind of just have to either jump around and shoot like a spastic, or just tank the hit. and 2) the hacking minigames pretty much all suck. there's a good portion, especially the earlier ones, that are "fine", but overall they're just annoying. I understood after beating the game and looking it up that the hacking minigames are actually supposed to be the classic "Yars Revenge" gameplay from 1982, but honestly, they should've stayed in 1982. unless you are SPECIFICALLY a fan of the original Atari 2600 Yars gameplay, trust me you will have a better time with this game if you just turn the hack invincibility ON from the beginning overall very good game, like 8.5/10! highly recommend

How does this game not have settings to adjust? Has some vsync or something low FPS idk what it is but it's not making a good experience.

A well-crafted metroidvania that's easy for beginners to start but still requires a high level of precision to complete. (I've not completed yet as of this review.) The use of a twisted imitation of 2600 Yar's Revenge game as a hacking mini-game is genius. The neon cyberpunk atmosphere and the vapourwave/city-pop soundtrack gives this a weeb vibe that's a nice break from the usual(?) grim dark aesthetics for this genre.