3 Up, 3 Down ‘ReCore’ Edition
Microsoft’s exclusive heavy holiday season continues in 2016 as Armature’s ReCore, headed up by legendary Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune, is the first of four and is set to come out on September 13th. The game has even more big names behind it as former Halo writer Joseph Staten is also on the project which promises an interesting narrative. We got to play a slice of ReCore at the X16 showcase this past week and there were a few things we immediately loved and a few things we loved a little… uhh… less. Take a look at our quick impressions of what we saw.
The Love List
1 – Gameplay
ReCore has you using different colors of ammo to take down enemies also of differing colors. Are a pair of yellow enemies taking up a vertical vantage point? Hit the direction on the D-Pad corresponding to that color. Is a massive red titan bearing down on you? You better swap out to the red ammo quickly. Now as far as I know you can still take out the red titan with an opposing color of ammo, but the matching colors act as different bullet types like piercing rounds found in other titles. This allowed the segments to feel like a puzzle, quickly switching between ammo types and jumping around to avoid bullets, especially when several different colors of enemies are involved.
2 – Story/Characters
First and foremost, the character design is brilliant. I loved the Pixar look of my robot friends and the main character, Joule, sports a mechanized look with a superhero cape. Swapping between the two robots available in the demo made me intrigued to see how it would all play out. I wish I could have seen some outdoor environments to really get a sense of the world and its current state, but I saw enough of ReCore to really be interested in its narrative. And you can’t go wrong with former Halo writer Joseph Staten penning the script.
3 – Difficulty
At first, I was taken aback after dying several times in the same section, but the feeling of victory after slowly working out what steps to take was immense. ReCore is not afraid to really challenge you, even if it’s just with a few enemies. One section had just three enemies but took me several attempts to pass. The game forces you to experiment with the plethora of gameplay mechanics available, and I can only see greater achievements and successes as players are given more weapons, robot commands, and tools later on in the game to counteract the hard, but necessary, difficulty levels.
Click on thru to page two to see what we hated…