Review: Yars Rising Mixes Yars’ Revenge With Metroidvania Style

It certainly feels like WayForward is being picked as the developer for series revivals and tributes, doesn’t it? Between its work on games like Advance Wars: Re-Boot Camp and River City Girls 2, it seems to specialize in bright, poppy takes on classics. Yars Rising feels perfectly at home among its siblings, with the same bright color schemes and character designs. However, while it is entertaining and the integration of the source material is clever, I sometimes felt like it didn’t stand out enough to be truly memorable. 

Emi “Yars” Kimura is a hacker. She’s working with a group of her friends to infiltrate an obviously evil organization called QoTech. That means pretending to work as an employee until she gets a chance to sneak into the server room, attach a USB dongle and get out. She manages that! But immediately after she does, she’s caught and thrown into a “holding” center in the building. After sneaking through some vents and hacking into an unusual terminal, she finds herself with new biohacks that augment her abilities, giving her the ability to shoot or generate energy wings to dash or jump. Armed with these new talents she aims to get out and deal with the ruthless execs and their minions.

The “Yars” element comes up in multiple ways. Some of it relates to the story. Yar is Emi’s hacker moniker. She has a tattoo of the character. Not to mention Emi’s last name — Kimura — is a reference to Atari artist Hiro Kimura. The evil corporation is QoTech, not unlike the enemy Qotile in the original game. But the most evident is the actual inclusion of Yars’ Revenge sorts of gameplay when hacking. In order to open new paths, gain abilities, or generally accomplish goals, Emi will need to hack terminals at the company. When she does, a hacking minigame ensues that is actually standard Yars series gameplay. So maybe you’ll be firing a cannon to get through Qotile shields. Though also, there will be times when it is more like Space Invaders and you’re shooting enemies advancing toward you. 

While I do applaud the way in which WayForward successfully blended Yars’ Revenge with the Metroidvania elements in Yars Rising and think it is clever to include the original gameplay as a hacking minigame, I also found it slightly frustrating. This is primarily due to how often hacking does come up as Emi makes her way through QoTech’s building. Yars’ Revenge can get to be quite a challenging game, and when those situations keep coming up and penalize you by zapping Emi’s health for failure, it can start feeling less than novel. On the plus side, WayForward seems to even acknowledge this, as there’s an option to make yourself invincible for these hacking segments to more quickly get through them.

Especially since the core gameplay in Yars Rising is an accessible Metroidvania. Emi is going through Qotech, acquiring biohacks that allow her to further escape the company’s clutches after being caught hacking. It’s fairly straightforward and I didn’t find it as complicated or challenging as a title like Metroid Dread. However, the clear influences are there. Especially since early on, before you acquire a weapon, there’s a high reliance on stealth to proceed. The gameplay here is quite solid. It’s easy to maneuver Emi around her environment, and the upgrades we eventually acquire only serves to make that even more fluid. It’s a genuinely good time. I really enjoyed running and gunning my way through it.

However, while I did enjoy myself, Yars Rising’s art direction, enemy design, and environments didn’t really excite me. The human character designs are great, but the enemies ended up looking a bit generic. Ones that leaned more into insect motifs fared a bit better, but areas around QoTech and most foes felt cookie cutter. I will say that it did make me appreciate the designs that did lean more into classic Yars or even other Atari properties when they’d come up. Especially since the concept — hackers against a big bad corporation — also is incredibly commonly treaded ground. Since most of the more unusual twists only come up in the second half, it takes a while for those elements to feel unique.

I appreciate what WayForward did with Yars Rising, as it incorporates the source material in some cool ways while doing something entirely new. It’s a solid Metroidvania, and bringing in Yars’ Revenge gameplay for hacking can be entertaining. I just feel that even with the unusual approach to hacking, some design elements and decisions feel a bit bland. It’s enjoyable, but I’m not entirely sure it’s very memorable. 

Yars Rising is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.