Berzerk: Recharged Review (todd_russell)
Remember fondly playing Berzerk when it first came out. This updated version attempts to capture that spirit with the confined mazes, the invincible Otto and add a few new twists. I'd argue most of the new twists they added negatively impacted the gameplay experience.
Take, for example, the utterly dumb bottom 1/8th of the screen that is shadowed and makes it difficult to see enemies. Yeah, cool, they can hide from you, but then you can't even see yourself very well. The developers need an option to turn this off. The original Berzerk was a flat maze and you could see everything. What developer Sneakybox tried to do here actually distracts from gameplay.
Dash in Berzerk? Huh? Why add Dash? Part of the fun of Berzerk is that Otto can outrun you. The enemies can eventually outrun you, too. Sure, a dash action can save you, but it's totally unnecessary until deeper in the game, which the vast majority of players will never see. Luckily, the devs offer an option to play with the dash disabled and earn a multiple of your score. That's cool.
Some of the powerups are kinda useful, like the shotgun fire, but anything to do with dash is unnecessary (see above). Slowdown? Yeah, that helps with the enemies that fix on you and come after you fast, but by the time you get the powerup, the level is cleared or almost cleared and Otto is coming out. Bottom line: play without powerup, get a 100% multiplier on your score.
Another problem: there are only two leaderboards, the single player leaderboard and multiplayer. The single player leaderboard actually covers three different modes: Iron Man, which is one life only, powerups enabled/disabled and dash enabled/disabled. If you run Iron Man mode only, then it's one life, with no powerups and dash and you get 300% boost of score on the same leaderboard. Apparently the developer thinks that score should be shared with others that do not use this mode and the score bonus. IMO, they should have different leaderboards for each configuration/mode. It's more fair to compete that way. It's fine to have one leaderboard with the score multiplier bonus (it isn't their actual score, which is strange, btw) but why not have more leaderboards with all options/configurations?
And the leaderboard for multiplayer is local only, so only the player logged in gets credit. That's a bummer for your friend that plays with you, because they get zero credit for being on the leaderboard. This is something that future Recharged titles need to fix. Mutliple Steam users should be able to get credit for a multiplayer session. I get that there would only be a login for the second player when playing remotely, so probably a challenge to incorporate this, but it's a bummer for multiplayer gaming sessions with your friends. The multiplayer Berzerk: Recharged experience is fun.
Glitches. Oh my. This feels glitchy in a number of ways. One, what's the deal with zoning between rooms? It's very jarring and not smooth like a game that was created for arcades 40+ years ago? Another is the fact that when you first zone in, sometimes your character will stall or glitch move into a different part of the screen near the doorway? What? This makes firing at enemies right away unnecessarily difficult.
By now, you're probably figuring out all the reasons this game is a thumbs down for me. I'm not going to refund it, because I've kept the other Recharged games, including some that should have been refunded. Buy Asteroids: Recharged or Yar's Revenge: Recharged instead of Berzerk: Recharged, but get them when they are on sale. These games should not cost $9.99. They are $5 and less games, at best. This one needs some more work with updates before it's worth even that.
On one hand, glad to see Atari pushing for these updated versions of classic games, but on the other, they need to put more love and time into these than what's being packaged and presented here. We want it to truly represents the gameplay experience those of us loved with the original game with modern update. One comment from a friend who played this with me was "this seems like a mobile game" and that wasn't meant complimentary. The version I played at launch feels more than a little rushed in the development process.