ReCore Review

I am pretty sure that by the time I finished ReCore I had been through the full spectrum of human emotion. The game’s first few hours seemed to be indicative of a fun, action-adventure platformer in an interesting quasi-open-world. However, after the initial honeymoon period of five or so hours, ReCore’s flaws started to become overtly apparent, with its excruciating loading times, tedious grind to progress and terrible design choices causing the experience to decline at a rapid rate. Sadly by the end of my journey across Far Eden I felt nothing but resentment towards the whole experience.

Mack Daddy

You play as Joule Adams, a maintenance engineer who’s in a cryogenic sleep on the planet Far Eden, while robots known as Corebots terraform the planet to make it inhabitable for the remnants of mankind who patiently wait in space for their utopia to be built. Joule was sent to Far Eden along with a handful of other maintenance workers after disease decimated the Earth’s population and made it uninhabitable in the 2020s. After catching some shut-eye for a couple hundred years, Joule awakens from her slumber well rested only to find that not everything has gone to plan – in fact far from it, as the majority of the Corebots have become corrupted and instead of building humans a new hospitable fatherland, Far Eden’s topography is a desolate sand and dust-covered wasteland. Think Mad Max without the V8s.

Thankfully not all the Corebots have been compromised, and as Joule makes her way across Far Eden’s barren land in search of answers to the terraforming failure, she will be joined at various times by her robotic canine sidekick Mack, an octospider-like Corebot named Seth and Duncan – the master of the robotic hulk smash. While you won’t have all three with you at once (we’ll get to that), each Corebot has their own distinct boons they provide Joule. Mack, like any canine has the ability to dig up items hidden in the ground, Seth has the ability to reach structures far above the ground and Duncan, well he just smashes rocks. Joule also has the ability to convert one of her companions into a floating robot during the game, which is essential to progress through the game.

From the onset you’ll be acquainted with ReCore’s fluid and fast-paced combat, which makes use of the game’s simple and intuitive control scheme, with Joule able to jump, dash and use her trusty laser-rifle to shoot her way to survival. While these may seem like run-of-the-mill combat mechanics, ReCore does have one unique mechanic and that is Joule’s ability to extract the cores out of her adversaries. This is done when an enemy Corebot’s health is below a certain level, at which point you can engage in a battle of tug-of-war with your opponent. Completing an extraction requires being strategic with your yanking, as pulling too hard too fast will result in your extraction rope snapping. After you’ve heave-hoed your way to victory you acquire said core, and depending on the colour or type of your enemy, the core you extract will have varying purposes.

While the combat mechanics are hardly avant-garde, pieced all together swiftly they create fun and exciting sequences that often find you overlooking its repetitive nature

You’ll encounter a few variations of corrupted Corebots on your travels, and these are mostly distinguished by their different colours (mainly red, blue and yellow). Switching to the matching ammunition (as your enemy) colour on your laser rifle allows Joule to deal the most damage. Your robot companions are also ready to lend a hand on the battlefield, with Mack, Seth and Duncan each having unique attacks which are colour specific (Duncan deals more damage to red enemies etc.). These special attacks can be directed at specific enemies with a simple aim + Y command. There is also a combo feature which yields higher amounts of XP the longer the combo chain persists, which helps Joule level up faster. While the combat mechanics are hardly avant-garde, pieced all together swiftly they create fun and exciting sequences that often find you overlooking its repetitive nature, at least until the latter stages of the game.

G.I. Joule

The cores you prise from your fallen foes are without a doubt Far Eden’s most sought-after resource (think America and oil), most importantly the Primastic Cores, which are essentially act as your skeleton key to access all areas of Far Eden. Prismatic cores can be acquired a few different ways, firstly by extracting the inner Prismatic Core of an enemy who is powered by the shiny almighty orb (these Corebots are found sporadically across Far Eden). The second method is by locating orb-shaped chests, which are scattered all over the desolate planet. This often requires utilising your companion’s unique skill along with a handful of luck to find. I regularly found myself going in circles trying to pinpoint a chest’s exact location, and despite being able to see it clearly on my map (however you inexplicably cannot set a custom waypoint), I found the majority of my chests by pure happenstance.

The last way to obtain Prismatic Cores is by exploring and completing challenges in the dungeons scattered across Far Eden. The irony in this is that each dungeon has a specified amount of cores required to enter, so if you’re chasing down cores but below the core threshold, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The one saving grace is that in addition to the required core amount to proceed there is also a level restriction, however this is only recommended and not enforced; it just means that Joule will deal less damage to enemies that are of a higher level.

Along with needing a certain amount of cores to enter, most dungeons require you to find the missing Cellbots in order to unlock it. While these little fellas are usually within close proximity to the dungeon they belong to, they’re not always the easiest to find (despite Far Eden’s seemingly anti-hide-and-seek friendly landscape), which can make for some fairly tiresome searches over the world’s many rock faces and extensive sandpits. A massive design oversight is the fact you can only have two of your three companions equipped at any one time. You may get all the way to a Primastic Core location only to find you don’t have the right Corebot companion equipped, meaning you’ll need to backtrack, equip the right companion and go back. The only way to switch your Corebot loadout is to go to the nearest fast-travel point or to go back to Joule’s crawler (her living quarters).

ReCore contains a fairly deep customisation system, where you can upgrade your robo-pals with the cores and components you’ve ripped from your enemies and with blueprints found throughout the world. Fusing more cores to your sidekicks gives them greater attack and defence strength as well as higher energy levels. While offering upgraded skills, blueprints also give your robots some cosmetic enhancements. For the most part this system is fine, its undoing is that Joule can only do all this at her workbench, which is in her crawler. On paper that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, however it brings you face-to-face with the game’s biggest offender: its loading times.

For a game with such a barren universe, it’s hard to fathom why the load times are as long as they are and in this day and age loading times of this length are quite frankly unacceptable and are rightly lambasted 

Joule is able to fast-travel to her crawler from the menu at any stage during the game or from one fast-travel point to another. However, what ensues is an egregiously long loading time that can take up to three minutes for you to arrive at your destination. What makes this even more painful is that because of Far Eden’s quasi-open-world, which is more or less large segmented open areas, you’ll be doing a lot of waiting around, as you’ll need to backtrack through areas regularly in order to obtain cores if you don’t have the right companion equipped or if you want to complete upgrades. Should you perish in combat (which given the erratic difficulty spikes is guaranteed to happen) you’ll also be subjected to these torturous loading screens. For a game with such a barren universe, it’s hard to fathom why the load times are as long as they are and in this day and age loading times of this length are quite frankly unacceptable and are rightly lambasted.

Thankfully the game’s platforming sequences are well designed and offer a throwback for fans of platformers of yore such as Mega Man and Metroid (not surprising considering the developers, Comcept and Armature Studio contain developers from both franchises). The platforming sequences are often challenging and are quite rewarding (mentally) to complete, however, if you fail to complete them without dying (which is highly likely), you’ll be subjected to fairly questionable respawn points. One position in particular was at the end of a platform with a giant ball that goes up and down the platform. It’s fairly easy to manoeuvre past, but if it does hit you, you will fall to your death.  However, if you die just ahead of this you will respawn back at the very edge of the platform, with the giant ball usually no more than millimetres away from giving you the old don’t argue. If you fail to jump at the exact microsecond required to escape unscathed then you’ll be knocked off and this cycle will repeat until you hit the sweet (jump) spot.

Stairway to… another floor

ReCore’s story is another letdown, not because the premise isn’t interesting (because it is), but the lackadaisical execution of the narrative means that the player never really becomes invested in Joule’s tale, despite the game being narrated by Joule’s father.  Aside from the elementals, the majority of the story is found within audio logs which are hidden throughout the world and once you do start to discover more about Earth’s demise and Far Eden’s conception, you realise how good the story could have been if there had been a bit more emphasis given to it. There is one slightly obscure storytelling element and that is that some of the audio logs are recordings of Corebots. Now while this sounds like a charming feature, the fact that they speak in gibberish and the subtitles are random symbols makes it hard to take this element seriously, considering the fact that Joule can somehow understand them. Joule for the most part is well-voiced, but aside from her performance the rest of the voice-cast is rather lacklustre.

Another questionable story element is that the lead antagonist Victor is basically a nonentity, as he is given a total of about three minutes of airtime throughout the entire campaign; all you really know is that he wants the Prismatic Cores as much as you do. There is also a missed opportunity to build on an apparent strong father-daughter relationship, and sadly it’s not fully fleshed out and fails to deliver the poignancy it’s intended to.

From a production standpoint the game is indicative of its budget $49.95 price, with most of Far Eden’s extensive sand plains being rather humdrum and a little rough around the edges, especially the texturing.  Quite often you will find yourself navigating long desolate stretches with only the odd rock face, ramshackle structure or corrupted Corebot to keep you company. The only real highlight graphically would be the character models, but even they aren’t anything to write home about. The game’s soundtrack is the standout here, with a few quality audible backdrops softening the blow of a mostly average overall production.

The final blow in all of this is that despite the game rushing you to the finish line, you’re nowhere near ready, not in the mental sense, but in the amount of cores you own or your current level. The final area is made up of five floors of platforming challenges and countless waves of enemies (this is where the difficulty spikes are at their worst). Each new floor you reach requires five more cores to enter, meaning you’ll have to backtrack through Far Eden to find more Cellbots to find more Prismatic Cores in what were originally made out to be optional dungeon missions only to rinse and repeat this grind process until you reach the fifth floor summit. This type of campaign filler not only murders the pacing of the game in cold blood, but it also saps all the enjoyment the game had previously generated.

Final Thoughts

At its core, ReCore is a solid and enjoyable action-adventure platformer. However too often the game is seemingly working against you with its archaic loading times, tiresome progression system, terrible design choices (such as being limited to two companions) and severe endgame padding. The premise while intriguing is delivered in a way that requires the player to explore the world in order to garner the full experience, which wouldn’t be so bad if traversing Far Eden wasn’t so tedious. While the lower price will soften the blow ever so slightly, it’s Microsoft’s weakest exclusive this generation.

Reviewed on Xbox One