Game – ReCore
Release Date – September 13, 2016
Platform – Xbox One & Windows 10
Developer/Publisher – Armature Studios/Microsoft Studios
Once you step into ReCore for the first time right away you can just feel you are on an adventure and that the exploring is limitless. You have Joule, daughter of scientist Dr. Thomas Adams, in the year 2284 and Mack, who is one of your companions throughout the game. Joule Adams has been in a cryo sleep for 200 years and is one of the last remaining humans on this planet, and she must discover a new power source for her Crawler ship in order to reunite with her father and discover what went wrong with the terraforming tower. As Joule tries to save the planet she runs into many corebots, most of them will be enemies and some maybe one of you best helpers throughout this adventure.

Believe it or not there is a ton to do in ReCore besides just doing the main story, in fact you may be forced to do side missions such as dungeons in order to be the correct level in order to continue the main missions, because some require a certain level and the amount of prismatic cores you need. As you explore different places in Far Eden there will be entrances to dungeons, enemies spawn all over this world so you could grind XP that way too.

Dungeons are all different you can have one that has a ton of obstacles or some that just has a ton of enemies coming in waves. Not only are you trying to complete those tasks you are also timed during these as well has finding an x amount of switches and a yellow key, at the end you’ll see about 4 barriers with crates in them and if you complete some of those tasks they will open and you’ll get awarded. If you do not complete those secondary objectives they call them, you always have the chance of restarting until you complete it all. Dungeons are basically a grind to level up your character, collect blueprints, prismatic cores, and to level up your companions. At some points in my time playing I found it annoying trying to find some dungeons as you can’t just fast travel right into one. It can get boring after a while.

Blueprints can be found in chests throughout the game in dungeons or while you are wondering Far Eden you may run into some. What do you do with those blueprints? Well when you go back to the crawler which you could say is your home place to do things in and you go to the workbench, and then you’ll see to the left of your screen a research section, once you do that you’ll see the blueprints you found in chests and then after you research them you can add them to one of your corebots. Doing that makes them a lot stronger against enemies and helps you out as well. I enjoy this feature as it’s basically customizing your corebots so they all look unique to each other.

Prismatic Cores are your best friends right to the end in ReCore because they can help you enter dungeons and proceed in the main story. You’ll know when you find one as they look like big crystal balls. There are different ways to earn them, one is to complete secondary objectives in the dungeons, on the map you’ll see spots where they spawn and most of the time you have to fight enemy bots in order to earn it as they’ll have it to attached to them so you will have to extract it from them. You are going to need to collect as many as you can.
Companions
In ReCore you aren’t alone on this adventure while you fight to save Far Eden, you start out with Mack who is just one of a few companions you meet up with. Each has it’s own ability that will help you throughout the story.

This is Mack, Joule’s K-9 bot form who helps her at the start of her adventure in Far Eden. He can fight through enemies pretty well. During my experience he killed quite a few enemies while I was trying to revive myself. You can order him to fight other enemies by pressing Y on the controller and he can do some damage. Not only will he fight well, he will also dig up stuff for joule that’s needed.

Meet Seth, he is more of a spider style bot as he can help you travel in dungeons faster and in places no other companion can go. He becomes very useful as you progress so make sure you keep him in your crew. When he fights enemies he shoots out heavy bullets putting more damage on them and killing them even faster. Seth is probably one of the least strongest companion that you have, but very useful.

Now you have Duncan and I view him as the “gorilla bot”. The reason why I say that is because he is a strong bot who can help you break through rocks. He is another great choice to add to your crew as he is a beast against enemy bots, Duncan charges in and smashes 2 rings of fire and puts heavy damage making it even easier to complete bosses or whatever it is you are fighting. Personally the duo i picked out of all the companions were Seth and Duncan as they helped me most of the way.

In the above picture you’ll see Seth looks a bit odd, well I chose to turn him into a flying bot (FL1-R) to help me at certain parts of the dungeons.
Controls

The controls in this game are pretty simple. You have X to recall your Corebot if you lose him so he comes back to you, B to dash this helps when you go to certain obstacles in the game. The one control you maybe confused about would probably be color affinity if this is your first time seeing ReCore. As you go forward into the story you’ll unlock certain color ammo and there is the neutral, Red, Blue, and Yellow ammo for your gun. Why do you need all these different colors? When you approach enemy corebots you’ll realize that they are all different colors so if you see a blue enemy corebot to put more damage on it you’ll have to switch to the blue ammo on your gun. Sometimes the bosses will change colors so you have to be paying attention as the action intensifies. The controls were pretty simple for me as I am a regular Xbox One gamer, if you are not so familiar with the Xbox controller you’ll have some time adjusting but it shouldn’t take long.
 
Exploring Far Eden 
As I said in the introduction the map of Far Eden is very big with 5 different places to go through. Each area is filled with different dungeons, prismatic cores, and more. The one problem I have had with exploring is that I wish there were some kind of vehicle provided as dashing doesn’t do a whole lot, yes it’s nice looking at everything, but after a while you just want to get to the spot you want to be at. Fast traveling is nice but it doesn’t travel you directly to the dungeons only the area it is in. As you progress in the game you’ll see enough of Far Eden not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

Combat
The combat in ReCore is pretty fun to say the least, when fighting bosses you can double jump and dash away or even when you strafe against them. There’s a lot of strategy in defeating bosses, I usually do not pick third person shooters as my top choice to play, but when playing ReCore it feels very different and Armature did a great job at making it fun. The enemies are challenging, the corebots actually help you as in other games your friendly AI may not do much damage.
Story
The goal is to save Far Eden as Joule is one of the last humans left there and corebots like Victor who you’ll learn about later on are trying to prevent you from doing that. Before we got our hands on ReCore, Armature Studios said it would take about 15 hours in order to beat the story. They were not wrong about that, but if you were like me you would have thought it was full of pure story gameplay straight through think again. Most of your time you’ll be doing side quests in order to continue doing your main missions which isn’t that bad so you won’t rush through the entire story then finish and say you wasted money, Armature made it so you have more playing time. If you’re someone who doesn’t mind going out of your way doing side missions and taking your time then this game is perfect for you, but if you’re someone who wants to rush through the story well this maybe not for you. In my opinion it really depends on what kind of gamer you are when it comes to ReCore. I feel like some parts of the story might have been rushed a bit at certain cutscenes you’ll realize, “wait, that happened?” It’s an old school style story for sure.

Cutscenes
I thought the cutscenes were great it wasn’t just random things happened, it revealed some information you never knew before and maybe some surprising events coming up in the future of the story. Even the visuals of it were awesome Armature put some time into them as they should have since it was focused on single player all the way. All in all they were all top quality.
Gameplay- The gameplay felt really comfortable and it made sure you knew the feel of ReCore.
Audio- The audio for this game sounded really good and you can’t forget about the music, some of the best I have heard.
Visuals- The Sand, Rocks, coloring, and everything else about the game looked fantastic. Armature did a tremendous job on this feature even the character design is so real.
One big problem I had with playing was the loading times were horrid after you died or traveling somewhere, the average would be 30 seconds to 1 minute.
 
 
 
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