Thoughts on ReCore (Patreon)

I wouldn't say I miss it. Trying to play an entire game in a weekend to review it is never much fun. And you rarely get enough time between playing the game and writing the review to sit with it, let it wash over you, let it sit in your thoughts for a few days and turn over in your head.

But I do like having a chance to really put to words what I do and don't like about a game, in its entirety. So I might do that a bit more on here. And I want to start with a game that I think deserves more love than it has been getting from the reviews.

That's the Xbox One and PC game ReCore. It comes from Armature Studio (ex Metroid Prime developers), Comcept (Mega Man producer Keiji Infaune), and Asobo (various bits, nothing noteworthy).

Here's what I thought.

The combat is really quite good

ReCore is a third person shooter, but it uses lock-on (like Metroid Prime) to make for a completely different experience. You don't need to think about aiming so you can spend more time thinking about:

Choosing enemies! Enemies are pretty diverse: some rush you, some shoot missiles from a distance, some fire lasers, some heal other enemies, some incapacitate your robot buddy, some spit fire, some discharge foes, etc. Prioritising enemies is key.

Moving! Enemy attacks aren't hitscan in ReCore: they're projectile. Which means you can dodge bullets, boost out of the way of rockets, and leap over rings of fire. You can do all this while unloading bullets into enemies.

Charge shots! Charging bullets is a cool mechanic because it lets you trade time-not-shooting for a more powerful attack, giving you something extra to think about. And you get to modulate how long you charge up for (which increases the power of the shot in ReCore) before firing. It's a different flow, a different pace. And it's especially useful for destroying shields so there's an extra tactical edge.

Changing colours! Enemies are red, blue, or yellow - and you can change your gun to fire bullets in those colours. Shoot an enemy with the same coloured bullet to do extra damage. Now that doesn't sound very tactical, and you're right. And the fact that you have to move a thumb to the d-pad sounds annoying. And you're right. But there's something kinda satisfying about hitting the correct d-pad direction in the heat of battle. It's almost like shifting gears in a car. Like... cha-chunk. It's something simple but tactile to keep you engaged. I dunno, I like it.

(Also, there are enemies that are orange, green, and purple, that yo-yo between two colours (and two attack patterns) which are even more fun to fight for this reason).

Using buddies! This one was 50/50 for me. You have a robot buddy who can be sicced on an enemy to keep them busy, or let them use a powerful attack at your discretion which is especially useful for making an enemy stagger as it's winding up to use an attack. The bit I didn't really get was deciding which buddy to deploy: they have strengths and weaknesses but I never saw what they were and perhaps just had to read up and then memorise them? I just used them interchangeably.

Extracting cores! When an enemy is sufficiently damaged you can fire off a hook shot to pull the core right out of the enemy's body. This is a fun little mini-game (similar to fishing, as you pull on a line without letting it snap) but you have to be careful when to use it as you are left vulnerable. It's a really fun, satisfying mechanic and it also heals you so it can be very worthwhile - but there's a trade-off as you won't get loot.

Healing! ReCore has regenerating health which isn't great because it means sometimes you can find yourself just running around waiting for your health to come back - when you could be doing something more interesting.

Avoiding traps! Battles in ReCore sometimes take place in dangerous areas with fire shooting out of the floor, or a big lava pit around the edge, or with laser beams shooting back and forth. You've gotta avoid all of them.

Put all that together and you've got a combat system that is almost always well and truly exciting. It's a desperate, feisty juggling act of enemy priorities, safe locations, charge shots, buddies, and incoming laser beams. Almost every encounter was a joy to play.

One thing sometimes soured the fights: Joule takes forever to recover from certain attacks and enemies take pleasure in beating you when you're down. So sometimes you'll go from full health to dead in a split second. That's harsh.

Platforming is crazy but fun

ReCore has more mobility than every third person shooter protagonist put together. If you boost off a platform, then jump, double jump, and boost in mid-air - then do the same through a floating gate that replenishes your boost and jump - you can clear a gap the size of the English channel.

It makes for some slightly wacky platforming where the platforms have to be massively far apart to make for any challenge. But that's kind of fun (as you soar between distant platforms, many metres above the ground) and offers a more arcade-like sensation that's part Mega Man X, part Mario, part I don't even know.

This comes to a head in the traversal dungeons where the game just turns into those abstract platforming bits from Mario Sunshine. Platforms floating in mid-air, giant electric boulders rolling back and forth, lasers beams cut across the screen. They make no sense but they are delicious to play and even more fun if you attempt to beat them under par time for the bonus reward.

Also, sometimes you get to ride on a rollercoaster rail by hanging onto an octopus robot and that's just dandy.

The platforming isn't wholly intertwined with combat but you do use all of your moves - jumping, double jumping, and boosting - during fights to stay alive.

The structure is bad

If the platforming and combat was simply linked together into a more linear experience, I think this game would have received much higher scores and would enter the realm of cult classics like Binary Domain and Vanquish.

But the game's trying to go for a Zelda-like structure (with an overworld and dungeons) and that doesn't always work out.

The most egregious part is the end game. When you reach the final tower you quickly find that you'll need 45 prismatic cores to actually face the boss. You'll get a bunch while playing but you'll need to do a huge amount of optional stuff to reach that number. It's like coming to the end of a Zelda game and finding out that you need 45 heart pieces to finish.

Now, finding those cores can be fun! The optional dungeons where they hang out are good (there are platforming ones, combat arenas, and ones that combine the two), and you'll also find them littered about the environment.

But that has its own issues. Again, like Zelda, there are obstacles in the overworld that you can't overcome unless you have a certain robot (who are unlocked at certain points throughout the game). However, you can only have two with you at once. So you might see a rock that you need the ape robot to punch... but no ape robot in your group. The menus, loading screens, traversal, and faff it can take to get the ape in your group again is too boring to describe.

Anyway. The cores can be fun to find but it can really harm the pacing of the game to suddenly require them all at the end.

There's loads of RPG bumpf

ReCore's trying to be so many games. Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man. But it's also trying to be Borderlands, or whatever, and that really dragged it down.

It's got a crafting system! Because every game needs a crafting system. And you can dump thousands of points into your robot companions for tiny statistical differences. And you can level Joules up!

This leads to annoying busy work (and all the loading screens that come with it) and the worry that it's your stats, not your skills, that's letting you down in battle.

Other stuff

A lot of the game looks the same. The whole thing is on a dusty desert planet, and most of the dungeons are built from the same building blocks. That's a drag.

I don't really care about the story or anything. And Joules is far from an interesting character. But it's nice to see a female hero who isn't the least bit sexualised. The only way she could be more covered up is if she were a ninja.

It's really buggy. It hard crashed my Xbox three times, I fell through the floor once, got trapped in a door once, and the frame rate dipped hilariously low at times. This was without any patches, mind (huge multi-GB updates aren't fun with my crappy internet).

Overall

I ended up really enjoying ReCore - in spite of the bits that were buggy and boring.

Between platforming and combat, this is a game that is mechanically interesting, engaging, and dynamic. It's doing things that third person shooters don't do, and often left me shaking with adrenaline after a tricky battle.

But it's a game that suffers from the same bloat and lack of focus that has soured me on many other games. By trying to do so many things - combat, platforming, overworld exploration, RPG stats, crafting, buddies, etc - it never does anything amazingly well.

I'm really glad I played it. And I'd reccomend it to you, with the same caveats mentioned in this piece. But it's another reminder of how some games can really suffer from a lack of focus, and an attempt to cram too many ideas into one game.