Asteroids: Recharged

One of the biggest surprises of the year has to be Atari's Recharged series, where the long-time video game company has found ways to reinvent some of their greatest arcade hits. I was thoroughly won over by Centipede and enjoyed my time with the lesser-known Black Widow, so I couldn't wait to see where the series would go next. The good news is that we didn't need to wait long, because here we have Asteroids: Recharged, another big-name arcade hit that helped pave the road for the video games industry. What's even more exciting is that this marks the first new Asteroids release since the 2007 remake, which received mixed reviews at the time. Does Asteroids: Recharged help to bring the series back to its former glory or is this another shooter that is lost in space? Let's find out.

Despite being a massive arcade smash in 1979, the Asteroids series hasn't had the same lasting appeal as Space Invaders or Pac-Man. There were only a few arcade sequels, including 1982's Space Duel and the largely-forgotten Blasteroids from 1987, and most of the re-releases have either been straight arcade ports or enhanced updates that fail to capture the magic of the original. These days, you're just as likely to play one of clones or imitators than a real Asteroids game.

Perhaps that will change with this new Recharged version, which takes the series back to its roots. You play a nameless character piloting a triangle-shaped space ship through an asteroid belt where rocks are coming at you from all sides. What sets this series apart from other 2D shoot 'em ups is that we don't have direct control over the ship. That is to say, you don't move the ship around with the analog stick, like most shooters. Instead, you pull the trigger to give the ship a little boost, forcing us to carefully plan every movement and not just fly around the screen with reckless abandon. Moving around is all about momentum and steering, two things that are tough to control in the middle of an asteroid belt.

Because flying around the stage can be difficult and deadly, a lot of the game has you taking a stationary position on the map and shooting any rocks or spaceships that threaten to run into our fragile ship. If things get too hot in that one spot, you can quickly fly to the other side of the grid and get back to shooting down asteroids. But that strategy won't always work, and this game is at its best when you're forced to navigate around massive asteroids and be on the run. And as if that wasn't tense enough, you'll quickly discover that every time you destroy a big asteroid, it will separate into a bunch of smaller and smaller and smaller rocks, all of which will fill up the rectangle playfield in a hurry.

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Much like the other games in the Recharged series, this version of Asteroids makes your life a lot easier with the addition of power-up items. This will come in the form of an enormously helpful spread shot, a big laser gun and an explosive shot that will suck a bunch of rocks into its destruction. Fans of the Recharged series will also recognize a mirror power-up, a three-way shot and other weapons pulled straight out of Centipede and Black Widow. These items go a long way to add excitement to the action, and my only complaint is that there aren't enough of them.

If you've played one of Atari's Recharged games, then this Asteroids download is going to look awfully familiar. The standard mode is an arcade game that gives you one life and no continues. It's identical to what we saw in Centipede and Black Widow, which means that it has all of the same problems that plagued those games. I hate to repeat myself, but this is easily the weakest part of Asteroids: Recharged. It's far too barebones to hold your interest beyond a game or two and is in desperate need of extra modes, customization and maybe extra lives. The fact that we're still reduced to only having one life feels like it goes against the spirit of the original arcade games. This is more of a challenge mode than a proper arcade experience.

Speaking of which, the challenge mode is back and ready to do most of the heavy lifting. This has consistently been the best part of these Recharged games, and Asteroids is no exception. The problem is that this particular game doesn't lend itself well to a wide variety of challenges, so we're forced to complete dozens of challenges that are all basically the same. The thirty stages rotate between destroying a set amount of asteroids, surviving for a set amount of time, using some power-up and trying to match a high score. There are some exceptions here and there, but a majority of the levels fall into those categories, with some overlapping.

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The slower-pace of the action also means that the challenge levels drag on longer than what we saw in Centipede and Black Widow. I found it frustratingly common to spend a couple minutes trying to hit the score or destroy enough asteroids, only to die in the last second and have to do the whole thing all over again. And if that wasn't bad enough, what kills the excitement is knowing that the next level is going to be the exact same challenge, only this time they added 15 extra rocks to shoot down. The monotony sets in early on this one.

Unfortunately, the repetition carries over to the visual presentation. Don't get me wrong, I like the vector-style graphics and think that Asteroids looks great in high-definition, but once you've seen the asteroids and space ships, you've basically seen it all. Much like Centipede and Black Widow, this newest Recharged game doesn't have enough variety when it comes to the graphics, which can make every stage and challenge look the same. I would love to see one of these updated classics mix things up with more colors, wilder backgrounds and maybe even a cool-looking boss. It won't take much to keep the visuals fresh.

For me, the big disconnect is that I've always found Asteroids to be more frustrating than fun. I appreciate that it brought something new to the fledgling shoot 'em up genre in the late 1970s, but there's a reason why so few games play like Asteroids. It's just so much easier to move the ship around the screen with the joystick, no matter how unrealistic that is. This Recharged version does everything it can to update the formula and the power-ups definitely help, but this is easily my least favorite of the series.