Developer Incinerator’s Star Raiders is a remake of the 1979 Atari 800 classic space shooter. Although it released several years too early for me to enjoy it, gamers of the time sung high praises of the original. And while many publishers have successfully remade their gems of yesteryear, this Atari classic would have been better off left fondly remembered through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses.
Raiders is a monotonous exercise in guiding a snazzy looking spacecraft through the droll depths of space; all the while pursuing annoyingly agile triangles. Actually, they’re fully rendered enemy crafts, but they’re usually so far away that bright triangles are needed to highlight the spaces they are occupying. The visuals of Raiders are undoubtedly its strong suit. This is why it’s so unfortunate that you often can’t see what you’re fighting.
It’s not just your own ship that has a slick appearance, but the other crafts ripping through outer space as well. You’ll also fly around enormous stationary ships and glimpse planets, stars and whatnot in the background. It all comes together to make for a very satisfying aesthetic, and makes for a game that is unrecognizable when compared to the 800 outing that spawned it. Sadly, the graphics are the only aspect that has received a proper 21st century overhaul.
Star Raiders’ game play is as dull and boring as it comes. Most of the time, you’ll just be floating through space trying your hardest to follow on-screen arrows and gun down the enemy Zylon forces. Nothing about it is captivating or exciting. Most players will never reach the end of the game because of how boring this basic dynamic is. It repeats ad nauseum and there is little challenge involved aside from beating out timers.
Tracking down the bad guys is frustrating (more on that later), but I wouldn’t really call it hard; they rarely gun you down. Death actually comes as a gift more often than not, because a recharge of your weapons comes with it. Otherwise, you need to find recharge stations which require more yawn-inducing treks across the stages. The ease of difficulty would be fine, were it actually enjoyable to engage in combat. It’s not. The game flows with a sort of tedious malaise that isn’t done any favors by its controls.
Expect to be finagling your fingers into pretzel formations while zipping after those darn triangles. With so many other 3D space shooters of the past two decades being a breeze to control, there’s no way Incinerator’s title can get a pass here. The underlying issue isn’t actually so much the control mapping itself (for which there are a few options), as it is the way your ship moves through the world.
You have to hold down a face button to boost in order to catch up to your foes, and also press the bumpers to perform barrel rolls. The nimbleness of the Zylons necessitates these moves constantly. The extreme distances between you and them simply cannot be closed otherwise; nor their uncanny ability to make razor sharp turns overcome. I don’t know how they move the way they do, but I sure wish that my fighter had been equipped with whatever impressive Zylon tech permits it. Instead, I clumsily pursued them across the levels hoping to gun them down and wrap up each mission as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there was little reprieve to be found in completing a level.
You’re given briefings between missions that detail what the Zylons are up to, and what actions need to be taken to overcome them. None of it is particularly important, and it can just about always be skipped over without the need to fear flying around cluelessly. Missions are self-explanatory enough; which is good, because your directives are written out in absurdly small text. Raiders legitimately uses the smallest font size I can ever remember seeing in a game. It’s dangerously close to requiring the use of a magnifying glass.
These sequences are made even more annoying by the soundtrack. Initially, the sounds therein will pleasantly transport you to a simpler time that is fondly remembered by older gamers. Give it a few moments however, and the music will start drilling into your brain and driving you nuts. The short beats loop endlessly as you strain to read the mission instructions.
Perhaps I’m missing something with this game. Maybe gamers who are my elders will play this arcade title and grin widely in fond remembrance of childhoods long gone. Even that scenario seems unlikely though, given how different this game appears to be from the classic iteration. In any case, everyone else will find few redeeming qualities in Star Raiders.
