Berzerk (Arcade)

Before Sinistar roared to terrify arcade goers, before Punch-Out!! announced your every landed blow to the arcade, if you heard a voice coming from one of the cabinets, it was likely the robots of Berzerk calling for your head. While the synthesized robot voices of this maze-based arcade shooter definitely count as a gimmick for drawing in curious players, it also gives the game a lot more personality, because not only is Berzerk made more memorable by the voice lines, but it even tries to get under your skin by criticizing how you play.

 

In Berzerk you find yourself in an endless series of rooms, the player represented in-game by the green Humanoid. Your goal is to clear out as many of the robots as you can before losing all of your lives, and the first room you find yourself in is practically just a shooting gallery. The brownish-yellow machines you first encounter are slow-moving robots that won’t even fire back, giving you time to get used to your own ability to fire in eight directions with some simple targets. Such easy prey is only there to make sure you can actually find your footing though, as soon you’ll find a whole range of differently colored robots in the following rooms, all of them more willing to try and rush you down and fire back as they call out “ATTACK THE HUMANOID” or “THE INTRUDER MUST NOT ESCAPE”. The coloration of the robots does gradually change over time, the early reds are slow moving and fire just as slowly, but later blues, greens, and whites will be far more aggressive and can launch multiple shots at once. While there isn’t a set amount of enemies in a room, you can find them containing as few as four and as many as eleven, although what makes the skirmishes in Berzerk more interesting is the fact you and the enemies are beholden to the same rules.

If any robot touches a wall, laser, or other robot in Berzerk, they will die, regardless of whether they are the Humanoid or the maze defenders. This means in busier rooms, while you are at risk from many more angles, there is a high chance of friendly fire taking out members of the opposing side, and since the robotic foes aren’t totally intelligent, you can start to notice the way they’ll try to follow your movements and trick them into running into each other or the maze walls. This adds a bit more strategy than just figuring out the best way to safely approach foes, a smart player able to thin the ranks so they’re at less risk of dying to counter fire. The maze walls for each room aren’t set, the game rearranging the play field with the only reliable part being the outer walls and the four exits, but usually they are fairly navigable and ensure that the robots are split apart a fair degree across the available space. This doesn’t mean you won’t find yourself with robots ready to fire at you as soon as you enter ensuring there is an immediate need for action in each new area, and there’s also a ticking clock of sorts to keep you moving by the name of Evil Otto.

 

Linger too long in any one room of the maze and suddenly a smiling circle will appear. Named Evil Otto for the game designer’s irritating officer manager Dave Otto, this simple smiley is actually the most fearsome thing you’ll find in Berzerk as he doesn’t play by any of the game’s established rules. He is completely invincible to laser fire, can pass through walls unhindered, and bounces like a ball, but he is still as dangerous to the other robots as he is to you. If you’ve nearly cleared a room out, both Evil Otto and the last robot will get a speed boost, but since Evil Otto also tries to bounce straight towards you, you can try the risky play of having him finish the room clearing for you. A points bonus will be granted if you can wipe out all the regular robots, incentivizing you to clear out all your foes and potentially linger long enough for Otto to appear, and his existence also means you won’t be able to play it too safe when trying to trick the enemies into walking into barriers or each other. It’s a nice way to give you a kick in the pants so you have to play aggressively and risk your three lives more often, but Berzerk contains one more part of its design that smartly allows it to balance its difficulty more: the chance to escape at any time.

Each room in Berzerk has an exit at the top, left, right, and bottom, and besides the side you entered from that seals off, there is nothing stopping you from heading for the escape route whenever you like. You won’t be docked points or made to encounter stronger robots earlier for taking an early leave… but you will be subject to the game loudly berating you. Quick to call you chicken for fleeing before clearing a room, Berzerk leverages a little bit of shame to try and discourage an otherwise effective strategy if you just can’t safely take out every robot or need to avoid incoming doom. While this was likely rather effective at inspiring some teasing back in the arcade’s heyday, “chickening out” and leaving the room also provides an important means of managing the difficulty as it begins to increase. You might not really have the time to safely approach the faster-firing robots as you get deeper into the adventure, and Evil Otto’s appearance basically necessitates a quick exit since he will catch up with you no matter how much you try to kite him around. The key to survival in Berzerk ends up being about making the quick judgment calls on how much of a room you can clear out, if you have to leave before the work is done, and trying to continue on as long as you can, and while death can come rather quickly in Berzerk, it’s also a fairly easy arcade game to jump back into. That early round with easy play maybe slows it down a touch despite being smart for easing in new players, but otherwise Berzerk moves at such an effective pace while still giving you such a degree of control that it’s easy to get caught in a loop of knowing you can perform better next time since you have enough control over the experience that it feels like a test of your situation management rather than luck.

 

Luck isn’t entirely a non-existent factor unfortunately, and that mostly comes down to the way things can spawn in. In Berzerk you do get to move before your enemies when in a new room, but the game can place so many robots facing you to start it’s almost a foregone conclusion you’ll get shot. This does seem to happen more when respawning after a death rather than entering a new room, and while there are chances to earn extra lives by hitting certain score thresholds (unless your arcade operator is feeling less than generous and disables that option), it is a shame to lose a life to being plopped down into a losing situation in a game that otherwise gives you a good bit of control over your fate despite the increasing difficulty. Evil Otto is also usually handled well in terms of where he appears, specifically because he appears from where you entered the room so you can’t be too surprised if he pops up on top of you, but because everything’s being lightly shuffled around each room there may be times where you can’t safely push forward in time, especially since Evil Otto appears more quickly in rooms with less robots to start. The game’s swift pace and your ability to quickly get to a decent score once you have the hang of it does make it possible to take some bad spawns on the chin and try again, but it is one of the few areas of the game that feels a little less clean even though it is likely an unintended side effect of trying to make sure the room layout and robot placement is always shifting enough to avoid becoming too predictable.

THE VERDICT: Berzerk’s voice is its most memorable element, whether it’s the robots shouting about hunting you down or teasing you for turning tail, but it’s a layer of simple personality over a well-executed maze shooter. Each room gives you the means to escape if the fight isn’t in your favor or Evil Otto’s smiling face is bouncing towards you, but rooms still feel mostly manageable because you can use the walls and other robots to your advantage to help thin the herd. The game’s speed makes it easy to dive back in and try to beat your previous score, and since only the occasional bad spawn might unfairly do you in, trying to get more points feels like a goal where your success is going to hinge on quick decision making and managing risk.

 

And so, I give Berzerk for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. Even after I played Berzerk a good deal for the review, I kept hearing the robotic voices in my head and the call to come back because I knew I could score a bit better next time if I buckled down and tried again. Berzerk isn’t too complicated, but the little touches like the robots being susceptible to friendly fire adds a lot more thought to how you approach a level than if you had to shoot every foe yourself. The enemies aren’t so dumb they’ll bumble into each other all the time, but exploiting their efforts to take you down to harm them instead rewards a strategic approach and makes the later rooms with the faster machines more feasible. Fleeing before the job is done is also a smart inclusion, giving you the means to manage your own survivability a bit better and allowing you to slip away if robots are nestled in a dead end that seems like your doom to approach. Evil Otto keeps things from dragging though, the deceptively happy face encouraging you to not become rigidly devoted to room bonuses and instead understand the value in running away, and with your enemy teasing you being the only price, it’s not only a good addition to the game’s design but one that lets your opposition be more memorable. The synthesized voices are deliberately robotic and can have some cute lines like claiming they can detect more coins in your pocket, but playing at the right time and even getting a little rude with the name-calling makes it a memorable piece of an experience might have been a bit of a plain sci-fi maze game in appearance if not for the sound design and a smiley that aims to kill you.

 

Berzerk didn’t need to resort to unfair layouts or hard to clear rooms to try and keep players coming back. The action is quick and success feels like it remains in your hands, so as you hone your ability to land your shots, manipulate the robots, and make judgment calls on when it’s time to run away, the points feel well-earned and you’re drawn back in by a desire to do better. Those early aggressive exclamations from the robots as they try to hunt you down start to feel like metrics of your success after a while, the player hearing the robots call out for your death each time you enter a room almost like a mark of your continued triumph over the mechanical opposition.