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Review: ReCore

With its announcement at last year’s E3, ReCore instantly excited me over two key points: an interesting mechanic and a protagonist who isn’t a straight, white, gruff male. Protagonist Joule is the daughter of famed AI developer Dr. Thomas Adams — and, in a fun twist, she also happens to BE an interesting mechanic, applying her trade on the planet Far Eden.

Set after a plague called Dust Devil has swept over the Earth, ReCore places you as one of many humans — each attached with an AI companion — responsible for monitoring the development and terraforming of Far Eden. A distant planet, Far Eden is being prepared for full human settlement. Kept in cryostasis, Joule and her co-workers are woken up any time repairs or investigation are needed, while the AI-driven ‘Corebots’ do all the hard work. At the outset, Joule is revived to find a new power source for the Crawler vehicle she calls home. Discovering a type of power core she hasn’t seen before, it quickly reveals that things on Far Eden might need a little more fixing than just a battery swap for her car-house.

Developed by Keiji Inafune’s Comcept, in conjunction with Armature Studio, I grew more wary of the title as time progressed. With Inafune’s team being responsible for this year’s Kickstarter-funded indie garbage-baby, Mighty No 9 – a game I personally backed, and would review simply with the sound of blowing an extended raspberry into my palm – I was concerned we would have another situation of ‘over-promise, under-deliver’. Thankfully, ReCore has emerged as a far more refined (yet, not perfect) experience as compared to its predecessor.

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The core mechanic of the game revolves around the robots that make up both your enemies and allies: the Corebots. Built around a swirling energy core, the robots fall into a few different categories and basic combat formulas, all based on their colouration. Red-cored enemies have attacks relating to area effect and fire-based attacks, blue-cored enemies use shock tactics and rush attacks and yellow-cored enemies use shielding and regeneration in conjunction with movement-restricting offensive moves. While this does vary further as you get into the game, this core personality basis persists for most enemies. In combat, you have two options when facing enemies: destroy them completely for core shards and materials or beat them down to low health and then extract their core entirely.

Each offers different benefits that play into upgrade and crafting mechanics, so it’s a juggling act throughout. While extraction does give you much more to work with as far as core energy – letting you supercharge your ‘bot allies for greater punch in combat – you have the risky moments where you have to play a tug-of-war mini-game mid-combat, leaving you defenceless to other enemies still on the battlefield and with no crafting materials. Conversely, destruction makes for a quicker end to combat and gives crafting materials, but severely drops the amount of core energy you take away with you. This plays well into combat, as you’re forced to either risk it for the core reward or take enemies down aggressively before you’re taken down yourself. Often, this makes it more practical to eliminate lower-level, smaller units entirely to clear the field, before focusing on the larger ones for the richer core rewards.

The combat itself is most akin to a bullet-hell type mechanic, despite its 3D nature. Most enemies have attacks that amount to spraying projectiles at you, forcing you to duck and weave to avoid taking significant damage. They’re also colour-coded either red, yellow or blue; as you progress the game, you’ll gain mods for your rifle that shoot in these three colours as well. Hitting an enemy with the matched-colour ammo does a significant chunk more damage and provides more XP, and without fail enemy encounters will feature a mixture of the three colours. Trying to combine evasion with on-the-fly ammo changes using the Xbox One’s D-pad was awkward, at least for me, but does add a further layer of strategy to encounters.

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Luckily, you have one of several AI robot companions to assist in crowd control during fights. Starting with the dog-like Mack, you’ll expand your entourage throughout ReCore. Accompanied by two companions (with one active at a time), these robots will mostly do their own thing in combat. Each has a special move they can unleash on command at an enemy of Joule’s choosing. Being a blue-cored ‘bot, Mack will perform a rush attack, while the spidery yellow ‘bot Seth will launch homing missiles. Added to the mix later, red-cored Duncan will pound the ground, unleashing waves of fire to hit enemies in range. It’s a nice touch that these moves are tied to the established patterns of the respective coloured cores, helping to mesh the world together and show how little difference there is between friendly and aggressive robots – except for who they attack.

Even with this complexity of strategy, a fight can go south way too easily. Enemies will regularly circle around you, which would be fine if combat wasn’t so focused on attacking with a lock-on rifle. One ambush from behind can take as much as three-quarters of your health from the wrong enemy, and the subsequent status effects can chain you in place long enough for their buddies to chip away the rest. Even with a regenerating health bar, the delay before this kicks in and the speed at which it happens will likely leave you playing keep-away while you wait for Joule to get herself together.

When she’s not taking down waves of rogue robots, Joule will mostly spend her time traversing the open areas of various maps. While the main story will lead you through these areas from one dungeon to another, they are also peppered with additional content for you to explore. Crafting materials are scattered on high and hard to reach vantage points, along with chests containing schematics for robot part upgrades. You’ll also find dungeons and speed-run missions around the place, gated based on level and the number of unusual Prismatic Cores you’ve found in your travels. The game also encourages a Metroidvania-styled retracing of your steps, as some side content will be far above your average level for the story content or feature traversal elements only usable after adding new skills. It’s a nice touch that allows you to play and challenge yourself at your own pace, electing to purely follow the main plot or blast through the main narrative instead.

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That said, the actual traversal of the world is, at times, painfully slow. Far Eden’s sandy vistas stretch for great distances as you enter each new zone, with almost all of it accessible — which is impressive, right up until you realise how slow Joule moves, even with her jet-boost boots. While the hulking, gorilla-like Duncan made me hopeful I’d be able to ride on his shoulders to move more quickly, it was sadly not to be. Thankfully, the game is pretty confident about efficiently spacing its fast travel hotspots to minimise retracing your steps across these vast expanses, it shouldn’t feel so boring to trek across them the FIRST time.

Even with fast travel, the game’s greatest weakness shines through: loading times. Goodness me, the loading times. Fast travelling or transitioning from one zone to another will take upwards of a minute, not to mention the identical load time merely to reach the main menu. Later in the game, this can extend upwards of two minutes. This inefficient loading happens in smaller areas, like the interior of Joule’s Crawler, just as it does in a wide-expanse zone. I’m not usually one to worry so much about loading times, but this especially becomes a concern with how easy it is to lose out in combat to a cheap death. When the fear of failure is less about actually being taken down and more about having to wait for the level to reload all over again, it’s not a good sign.

Yet despite its issues, I’m still playing ReCore. Its narrative, while no great work of prose, is intriguing enough to draw me through. Combat is varied enough to keep me coming back — even when I’m forced to replay the same encounter on occasion due to gang-up attacks. The ability to craft upgrades and collect loot throughout the world scratches that Metroid-style itch that Nintendo itself refuses to do anything about. Hopefully loading dramas will be addressed via-post launch optimisation patches, but for now it’s solid enough to draw me through a little while longer.

ReCore was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox One, as provided by the publisher.

 

Review: ReCore

The good

  • Decent story thread.
  • That perfect Metroidvania hit.
  • A female lead who isn’t overly-sexualised!

The bad

  • Excessive load times.
  • Occasionally cheap combat.

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About the author

Matt Gosper

aka Ponk – a Melburnian gay gamer who works with snail mail. Enthusiastically keeping a finger in every pie of the games industry. I'll beat you at Mario Kart, and lose to you in any shooter you can name.