ReCore is an action-adventure platforming third-person video game by Comcept and Armature Studios, and directed by Keiji Inafune of Mega Man fame. It was released on September 13, 2016.
Set After the End Earth has been ravaged by a deadly disease, called the "Dust Devil". Humanities only chance of survival is to abandon Earth and set course to a barely inhabitable world dubbed Far Eden. While humanity as a whole lies in cryogenic status above their new home's atmosphere, a few scientists and engineers take "shifts" ensuring an autonomous collective of AI terraform Far Eden to make it a safe place for humanity to rebuild.
Predictably, something goes awry. You play as Joule Adams an engineer down of the surface that awakens long after she was due her shift and with a large portion of the robots on the planet now hostile to human life. Seemingly alone on the planet Far Eden; Joule must uncover what went wrong, fix the ailing terraforming machinery and attempt to make contact with the remains of humanity. To survive she must forge friendships with a courageous group of human-loyal Corebot companions, each with unique abilities and powers.
Tropes found in this videogame:
- Ability Required to Proceed: In order to prevent the player from sequence breaking, you'll need to gain new corebots and new robot frames with abilities designed to open up the world. One of the largest complaints of the game is the limitation of only having two robots at a time and no quick swap ability; so if the player didn't guess they required the robot that can smash rocks or fly they'll need to go back to a checkpoint to swap one in.
- Action Girl: Joule, of course.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: At some point during a sleep-cycle a corebot goes rogue and attempts a coup against the humans.
- Animal Mecha: Most corebots generally have at least a vaguely animalistic design - for example, Mack's dog shape, or enemy corebots looking like wolves and spiders.
- Arbitrary Head Count Limit: During gameplay, Joule can only bring two corebots with her and can only have one corebot out at a time even though she can face against multiple enemies.
- Artificial Limbs: Kai has two cyborg legs which he lost on Earth after contracting Dust Devil. The first thing you do after meeting him is help him find new parts, so he's able to move around easier.
- As You Know: The conversation logs with your father leaves can fall into this. Detailing the creation of the robot-cores their different personalities and what roles they take. Something Joule, who is overseeing and maintaining all these robots, would hopefully already know.
- Bizarrchitecture: Eden Tower and its interior corrupted by Victor is weird and creepy.
- Charged Attack: Joule's Weapon can do this in addition to it's standard fast-fire. The DLC adds three additional charge shots; a powerful laser, a multi-energy-grenade styled shot and one that targets multiple enemies.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Joule's weapon gets four different colored attacks and robots come in a collection of different colors with the same color weapon doing bonus damage against them.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Joule can comfortably exist in chambers with lava, hoping across rocks a few inches away from the surface, without any damage taken. She can even fall in the lava and jump out again with only a bit of health missing.
- Deadly Dust Storm: Common on Far Eden, said to be so powerful that they will last for days and make significant changes to the region.
- Desert Punk
- Death Course: Half of the optional dungeons are these. Timed platforming sections with moving platforms, lasers and other hazards.
- Disney Death: Kai seemed to have died when Victor attacked both him and Joule on the aerial tramway. Joule was able to escape as Kai held Victor off and the tram fell to the ground. At the end of the game, during The Stinger, it is revealed that Kai survived.
- Double Jump: One of the mechanics of Joule's suit.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: AOK is having his messages sent through a cypher to prevent them being understood by hostile robots. However, this leaves his messages coming out slightly garbled until it corrects the cypher.
- Easily Detachable Robot Parts: The player can swap their corebots into different robotic frames, and they can also pick and mix what parts make up that frame.
- Homeworld Evacuation: "The Mandate" is a nebulous organization that sent colony ships to Far Eden as a desperate last measure to save humanity. There wasn't nearly enough room in the ships for everybody, leaving the fate of Earth a mystery but presumably devoid of human life.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Dotted around the planet in hard to reach areas are random treasure chests, generally with schematics of robot parts in them.
- Interface Spoiler: Empty slots for corebots on the various menus spoils the fact that Joule picks up additional corebots as the game goes on.
- Item Get!: Joule gets one when she collects a Prismatic Core.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Has a grapple which she uses to extract corrupt corebot cores or latch onto specific companion corebots to help traverse the terrain.
- Killer Robot: Victor; the first rogue AI that seeks to take Far Eden for himself by wiping out all humanity.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Even after the patch for Xbox One to alleviate some issues with the game, it's still prone to very long load times.
- MacGuffin: The Prismatic Cores. Special white cores that the player must collect to progress through the story and the villain also wants.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Each corebot is housed in its own "species" which were meant to be designed for specific jobs on the planet. With years of negligence, these robots seem to have filled ecological niches throughout the world.
- Monster Arena: The other half of optional dungeons are small rooms where that the player must face off against a series of enemy waves.
- Named Weapons: Joule only has her machine gun, which is aptly named Joule's Weapon.
- Names Given to Computers: Naturally, the corebots that accompany Joule all get their own names. Also corebots that are plot important will also be named, such as "Violet" (V1-0LT).
- No OSHA Compliance: Justified by the levels being designed for robots, not humans. There are even little PSA posters warning corebots not to manhandle their less-durable human coworkers.
- Reclaimed by Nature: Far Eden has fallen into disrepair with it's terraforming projects halted and the robots no longer maintaining the structures on the planet, everything is slowly being consumed by the desert.
- Robot Buddy: The companion corebots.
- Robot Dog: Your first corebot companion is your personal assistant Mack, who is originally housed in a dog-like robot frame. The special ability of this frame enables it to dig up loot.
- Scenery Porn: Far Eden is a desert world of sweeping vistas and rock formations with lots of bright colors.
- Secondary Fire: Joule's Weapon has a normal fire and charged attack and she can switch between 4 ammo colors.
- Sequel Hook: At the end of the game.
- Single-Biome Planet: Far Eden consists of sandy wasteland and sandy wasteland with deadly radiation.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: Possibly two. First humanity travelled to a new planet in cryosleep leaving the rest of humanity to die. Then, while waiting for terraforming to progress, a robot rebellion on the planet potentially kills off the remaining humans without most of them ever being woken up.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The basic story is spelt out quite clearly, but to figure out what actually went wrong and the lore of the world the player must collect audio logs randomly scattered across the planet.
- Terraform: What the Mandate wanted to do to Far Eden.
- Trick Shot Puzzle: With the DLC adding new ability to Joule's gun, you'll now have to use them to activate doors to progress through the dungeons.
- The Plague: The catalyst of the game is Earth being overrun by a disease called Dust Devil, we're not told exactly what it is or the symptoms, but one character is missing limbs after contracting it.
- Tron Lines: Shows up inside the corrupted Eden Tower.
- Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Eden Tower is a looming obelisk on the horizon the entirety of the game. It's where you're told Victor's base of operations is and requires numerous Prismatic Cores just to enter. Even after that there are five levels of Platform Hell to go through.
- Videogame Dashing: Air Dashing is a mechanic used by Joule thanks to her exo-suit.
- Warp Whistle: The Transfer Plates let you fast travel between them after discovering them. They are manned by a corebot designated as Violet (V1-0L3T).
