Average Guy Reviews: Recore

Robots are a Woman's best friend
by ~SL​

Every once in a while, you get that itch to want to play something new. I decided to check out the newly released Xbox exclusive Recore. What did I think? Find out below!

My experience with Recore is that it's a game that shines brightly when it comes to it's platforming and shooting game play, but is severely hindered with some tech issues and design choices.

The story itself is fairly basic. You play as a young women Joule who has awoken from a deep sleep on a new planet called Far Eden, where civilization is trying to start over after Earth has been destroyed. When she wakes up she finds that everyone has gone missing, so she ventures off with her robot companion Mack to find out what is going on. 

Man what happened to the St. Louis Arch?

It is from that point where the creators of the Metroid Prime Series level design comes into full effect. You start out tackling story missions and also dungeons/side missions scattered throughout the world. To take on some of these missions requires upgrades to your weapon or robot companions, which you may not acquire until later in the game. This causes a lot of back and forth travel between areas, but is kept fresh by the random spawning of enemies, and a lot of collectibles to find in the game world.

Blue enemy? Blue ammo

​The shooting is also fairly simplistic. Enemies are colored as red, yellow, white, and blue, which means you must use the D-pad to change your rifle ammo to the corresponding color, to maximize damage. Joule also has robot companions that vary in how they attack. By pressing Y, while locked on a target, Mack the robo dog will tackle opponents, Seth the crawler will shoot from distance, while Duncan is the brute force robot that gets up close and personal. Certain robots also offer up unique skills. For example, Mack can dig up items buried under the sand, and Duncan can smash rocks, opening up new areas to explore. The robots can also be upgraded with blueprints found in the game world, which can help boost their stats like attack and defense. However, I didn't really see any big difference as I continued leveling up. They are more of a nice decoy than anything else.

You can customize the look of each robot that adds to attack and defense.

The concept of each robot having its own unique skill is great, but for some reason you can only have two at a time.  There are numerous instances where I needed Seth to help me climb a structure, but I did not have him equipped. This means that I have to fast travel back to the hub area, choose him, and then fast travel back. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for one thing.....the load times!

Yes the load times are terrible, and this is the only drawback to what would make this game pretty great. Fast traveling back to the hub takes about a 1-2 min load screen...which adds up because you need to fast travel A LOT.  Please make sure you also never die in the game because every time you do be prepared to almost wait 2-3 minutes. It may not sound like a lot of time but it really pulls you out of the game and gets very annoying to wait that long.  With the technology these consoles have today loads should not take that long. ​

My favorite aspect of the game is controls and platforming type game play. The creator of Mega Man's input is felt in this game, as the movement reminds me of the Mega Man X games. Joule is able to dash, double jump, then dash again mid air. Some of the side missions revolve around dungeons that cater to simply platforming. I really enjoyed these ones, as you need to be able to time dashes and jumps to get over the obstacles. It is also nice that each dungeon offers a set of objectives, so completing the dungeon within a time limit, and also finding certain items, grants bigger and better awards when it's over. This adds a nice bit of replay to each dungeon, as a completionist like me wants to complete everything in one go.

The game launching at $40 dollars had me a bit skeptical because I thought A: The game is really short or B: It was just a fancy arcade type game.  In the end, the game itself was pretty fun, but the tech problems of the load times really frustrated me, and took away from the experience. ​​​​

Average Guy Review Score: 4 out of 10
Price point worth of purchase: $10-15 dollars
Level of Replay: Story is about 8-10 hours with some moderate replay if you want to grab all collectibles and complete each dungeon