Review: Berzerk: Recharged

destructoid.com:

When I started into Berzerk: Recharged, I was shocked. There were no robot voices.

Berzerk was a 1980 arcade title, which means it existed before good graphics were invented. While something like Pac-Man could generally be considered a better game, Berzerk had one thing going for it: the robots talked. They’d draw from a series of words and phrases that would get pasted together into taunts. Things like “Chicken! Fight like a robot!” or “Get the humanoid!” Imagination was leaned on to fill in a lot of graphical blanks in those days, and having the robots converse with each other and actively taunt the player really helped get you in the headspace.

If there are no robot voices, what are we even doing here?

So, I asked the PR person representing Sneakybox and Atari about it. They told me that it was a problem with the sound levels. In order to hear the voices, you had to turn down the music completely. They had a patch for it out well before launch.

Phew, crisis averted.

Berzerk: Recharged (PC [Reviewed] Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch)
Developer: Sneakybox
Publisher: Atari
Released: November 10, 2023
MSRP: $9.99

Berzerk wasn’t a very complicated game, but try to remember that this was two years after Space Invaders and the same year as Pac-Man. The evolution of video games was going to be kicked into high gear for the next two decades, but 1980 was still pretty early.

Largely, the game just involved you running around electrified mazes, shooting at hostile robots (in eight directions! Fancy!) You’d get extra points if you cleared a screen before proceeding to the next, but if things go too hot, it was always better to duck through a doorway. If you lingered too long on a single screen, Evil Otto would show up.