Instead all areas share the same enemy type. I’m imagining the eco themed level protected by enemies that multiply and attach to Program which would slow you down for example. Which happens to be one of the more naturally thought out levels. There’s a security focused level that respawns enemies protecting the area. Bosses will catch you off guard.Įach area in Recompile has its own distinct look and color palette. The problem for me is this could easily be skipped by someone and the main dialogue in the game is just surface level-go here, go there. Program both in name and function, is a silent protagonist there’s enough happening around them that has me engaged. You parse through found fragments of data that reveal conversation logs of some crew. This is easy to miss as it’s presented in lore fashion. I did end up caring for the characters I was reading about. It made total sense that something digital could move within the space as it wanted. What stuck with me from the demo and in the final release of the game is the unlimited traversal. I remember stuff here and there from a demo of Recompile I played long ago. Recompile in concept is great but this code could’ve used some revisions to really stand out. The lore is what shines best here although some might miss it since it’ll feel like reading a big wall of text. Combat takes a backseat as its unsatisfying or can be completely avoided. Backtracking is a staple of metroidvania that feels fun with its own twist here. Yes, the AI picked up a sense of self and poetry-and that can be seen in the original and often artistic depictions of the computer world within Recompile-but the system also taught itself self-deception in the process, subsequently falling apart.Recompile doesn’t give it’s best elements enough time to shine. This is immediately at odds with the game’s compelling narrative-relayed entirely through recovered data logs-given that undirected, unchecked self-learning is what led the Hypervisor to break in the first place. ![]() Instead, Recompile treats you like the self-learning Hypervisor AI that you’re trying to restore. Alternatively, a fast-travel option would go a long way to stave off the tunnel-vision urge to finish the combat-heavy Security biome before proceeding to the AND/OR/NOR logic-gate puzzles of the Engineering sector. A more balanced game, one in which enemies can’t kill you in a matter of seconds, would make it easier to figure out what you’re doing wrong. ![]() To progress, players have a choice between two unappealing options: throw themselves at a challenge over and over again until beating it, or laboriously backtrack to other areas. All of these elements make narrative sense, but it’s nonetheless disappointing that gameplay pays the price. It’s already hard enough to gauge depth and distance when maneuvering your dotted humanoid avatar, but in areas where you’re forced to jump between narrow, jagged bits of fragmented data, you will find yourself falling quite often. The verticality of each of Recompile’s areas also makes platforming rather frustrating, because if you miss a jump, you have to wait until you hit the ground-which can take tens of seconds-to respawn. (This is especially true during the first half of the game, before you’ve acquired many movement, combat, or hacking upgrades.) The mainframe’s scope is impressive, but when you couple its size with the lack of objective markers and the low-light conditions that reflect the computer’s disrepair, it feels less like you’re making progress through it and more like you’re stumbling around in the dark. However, because you’ve been installed into this computer to repair it, these regions aren’t in good condition, and they can be a chore to navigate. It’s a brilliantly minimalistic setting, and this 3D action platformer, at its best, vividly imagines what a mainframe might look like to your protagonist, a pointilistically rendered recompiler program: from the harsh red enclosures of the security system, to the green synaptic tubes of the logical processors, to the yellow platforms of pure code, to the circular cool blue fan blades that cool the computer’s quantum cores. Phigames’s Recompile takes place entirely within the interior of a futuristic computer.
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