I have a serious love for Metroidvania games, but the biggest issue with talking about them is the fact there are just simply so many. Anyone you talk to could have played 100 different Metroidvanias, and still have no mutual games with you. Especially with the hype behind games like Hollow Knight: Silksong, or the love for Metroid Dread, it’s hard to not be too critical of other games in the genre. Which brings us to Yars Rising, the Metroidvania on show today, which takes a whole lot of notes from Metroid specifically. Yars Rising was developed by WayForward, known for River City Girls, which is noticeable in the art style, and another Metroidvania-style game, Shantae.

I do like the comic book-styled cutscenes.

So let’s just jump right into why Yars Rising takes a ton of notes from Metroid. The combat and world layout scream original Metroid, complete with needing missiles and other power ups to traverse the world. As long as you don’t think too hard about what the story of the game is, all of this is meant to be happening within/underneath a business, then it will help your suspension of disbelief in what’s going on with this map.

We have missile silos or bunkers, full-on robotics factories, and more than enough corridors filled with random giant worms and bees that birth smaller bees. The bosses are interesting within reason, using the background alongside the foreground to create some more interesting attacks, but generally the background is only used to attack as a transition between phases, which just seems like a waste of opportunity if you’re going to use it.

Sorry guys, I have worms.

I adore the art style and voice acting in Yars Rising, Jenny Yokobori, who voices main character Emi Kimura, does a great job at emphasising when dialogue is meant to be taunting or sarcastic, as well as when it’s meant to be serious. On the same token, the art does a great job at distinguishing areas that are clearly going to be more serious and enemy focused, as opposed to a regular corridor. Where the game is then let down is the background music. It’s a serious distraction when there are random background songs with singing during a tense battle, especially when it’s not taking the front seat for the sound. It can really pull my attention away from what I’m meant to be doing sometimes, which can lead to unnecessary damage taken.

Some bosses are fun, some are just annoying. You can guess for yourself which Black Widow falls under.

One of the neater parts of Yars Rising is the hacking segments. There are a few different kinds, like a maze of wires that aren’t too dissimilar from the pipes in Bioshock, and then a side-on pixelated spaceship shooter would be the best way to describe it. It’s also the only instance in which the game even vaguely resembles its main source of inspiration, Yars’ Revenge, originally released for the Atari 2600 many decades ago.

Basically, you’ll have a little character that can sometimes shoot, sometimes can’t, and you need to destroy a main target with a missile that can be earned from various different ways, sometimes you just have it, sometimes you need to eat things like the walls protecting the other target with your little character thing. These sections don’t come across massively often, but they can be fun when they do appear, or in some cases they can really ruin the flow if there are a few back to back in quick succession. Essentially, the pacing of them could be worked on, but they’re still a welcome addition.

HACKERMAN!

In such a crowded genre, it’s hard to say that Yars Rising would manage to truly stand out, even though it did try its hardest. There are too many sections to either just didn’t fit in very well, such as the aforementioned lack of flow in the hacking bits, or just too much stuff other metroidvanias ended up doing a lot better. It’s not a bad game by any means, and it can be enjoyed if you’re a metroidvania or old-school Atari fan, but I can’t say it would be on the upper echelon of my recommended games list by any means.

Yars Rising is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Yars Rising was provided by the publisher.