When I saw Microsoft’s showing for Recore at their press conference, I felt like there wasn’t enough shown to really tell how the game would turn out and that it was a bad way to show it off. I had the chance to go hands on with Recore at the Xbox booth at E32016 and this demo convinced me that what was shown at the press conference has undersold the game.

I was dropped straight into a level and given a quick crash course on the shooting mechanics: Left trigger to aim and automatically lock on to enemies, right trigger to fire and right bumper to charge your gun and fire a charged shot. A charged shot does more damage than a regular shot, stun an enemy for a short period of time and also prevent them from using their special attacks for a little while once the stun wears off. Both of these types of shots gradually reduce your ammo, which is represented as a meter that recharges over time, as opposed to a specific ammo count. A charged shot uses a larger amount of ammo, so using it too many times can leave you without any fire power at all for a time. This results in needing to use the charged shot sparingly to prevent becoming vulnerable.

This isn’t where the shooting mechanics end, as Armature Studios has leaned on a system from Ikarugi and included a colour switching mechanic. On your d-pad you have four different colours: red, white, yellow and blue. Each of these colours represents a different coloured ammo that you can use and corresponds with enemies. You need to match the colour of your ammo to the colour of your enemy to do the most damage. This is also true of your companion robots, which you can call to help you in battle. Each companion has a colour, like Mack the dog who is blue, and this results in certain companions being better to use in battle than others. Overall, what results is a battle system where shooting isn’t your only concern and there is a higher level strategy, especially when facing enemies of multiple colours at once.

Platforming and puzzle solving also seem like they will be key components of Recore, however they were pretty light in the demo that I played. As far as platforming went, there was a small jumping section that needed to be completed, mixing double jumping and a dash manoeuvre to get between platforms that were quite a way apart, but there wasn’t enough to judge how well this worked.

Overall, my time with Recore has shown that it does have the potential to be a good game, with interesting shooting mechanics and a premise that I like the look of. More will be needed to be seen of the platforming and puzzles before a real judgement can be made, but the early signs are positive.