Recompile test: when the intention is not worth the action

Recompile is a cybernetic metroidvania whose power of attraction is immediate: with its seductive realization and its current themes, the game of Phigames and Dear Villagers sucks us into its fascinating universe in one breath, to spit us out a few seconds later with a platform missed or a useless fight that goes wrong. Loving it is quite a challenge, even if everything is seemingly set up to convince meta adventure lovers. Did you say game pass?

Recompile test: when the intention is not worth the action Read the conclusionRecompile

Fascinating universe and scenario
Flashes of level design
Good ramp up
successful realization

Tedious start
Inaccurate platforming
Boring action sequences
All this light stings the eyes

Test carried out on the PC version. The game is available on PC, Xbox Series S|X and PlayStation 5.

Plagued by nuclear wars and toxic waste, humanity entrusts a few eminent scientists to find a fallback solution to avoid extinction. Sent into space, they are accompanied by an artificial intelligence - the Hypervisor - which they must gradually educate to help them in their task. But something is wrong, and it is up to a small piece of humanoid code to infiltrate the main computer to reactivate a certain number of processes and to understand, along the way, what could have gone wrong in this story.

It is by surveying these different cybernetic sectors that this luminous character will get his hands on a number of programs designed to improve him. A first jump then a second, a dash, different weapons to defend against the sentries guarding the premises, the possibility of hacking the logic gates that govern the elevators and other portals: Recompile perfectly respects the unspoken rules of Metroidvania by offering a beautiful rise in power which comes, a little late nevertheless, to compensate for the big gaps in the game.

The precision ? It's Recompile or face

We plague indeed from the outset on its irritating platform sessions, often for lack of visual cues. Very bright and vertical, the bare decors perpetually play with our senses, but also with our nerves. A simple drop shadow of the character on the target platform would have been enough to save us many useless and tedious round trips, the fault of checkpoints never really well placed. Not quite connected platforms between which we fall unnecessarily, pieces of scenery that protrude a few millimeters but cannot be crossed without jumping: nothing is really soothing in the handling of the character, which too often prevents us from enjoying of the formidable work of arrangement of the level designers and Recompile strike of a good part of the gratification of the crossing specific to the excellent games of the genre.

It's not much better on the action side. The shoulder aim slows down the character enormously, it is impossible to shoot while jumping and the enemies are not very interesting to face anyway. We will quickly seek to annihilate the reappearance points of these annoying guard rails by manipulating the logic gates, which are found everywhere in the levels. If, like me, you are not familiar with basic computer reasoning, luck and a bit of perseverance will do just fine, even if there is no doubt that AND/OR/IF aficionados will take great pleasure in solving the some puzzles in a logical way. A small tutorial would not have been refused, the risk being to miss out on part of the game for lack of really understanding what we are handling and why.

This feeling of abandonment never really leaves us, since the game leaves us to fend for ourselves from start to finish. For the better, especially when you finally begin to identify the following issues and objectives, after a few minutes of wandering between biomes without really knowing what to look for, or towards the end when the possibilities of movement are completely unbridled, and you are finally free to enjoy the beautiful environments that unfold before us from the start. For the worst too, when we shoot for long minutes without understanding if the device we have just activated requires a new operation or if we can leave the premises, but also when a formidable boss blocks our way. and that we do not really know if we are up to face it or not.

The fear of the great void

Recompile constantly tests our patience with its gameplay proposals, and makes up for its wanderings too late by overloading its character with overpowered powers (jetpack, jump, dash and infinite time slowdown). It is finally the desire to know more about the universe which pushes us to be stubborn: in spite of the theme repeatedly marked out, the impressively accurate writing - which enjoys a perfect translation - constitutes one of the the strongest assets of the game. Less abstruse and wordy The Talos Principle, less fortunate than Portal 2 but more modern and ingenious than Tron, Recompile hits the mark in the portrait it paints of an AI in search of knowledge headed by a skewer of disillusioned and lonely humans. The different endings are all more fascinating than the other, and would almost motivate you to play the game several times if its execution were not so perfectible.

If you like to hurt yourself, you will be rewarded with an impressive achievement: dark and gigantic, the sets are studded with neon lights and other intense light sources that create a striking contrast and underline the dizzying side of the environments. If after a few hours this ambivalent visual ends up irremediably stinging the eyes a little, the desire to survey these magnificent environments of sobriety is essential despite the difficulties that one may encounter in moving around. Between the simple melodies on the piano and the haunting synth pads, the music gives even more body to this empty and disembodied decorum, and this remarkable aesthetic benefits from a technique never faulted.

JVFR

Six hours of play in the first run, a little more to see all the endings

Recompile, JVFR's opinion

Recompile is frustrating. All Phigames' efforts in terms of aesthetics, writing, level design and atmosphere constantly come up against its many gameplay clumsiness. At the same time seduced, annoyed, bewitched and rejected, players will too often be tempted to interrupt their immersion in this fascinating universe, and if Recompile does not lack much to impose itself in such a competitive genre, Dear Villagers' metroidvania fails to break the glass ceiling that separates it from the best exponents of 3D action adventure.

recompile

As enticing to watch as it is frustrating to play, Recompile has almost everything of a great 3D action-adventure game. We warmly recommend it to fans of metroidvania and well-refined science fiction lovers, less to those who like to be taken by the hand.