Screenshot: Centipede: Recharged
I thought my days of chasing high scores were over, but apparently not. While a staple of classic video games, score keeping isn’t as prevalent as it was back then, when absolutely every game had some sort of meter counting your accumulated score. While we’ve mostly gone beyond simple score keeping as a metric for progression or status in games, there’s still a whole hell of a lot of fun to have in a classic arcade experience, which
Centipede Recharged tries to reproduce.
Centipede Recharged is a recreation of the classic arcade game
Centipede. It’s a top down shooter where you have to fight incoming bugs that turn into mushrooms as you shoot them. The better you do, the higher your score. The graphics have been revamped, and while still visually similar to the original, now have lots of neon added and particle effects. There are also new pick-ups that give you spread shots, faster firing, and lots more for a limited amount of time.
Centipede: Recharged
There are two main ways to play
Centipede Recharged: it’s arcade mode, or challenge mode. Arcade mode is an endless mode where you try to get the highest score with ever-increasing difficulty. The challenge modes, on the other hand, have a variety of different challenges to test your skills. Some will have you destroying spiders, others will challenge you to stay alive for a certain amount of time, or to achieve a certain score, etc. You can then check your score versus the worldwide leaderboard to see how you stack up. Each of these modes can be played with a co-op partner, too, so grab a friend and try to get a high score or beat some challenges.
While
Centipede Recharged is a revisit to a classic, it doesn’t do enough to change up the formula or add to the gameplay. The biggest addition is co-op, but even so, it’s a primitive experience. The gameplay of
Centipede Recharged will probably only appeal to those seeking nostalgia, or those curious about what a “recharged” version of an arcade classic looks like.
Centipede: Recharged
Since
Centipede Recharged is so barebones, it’s hard to recommend. It comes off as a neon soaked novelty—a revisit to an arcade classic that throws in particle effects and co-op and declares it as “recharged.” It’s certainly
Centipede, however—at least how I remember it. But its gameplay just isn’t enough to justify a rerelease.
Centipede Recharged is available tomorrow on
Steam and the
Epic Games Store, Atari VCS,
Xbox One and
Nintendo Switch.
A Steam copy was provided to us for the purpose of this review.
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