izigame.me

I liked the previous nine Recharged games (though wish they had the dip switch settings of the originals), but man, I pretty much had a visceral dislike of this one. I've never uninstalled a game so fast before. Twice in less than half an hour of play-time. I gave it a third try the next day and disliked it less, but still ended up uninstalling it. It feels so generic and is too different from the original to trigger any sort of nostalgia. Definitely watch a video or two before you buy this. The other Recharged games are basically the originals with “more” and/or power-ups, but this one changed things all over the board. The overall speed is way faster than the original, which necessitated twin-stick controls (though you still have a fire button). It has way more bullets on the screen and quick homing enemies practically from the word Go, an isometric viewpoint that is surprisingly difficult for me to parse, significantly less voice samples compared to the original (which might be the biggest crime of all), and modifiers which only make the game more difficult. They could at least have given the equivalent of Missile Commands' Calm modifier so you could have pacing closer to the original. Maybe if it had the control scheme of Robotron 64 I would have liked it. In any event, I find myself among the haters, and the only reason I’m not returning it is because I bought it as part of a Recharged bundle sale. The biggest downer might be that going forward I’m not going to buy any Recharged titles before I have a chance to really look into them, including seeing how the reviews shake out.