Having grown up playing Atari games, and owning a few Atari systems, it has been really wonderful to see them back at least in some capacity this generation. Aside from the excellent 50th Anniversary Collection, the various updates that they’ve attempted with some of their iconic titles have been pretty interesting, even if not all winners. Yars Rising is something different though, and its connection to the old-school Yars’ Revenge from the Atari 2600 was unexpected, though I suppose at least creative.

The main game is actually a pretty middle-of-the-road Metroidvania, where you’ll play as a hacker named Emi, who is trying to infiltrate a company named QoTech, who it seems has been dealing in some sketchy stuff. Oddly enough, the hacking is where the classic game, or at least a wide variety of variations on it, gets pulled into the mix. For whatever reason, you’ll essentially be playing remixed versions of Yars’ Revenge as a means of breaking through security. Thankfully this at least takes on many forms, with some directly using elements of the classic title, others feeling a bit more classic arcade in nature, and some even involving a timing component to help up the pressure a bit. I suppose for older gamers like me this is a bit of an interesting value add, but I could see newer gamers, or just people unfamiliar with the original, perhaps being a little bewildered by it being so central to gameplay.

Once your plan to install a dongle in the company server room, and give access to the people who hired you, goes completely wrong you’ll find yourself on the run. For the most part, you’ll be working to find a balance between sneaking around, evading detection by security and knocking them out. It turns out that when you hack some particular stations, rather than unlocking doors or other normal things like that, you’ll end up enhancing yourself, giving you multiple capabilities that mirror the original game as well. That allows the action to switch more to a run-and-gun feel in places, and at least that can make for a little variety.

The problem is, for all of the polish the game has, including the quality of its art and its voice acting, the experience as a whole does feel a bit safe. There aren’t issues with how it controls, it has some nice boss fights that utilize your discovered abilities effectively, and the hacking sequences at least don’t get stale too quickly, but the action also failed to grab me and demand my attention every time I put it down. In my mind, that leaves a window where I have no doubt there’ll be people who love it, but I could also see Metroidvania veterans left a bit cold. I applaud the effort to find new directions and ways to continue to make Atari classics relevant, and this was a creative method of doing so, but I’ll admit this feels like a bit of an odd stretch.