ReCore is a rare breed of a platformer. With big emphasize on shooting and exploration, platforming comes mostly within the games own version of dungeons with techno gizmos and enemy robots. It's a fun game but the caveat is how the game in design doesn't work in certain areas that makes it come out like a sore thumb. That doesn't entirely diminish the whole game, rather what it provides is complimentary to the old platformers of earlier gens. Especially considering this game is produced by creator of Megaman; Keiji Inafune. As a Microsoft exclusive, there was a lot riding on this game to be successful considering their exclusive library was sparse in quantity as of recently. But by the time it came out after Inafune's biggest failure that was the kickstarted Mighty Number 9; it was buggy, texture pop-ins, bad loading times and game ran slow at times. Post-release after multiple patches, it has improved...well sort of. Bugs were mostly gone, textures in the game were updated and the loading times decreased. It wasn't a bad game the whole time, it was like an action figure just released and when you bought it, you started seeing poorly trimmed edges and corners around it. ReCore Definitive Edition was a re-release of the game with newer content, some of the design issues of the game were fixed alongside retuned gameplay and updates from the base version.



The game was in development from both Armature Studios and Comcept (now is Level-5 Comcept) with head of design Mark Pacini from Retro Studios and writer Joseph Stathan from Bungie. Inafune took inspirations from his earlier games and took it to himself to implement some of the inspirations within the designs. Before I continue, I have to mention that even after Megaman he worked with Capcom on multiple games like Dead Rising, Lost Planet and Onimusha. The game had a reveal trailer shown in E3 2015 and was released in 2016 to mixed reviews, most of the positives were about the unique gameplay, platforming, story and controls. The mixed reviews were because of the issues I mentioned, but since it has majorly improved some reviewers including users have revisited the game. ReCore has had a cult following within Xbox store as being one of the most highly downloaded games despite what sales analysts have said. Being in the list of one of the most underrated Microsoft games alongside Sunset Overdrive and Dark Dreams Don't Die.                                          

                                             Gameplay:

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ReCore is a third person shooter reliance on target locking enemies and blasting them with your rifle, that's it. But the combat is more complex and intuitive than that, you see blasting them isn't enough. Enemies can really corner you or worse put a lot of damage the least you expect it, you have one weapon with 3 different ammo type you'll need to switch on the fly depending on what Corebots you're fighting against. With each type of Corebots, there are 4 type of plasma ammo you shoot; red, blue, yellow and white. White is neutral, damaging any Corebots but without the bonus damage you get from the other colors provided you match each ammo type against the color of the cores from enemy bots. Higher ranking bots have rare colors like orange, green and purple, which signifies that those bots can change colors. Ok am done with the children's way of explaining, here's how you basically play in combat: You blast enemies by right trigger or you could charge up your rifle for a blast that can knock them out, to avoid being hit by enemies you jump and dash through their attacks, outmaneuvering them is key to survival. Although only this method isn't enough and would rather make the game very difficult; enter your companion bots. You start the game with Mack, who's a K-9 (canine) unit. His attacks are zip charges which has single target crowd control, knocking enemies out while significantly damaging them. In combo, you could shoot a charged blast and have your bot attack at same time to easily win a fight against enemy Corebots, although that becomes sort of difficult as the game progresses further. Speaking of progression, you'll stumble onto other companion bots with their own different kind of attacks like shooting rockets or spinning with area of effect damage, you can even switch bot frames like say if you want Mack to change from a K-9 to T8-NK tank which drives over sand allowing you to bypass areas(fun fact: the tank wasn't around in the base game and was a mystery till in the definitive edition Violet at some point of the game would take you to where it is). While fighting enemies further in-game levels up your rifle automatically, your companion bots will need upgrades from various components found in blueprints and composed of from located parts. Then there's the cores, yes there's a fishing mini-game in every battle and everytime you try to open a sealed door within the games dungeons; all you do is extract cores from enemies once they are weak, you'll need these cores to upgrade your companion bots. Especially Prismatic cores because you cannot progress through the story and certain areas of the map till you have extracted x amount of Prismatic cores (e.g: 30-45 Prismatic cores, it's a buttload), it's a hamfisted level requirement design but this edition made sure it wasn't much of a chore just like the last was. Also a word of advice, there are difficulty spikes in battling enemy bots, my suggestion would be to keep leveling up, progress till you've reached somewhere over level 20. That way you'll play the game much easier.

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Now let's talk about the platforming, the video above is a footage from one of the last levels of the game. So you can see how difficult it might seem, yes because each of the levels within the game's levels have unique platforming areas to bypass and puzzle to solve. You're given 3 challenges to complete in each dungeons you enter: Find a yellow switch and, find and hit cubes of 4 specific colors within a timeframe. Now you can complete your exploration of these dungeons without achieving the challenges and try again for later, but the rewards you get are oh so worth it considering you could earn more than one Prismatic cores. Here are the following physical abilities you have:

1. You can jump and then boost yourself up as double jump.
   
   
2. You can dash for over 1 second.
   
   
3. You can grab ledges once you're close enough to climb up.

Heck you can combo 1 and 2 together in order to get to your goal. However, you cannot progressively upgrade these abilities for Joule. Some of the platforms you need to reach over in certain levels are well...impossible but that's based on design since you'll need to find a coreframe that could slowly descend you from above, helping to overcome such obstacles even though it becomes a bit tedious after the long run. Yes that's my grief with this game, some of the platforming sections while great can often drive you to become weary. Adding insult to injury is how difficult they can become at random times, forcing you to take a break before resorting to try again. But I guess you could get over that considering there's so much you can do with your companion bots. Seth can act a grapple placement and traverse through wall objects while your character holds dear life, and no you don't have to do any button prompts for her to survive such a task. Your other bot; Duncan can well smash giant rocks blocking pathways to open unexplored sections of the game.

                                             Story and Characters:

The game's story begins with Joule Adams, in a far distant on another planet called Far Eden. Set 200 years past from 2020 after a disease called Dust Devil Plague has slowly ravaged the Earth, making it uninhabitable. Joule's father is the head of science division terraforming Far Eden and were hibernating during the 200 year period while the Corebots finish the procedure. What happened unfortunately was the human members vanished and most of the Corebots went rogue. So it's upto Joule alongside Mack and other friendly bots to investigate the cause. Teleporting and depositing extracted cores, and collected components via Violet; a unique Corebot with a strange incomprehensible language. 

Warning, spoilers ahead as I will reveal entire plot elements. If you do not want to read them. Keep scrolling down till you see a giant "STOP" text.

• Joule wakes up inside her crawler and finds no contact with other crewmembers in hibernation. Goes out with her Corebot Mack to investigate.
  
• Stumbles onto rogue Corebots, battles against them including security bots before finding Prismatic cores. She'll need to more in order to advance throughout the game levels.
  
• Finds another crawler with a Corebot named Seth and his owner; an amputee named Kai. Him and Seth have been stuck since the attacks asking Joule to scout ahead. Afterwards Joule sees a transmission from her father within the Prismatic cores.
  
• She finds the group leader of the rogue Corebots named Victor, who has waged a vendetta against mankind. His reasons are unknown but stopping him was imperative in order to continue terraforming Far Eden and wake up everyone from their crawlers.
  
• Heading to Eden Tower, after meeting up with Kai they become ambushed by Victor. Kai risks himself alone to fend off Victor, before seeing the rail transport they were riding under falls over. After Joule's ask, she finds a crawler with art depicting Victor manipulating the other Corebots to betray their maintenance habitat and finding Duncan, a security Corebot whose owner was killed by Victor's group. He joins her alonside Mack and Seth.
  
• Joule finally reaches Eden Tower and faces off combat against Victor after he prclaims to her that Kai is dead. After passing 5 levels of the tower, Joule finally battles Victor once again in his final form before he is defeated and Joule reactivates the terraforming machine. The game ends with video broadcast of Kai being alive and claiming he found something incredible.
  

                                              STOP!!!

Now that the synopsis and overall plot details are done, here's what I have to say. The game actually has a good story but during game time it's not fully revealed to you in such a linear fashion. To fully understand the plot, you'll have to gather scattered logs both within the desert and in some of the dungeons you'll explore. On paper, it isn't a bad story but there's little plot development going on in comparison to how this could have been expanded just a bit further. All I know is I fought 99% robots and have met only one human besides mine, that's it. There aren't even interesting subplots regarding other unique bots or the human workers that landed in Far Eden. That would been a great distraction from all the chores of puzzle platforming to get Prismatic cores.

Besides the aggressive Corebots from Victor that flung at you; you have Joule, Kai, Joule's father, Mack, Seth, Duncan and Violet. Violet's character is the only standout here even for a bot, she speaks a weird gibberish language same with her logs and they aren't even translated in the game just to you understand what she's even talking about. Also she sounds like a 9-year old speaking with Aspergers. Maybe if they released a sequel for this game, it might expand its lore beyond the bots and let us explore the pleas of the human survivors. Also add translated subtitles for Violet please.

                                                 Visuals:

Despite what my videos show at 720p recorded in my Xbox One S, yeah the visuals aren't that great. Inside the dungeons however is a different story, with lack of details the game mostly flourishes in a great palette of blooming colors. where most games would be more or less condensed with their visuals ReCore has no problem adding simple yet intricate details into the levels with various colors. The art style becomes a complimentary addition to the colorful palette as you'll see solid crystals looming in caves, mechanical structures even with great Anistrophic Filtering and small drones minding their business just noticeable within the visual spectrum. Even drones that attack you have highlighted color scheme for you to intuitively response against.

But this game isn't a technically proficient title nor at least close to being one. Within the second video I embedded, you'll see weird glitchy pop-ins during battles and game artifacting. Then there's the occasional framerate drops and once they do, the game doesn't hold itself steady while playing. This was made with Unity engine, something so accessible that Comcept failed to fully utilize it for the betterment of the game. The visuals don't look very bad, even in the outskirts but even improving the textures in definitive edition doesn't make the horse look any prettier. The issues don't linger most of the time, that's a plus side though.

                                       Sound design and Music:

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You'd never imagined a game that was released in 40$ price tag would be scored by a film industry veteran; Chad Seiter. He's worked in the first Gears of War score and as of recently, Resident Evil 7. The score is good, but more in line with what Chad has worked in his previous years, has mostly orchestral and alternative rock highly mixed into it with a bit of electronic music added in certain sequences. It just works, but there isn't anything more broader for me say about it.

The sound design in this game is unique, everytime you shoot your blaster it sounds like the ones from Star Wars just in more treble to it. Each sound whether Joule dashes, Mack barks or beeps and nuance sounds of machines shifting in platform sections, each has their own distinction intuitively recognizable. Much akin to the audio of older generation games just more defined and amplified to such quality.

                                              Summation:

When the game came out in 2016, August it baffled a lot of the reviewers as to how this game was released in such an incomplete mess. After the criticisms were laid, developers added multiple updates in due time. Months later, the game was in a better shape but some of the content it was planned to have were still missing. In came definitive edition a year later, priced at 20 USD in release alongside major improvements and bonus content as an apology from the developers. It's almost the same I believe with Devil May Cry reboot in 2013, once it got a definitive version for next generation consoles 2 years later, low and behold critics were praising it. That doesn't mean you can run away with that excuse, there's just too many games coming out right now to hold over one to fix itself in time. However, with that being said ReCore is a unique game that mashes Metroid Prime game design alongside modern third person shooter elements. The platforming was enjoyable although a bit tedious and a bit obnoxious. I really do believe it deserves a sequel, especially with the cliffhanger ending so fingers crossed it gets one this year.