What it is, jive-turkey!
It's 1998 and retro is definitely in style. In popular music, at the cinemas,
and even in some clothing, the 70's seem to be everywhere. And while it's up to
you to decide if bellbottoms and parachute pants really
NEED to come back,
the games of these time periods are coming back strong. Mainly started with the
emulation scene on the PC, and solidified on the console in the form of the Namco
collections, retro gaming is strong. Activision has a classic pack coming soon,
and there have been innumerable updates of classic games. Some have been good
(
Battlezone), and some have been
bad (Sentinel). The latest game to receive the make over is
Asteroids,
and it leaves you wondering why anything was actually changed.
Everyone who has ever played
a video game should know what Asteroids is like. It was one of the first
"classic" games to ever be released, and it actually does have a certain way
of addicting you. For the unenlightened few who do not know what this game is,
it consists of you controlling a spaceship blowing up asteroids as they fly
around on the screen . . . And that's about it. While it's fun to go back and
play the game as a remembrance of all things that have come before, that sort
of gameplay doesn't really cut it anymore in the modern video game market. This
update of Asteroids hardly adds anything either, and that is its main
problem.
Although the graphics have been updated significantly, the gameplay has not been changed. While there something to say for the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality, but a repackage of something we've all seen before is just as bad as changing the gameplay for the worse. There are, of course, the obligatory new power-ups, but what does adding missiles to Asteroids really do? Not much. The whole game is basically just a graphical upgrade with a couple of doodads to give you a cheap thrill.
The paltry five levels offer
a couple of interesting gameplay effects, but they aren't much to speak of.
In one level there is a gravitational pull towards the center (anyone remember
Space War?), and in another there is a sun that shoots fireballs at you. The
most interesting level has you protecting Earth from asteroids that are falling
from the sky, but don't expect to be playing any of the levels for very long.
Although there are 15 sub-levels to each of the larger five levels, completing
the game is fairly simple.
The best feature of the whole game may be the completely accurate recreation of the original game. It looks and feels identical; it's not just a shoddy recreation like some of the other retro products on the market.
For a game that was perfectly designed in the first place, one must wonder why a retrofit was required. Although several good games have come out of this recent fad, in the case of Asteroids, it was a mistake to try and update it. What we are left with is essentially the same game as the original, with the addition of a two-player mode. Is that what anyone really wanted?
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