Yars Rising Review

Yars Rising is WayForward’s way of celebrating the Yars gaming series; which first released on Atari way back in 1982 as Yar’s Revenge. The game was a fixed/single screen shooter where players need to shoot through barriers to destroy the Qotile with a hit from the Zorlon cannon. The original is currently part of the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection of games.

Yars Rising puts players in the virtual boots of the young hacker Emi Kimura, hired by a mysterious patron to infiltrate the shadowy QoTech corporation. The protagonist will explore office buildings and hidden underground labs; among other areas of the building to uncovers the dark truth behind the QoTech corporation.

Yars Rising is a 2D action platformer in the style of Metroidvania; players explore the large corporation areas where you’ll find dead ends that require specific skills in order to progress forward. The genre is known for its backtracking as once you’ve managed to acquire a specific skill, you’ll need to retrace your steps to overcome whatever obstacle was blocking your path.

As with any platformer, our little heroine, Emi, can take care of herself. She can run, jump, climb and crawl through small spaces. Within the first few minutes of the game, you’ll rely on stealth but either crawling into ducts or hiding in door ways to avoid enemies.

Emi learns to defend herself soon enough by firing colored pellets from her portable device. And as you go deeper into the corporation, you’ll unlock new skills and character upgrade (such as health upgrades) to aid you in your investigation. And you might be asking how we unlock and acquire new skills? Throughout your exploration, you’ll come across hackable terminals.

While most of them are to unlock doors and passages, bigger, more flashy terminals will give you perks once you’ve successfully hacked up. But it’s not that simple. Every “hacking” is basically a level/game of Yars Revenge. You’ll have to shoot up a specific item in the hacking level with your cannon. You can also health and missile pick ups from objects or dead enemies. You’ll need the former because Emi takes a lot of damage from a single hit.

And it’s not always that simple and easy. Some will require you to nudge away at a protective barrier, others will require you to dodge heat seeking missiles or build up your Cannon meter before firing. This also applies during boss fights. Once you’ve dealt enough damage, you’ll need to hack the nearby terminal. But this time, it might require multiple levels of hacking. If you fail too many times, you can enable an Invincibility mode.

The game looks great as a whole; it offers a highly diverse colored universe players can explore. Each area of the corporation (and outside) has some subtleties that make each section unique whether in terms of color palette and level design. Due to its Metroidvania nature, the level design evolves given some areas or section of the map will be unreachable until you unlock the required skill. A lot of Metroidvania have a more dark tone, but Yars Rising is the popular opposite with its colorful and anime like design. The soundtrack is an enjoyable mix of lounge-y EDM tunes; a bit of a contrast compared to the action, but nice to the ear nonetheless.

The game does have a few annoying quirks. The hacking mechanic, while unique and original, gets tedious after a while even if each “hack level” is different. At some point, you’ll just want to activate the Invincibility mode just so you can clear them as fast as possible so you can go back the 2D action. The grasshopper legs, while allows Emi to wall jump, is incredibly clunky to use. Instead of automatically jumping from left to right, you need to press the direction you want to go on the d-pad (or joystick) and it feels unresponsive at times. Emi also takes sometime excessive damage when being hit while health pick ups barely regen health. A cop can take you out in 2-3 hits for example; at full health.

Fans of the Metroidvania genre should definitely look into Yars Rising. It’s a fun and challenging addition to the genre. And yes, while far from perfect mostly because Emi is incredibly fragile and the hacking mini-game gets tedious the more you do it, it does offer solid gameplay, challenging bosses and a unique environment to explore. I highly recommend Yars Rising to everyone; fans of the Metroidvania genre or not.