Publisher Atari and developer SneakyBox are bringing back a classic 80s Atari arcade gaming experience that quite frankly scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid, if not caused outright anxiety at the time. The game? Berserk. The point of the game is to infiltrate a dangerous robotic military compound and eliminate a bunch of enemies while avoiding the vicious Evil Otto, an indestructible killing machine. You needed a reason to shoot, score points, and escape. The game had all the above.
Re-tooled and re-imagined, this time out the game is called Berzerk: Recharged and it’s everything the original was, including inducing a healthy dose of anxiety to keep the essence of the arcade game alive. While the concept of shooting, scoring, and moving is still very much in the experience, the difficulty has been ramped up to 11 for those who enjoy torturing their senses.
So, get those running shoes ready, set phaser to destroy, and for God’s sake watch out for that damn bouncing ball as we run through this review.
Bounce, bounce, bounce
The gameplay for Berzerk: Recharged is broken down into two main modes – arcade and missions. Beginning with the arcade mode, this mode mimics the old 80s arcade game, where your little character is bouncing around a series of mazes trying to destroy every robotic baddy in sight while avoiding the chase given by a happy/sad bouncing ball called Evil Otto. Spoiler alert, you cannot kill Evil Otto. In fact, one touch from that warped kickball and you’re done. Is that fair? No, but that’s the 80s! Anyway, the higher the score in the arcade mode, the better. That was the purpose of arcade games in the 80s and it maintains that essence in this new recharged version. For that, I commend it because I believe that should be a driving point for remaking, remastering, and recharging these old arcade experiences – keeping the game’s original purpose intact.
Now, if you aren’t interested in scoring a bunch of points and being the king of the hill, then the game features a short-stinted missions section. This mode of the game gives you missions to achieve, and enemies to kill, and all of it is finite. The purpose of this is to simply get as many points as you can in the shortest amount of time. I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t this just a smaller arcade version of the game?” Yes, it is. I didn’t think that through thoroughly. You’re right. Anyway, it’s still fun to challenge yourself on unique missions that have varying degrees of difficulty. As you complete missions, you begin to unlock more and more missions that have different completion requirements. The change might be subtle between missions and arcade, but it’s enough to keep it different.
Both these modes are worth the $9.99 asking price, if not only to challenge friends and revisit old feelings of anxiousness.
Thumbstick and move
Moving our hero is as easy as using the left thumbstick, while firing is handled in tandem by the right thumbstick and the R1 button. At a base level, the controls are incredibly simple to pick up on, as you will get them down right out of the gate. Honestly, outside of using power-ups that are assigned to the other top controller buttons, it’s nothing too difficult at all, which is great because you must worry about a few other aspects of the game that are constantly coming at you, namely swarms of enemies.
The enemies in this game, outside of the changing borders and walls of each level you pass through, are made up of stationary guns, quickly moving bombs, robots armed with pistols, and annoying robots that don’t shoot, rather they just get in the way. The enemies progressively get difficult in the game, as they begin with one-shot enemies, meaning you blow them up in one shot, then start requiring multiple shots to take them down as you push further and further through. The difficulty arc is proper in its progression and doesn’t do a lot to annoy the senses. During my review session, I never felt like I was ever put into an impossible situation where swarms of enemies were just too much to handle, even when the walls of the levels got in the way. But there was one enemy that really got my goat when playing the game and that was my ability to aim.
You’ve played yourself, player
I thought about this long and hard. Legit. I had to tap into my inner six-year-old self and think back to how things were in a 1982 arcade. The arcade that first popped into my head was in the Galleria, and it was called 2004. I guess 2001 was copyrighted. Who knows. Anyway, the point of arcade games during this time was to keep you pumping quarters into the machine and keep you there if your wallet allowed. Arcades used a risky system to make money, where difficulty poked at ego, and not every arcade survived because of this. Regardless, if you make a game slightly more difficult than it needs to be, it offends the player’s ego enough when they lose that they keep playing. Berzerk did this quite well with its arcade stick aiming system, as it wasn’t as perfected as say the dual-stick gems Robotron 2084 or Food Fight, and I can only believe that was on purpose for the above reason. Well, the new game translated that flaw, recharged it and maintained it like you were pumping quarters into the game. While I respect the concept being preserved, I could have done without it.
When you aim in Berzerk: Recharged, you do so accepting that you will not be able to shoot straight – literally. Rather, you shoot in angles, which means you must position your player to move around in angles. I cannot tell you how many times I thought I had my enemy down sight only to fire above or below them. Getting a dead-on straight shot was never in the cards. That was frustrating as hell, especially when waves of enemies started your way. Even after over 20+ playthroughs of this game, and an encouraging number of trophies, this aspect of the game still bugged me. I don’t mind a challenge, but I would prefer the aiming option to be a bit more accurate. This honestly didn’t need to be carried over from the arcade experience. I would have preferred it if it wasn’t.
Creepy, happy visuals
Back in the day, the visuals were limited in an 80s arcade experience, unless you were playing Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, or that poorly drawn other laser-disc game that was two steps away from Zelda on the Philips CD-I. Anyway, the point here is that the visuals took a backseat to the action and gameplay. It’s a proper order of things for that period of gaming time, as arcade game manufacturers were trying to make the most money without adding unnecessary hardware costs to improve visuals. If you need proof, check out the story behind Steve Jobs and Woz when they made the Breakout arcade game. Saving money in the build process and making money from it was a nasty balance at times.
With Berzerk Recharged, the visuals are simplistic by today’s standards, but miles above the original game. Enemies are color-coded for difficulty, as yellow is an easy kill and red is multi-shot kills. There is an 80s neon glow on the walls and Evil Otto reminds us of the decade this game was born in and how cool neon was back in the day. Hell, it’s still cool.
Anyway, visually this is a cool game. Audibly, equally as intriguing, as it bases itself on synth-rock that yet again harkens back to a Duran Duran-led time. All the way around, it’s a fun game.
Conclusion
Berzerk Recharged from SneakyBox and Atari gives a tip of the hat to a wonderful 80s arcade experience, even at times when the hat tip means carrying some of the original frustrations.
