izigame.me

I don't understand the hate this game is getting. The Atari Recharged series is about making new versions of classic games, not recreating the original exactly as it was. After all, what would be the point in that, when Atari owns and can just release the original? And it's not like this is a new concept, newer "improved" versions of games have been getting made since the early days of the arcades.
I have the 2600 version of Berserk, I busted out my cartridge and played a few games as a refresher before I played this. There are a lot of nice improvements over the original here. Firstly, the graphics and sound blow away anything on the 2600. The 2600 was innovative and great for its time, but by today's standards the graphics on the best games look like something a 4 year old drew, and the sound was rudimentary. This new version takes advantage of modern capabilities, without vastly changing the game play. The walls are no longer lethal, which is nice, but some rooms do have laser gates. Touching those will give you damage, but other walls won't. Another improvement is that there are now 4 varied enemy types with different abilities, rather than a room full of the same robot. There are the humanoid drones, which are closest to the original robots. They will move towards you and shoot 1 bullet at a time at you. There are pursuers, which fly towards you and explode. There are turrets, which are stationary but they track you and fire 3 round bursts. And there are crawlers, which don't fire and they only hurt you if they touch you. The 4 enemy types make it more interesting. There are also achievements, such as killing 150 of each type of robot and killing 100 enemies when Otto is in the room, as well as reaching a certain number of rooms. The fact that you don't have "lives," but rather a 5 hit health bar makes reaching certain numbers of rooms easier, as dying and then respawning, restarting the room (as the original did) would break your momentum. I found myself doing some achievement hunting. I got all of the kill ones, the one where you have to kill enemies with Otto in the room was fun. Basically, kill as few enemies as possible before the Evil Beach Ball of Death spawns, then kill what you can and escape or die, depending on whether Otto kills you. The achievement I'm working on now is doing 20 straight rooms without taking damage, the most I've done so far is 12 rooms.
As for the game play itself, there are different play modes. You can play Arcade or Missions, though there's no explanation what you're supposed to do in the missions. So, I just play Arcade. You also have different options in Arcade mode to change the difficulty. Yon can start with 1 bar on your health. You can also play without power ups. And, finally, you can play without dash enabled. You can start a game with 1, 2 or all 3 of those enabled. Each one you enable increases your final score by 100%, so you can get 2, 3 or 4 times your final score. I usually play with dash disabled unless I'm doing one of the "reach X number of rooms" achievements, as that's the only time I use the dash.
There are some things that are the same as the original. The rooms are still randomly generated, the enemies still change color as you progress. Though, instead of changing as your score increases, they seem to change after a certain number of rooms. And, of course, Otto is still invulnerable and will kill you by touching you, no matter how full your health bar is.
Then there are a few things that changed that I'm less than enthusiastic about. Otto no longer gets faster after you kill all of the enemies in a room, his speed stays the same. Having him speed up made it more of a challenge to avoid him. Now it's pretty easy. Also, you can no longer shoot enemy bullets and destroy them, like you can on the 2600 version.
So, bottom line, I think this is a fun game. It's a cool time waster. Games can be quick or long, depending on your skill, or lack thereof, and on what spawns in each room. And, at only $10, it's a good deal, like the rest of the Recharged games. (I have them all) I'm not sure how often I'll actually play this one, but it's definitely been entertaining me, so it's worth the money. Or, if you don't think it is, just wait for a half off sale, as they happen fairly regularly.