SDCC 2016: Hands-On With ‘ReCore’!

ReCore has been a mysterious game. Ever since it’s initial trailer over a year ago, many people have been scratching their heads wondering just what kind of game this is. It seemed to just come out of nowhere with big names like Keji Inafune and Armature Games, a studio comprised of former Retro Studios employees.

I got the chance to try the game out during Comic Con, and aside from some of the technical problems, ReCore feels more like a Mega Man game than Mighty No.9 does (which is weird seeing as how Inafune worked on both projects.). The game feels like a great balance between classic Mega Man and Metroid Prime. What about it makes it fun though?

Gameplay in ReCore is split into 2 sections, platforming and combat. Both styles are fun, but the platforming sections in the game were very well done. Most of the platforming will have you jumping from platform to platform in order to open doors, flip switches, or complete puzzles. Movement feels very nice, especially the jumping since you can double jump and then transition into a dash hover. While easy, this makes most of the platforming fast and fun.

Puzzles are also really well implemented. While only a handful in the demo, most of the puzzles centered around using one of your robot companions, a spider named Seth. With him, you can grapple onto slopes and platforms that you normally couldn’t. While he does move automatically, it feels really satisfying when you’re able to pull off one continuously long grapple move. This is only one of the different ways that your robot allies can be used (more on that in a bit.).

Let’s talk a bit about combat. This is where the similarities to Mega Man come into play. In the demo, there were 3 different kinds of enemies and 4 different bullets. The plain bullets feel a bit un-necessary most of the time since they did the weakest amount of damage. The main reason for this is because most of the enemies are color coded which means  that they’ll take more damage if hit with the correct colored bullet.

While it does sound a bit tedious,  switching bullets is instantaneous with the help of the D-pad. You can also charge up a shot by holding a fire button which is what you’ll probably want to use most of the time since that does the most damage, but you will have to wait for the ammo bar to recharge afterwards.

The other part of Combat is also taking advantage of your robot allies. The demo contains 2 of the allies, Mack the Dog, and Seth the Spider. Only one can be summoned at a time, but you can command them to attack and retreat whenever you want, so if you’re a strategic type of person when it comes to combat, then you’ll have plenty of fun with this game.

Now for all the good that the game has, there are some things that concern me. While the combat system right now is fine, it could really use some tweaking as it still feels a bit stiff. Perhaps a dodge roll would help the combat flow better. The game also seemed to have some pretty bad frame rate issues throughout the demo. They didn’t happen all the time, but they were often enough to be a problem. This mostly concerns me seeing as how the games release is a little over a month away, so hopefully they fix it up by then.

In the end, ReCore is a very compelling game with some great ideas, but is hampered by some pretty inconsistent performance issues that could really bring down the whole experience if not fixed. What Inafune and Armature have here really is something special, and I can’t wait to try out the rest of it. ReCore will release on September 13th for Xbox One and Windows 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnKT9ZCGgBE