When ReCore was first announced for the Xbox One back at E3 2015, it was a game that showed us so much promise. It was a game that looked stunning visually, and a game that we were all eager to wait and see more of. At E3 this year, we were shown more of Keiji Inafune`s (previous notable for his work with Capcom on the Dead Rising series) game that he`d helped produce, and that is the story of ReCore. ReCore was a game that was billed as an Xbox One Exclusive, and was a game that looked promising and with so much potential. But a year later after that trailer, was it a game that could live up the the hype? Could it do Xbox well in their exclusivity market over PS? Well, I`m afraid to say, the answer is no.
ReCore is an action-adventure game side-tracked with a bit of challenge and puzzle in there. It tells the story of Joules Adams and her three robotic companions, most notable Mack (the robot dog you see in the artwork and trailers) as they set out from waking up after a cryo-sleep and find what was planned to happen in the future had failed and all gone wrong, they must travel to the Far Eden and to save mankind from terrible fates and doings. It` s a game that`s going to give you a lot of exploration, open-world gameplay, and a good puzzler throughout the game. But don’t let it fool you.
As soon as being thrown into the game, the exploration begins, and you`ll have to find your way fighting through robotic enemies and picking up collectables and bits and pieces along the way. You`re going to need to destroy enemies and take their cores (coloured cores that Joules can specially take, you`ll need them for later on) but it`s a game that just doesn’t live up to what I expected of. It`s a game that you`re going to get very frustrated with very quickly and a game that perhaps, isn’t quite a finished product.
It`s a game that`s going to throw a lot at you in terms of game-styles, there`s no doubt about that. You`re going to get the FPS part of the game, the shooting element that you`ll need to take Joules on and wipe out her enemies. The puzzling side of things, how are you going to get from one element to the next, how are you going to get that last powered core you need to activate the main pylon? It`s a game that offers something quite a good challenge at times for the puzzle fans, and for fans that like platformers, it`s also a good task and offering, as you`ll need to jump from platform to platform in order to get some of those powered cores that aren’t within the normal reach. It`s a game though that at times doesn’t tend to push the gameplay out enough within those styles. It`s as if ReCore has had too many styles thrown into it, and not enough focus on one. It`s a game that feels very un-pushed in the boundaries for some of its mechanical and gameplay style.
And where they have focused on a style, they`ve taken out the skill element within it. For example, holding Left trigger will automatically lock onto your opponent and then right trigger will viciously wipe them out. It for me, takes out the skill element of a first person shooter. I like to be able to feel like I`m in control of where I shoot, and not automatically have it aimed for me. Some will like that, but I just feel like it takes the skill element away from it, and for me, it becomes a real bore. There`s no skill involved in just holding down the trigger buttons and not aiming anywhere because it does it for you. For me as I mentioned, I prefer a game that I feel I have control.
There`s no undeniable question, that the game needs working and patching in areas. Load up times were awful, and although I think this has now been patched at the time of writing this review, it should never have been as long as they were. You could boot up, go downstairs, make a brew and still be back before the game had booted up. And that wasn’t just at the start. Throughout the game if you were to die, you`d be waiting a while, as they were all the way throughout the game. It was apparent throughout the game, and although a patch is in place, a game shouldn’t have been allowed to be released with that sort of times. That`s the sort of thing that should have been fixed in a day one patch. We`ve seen games in the past that acknowledge the game with long times before it`s released, and a day one patch has saved it from the public. But, we`ve not seen that with ReCore, and although we`ve finally got a patch, it perhaps has become a bit too late.
It`s a game that I had such high hopes for, and it`s a game that have seriously had those hopes diminished and demolished quickly into the game. It was a game that was billed up as being a top Xbox exclusive, and the first game to take use of the Xbox Play Anywhere program that was announced this year at E3. But it`s a game that isn’t going to be top of the list, it isn’t going to win any exclusive awards, and it`s a game that isn’t going to make anyone consider joining a brand based on exclusivity. I can see the element for some who`ll enjoy it, but it takes too much away from me in its style, and I just don’t feel like I know what they`ve tried to do with ReCore, in terms of their style of game that they`ve tried to make.
A huge thank you to XCN for supplying us with a review copy of ReCore.
Game: ReCore
Developers: Comcept/Armature Studios
Publishers: Microsoft Studios
Genre: Action-Adventure, Platformer
Price: £29.99