Summary
Although my expectations have not been met fully, there is a charm to recharge that makes me want more. The future content and overall theme give me hope that Room Games sticks to it and proves they can give a realistic RC experience. Recharge is not bad; the foundation is there to build something actually fantastic. I just hope they stay on track and give us an ever-evolving experience.
Developer – Room Games
Publisher – Room Games
Platforms – PC (reviewed)
Review copy given by Developer
NOTE:
The following game is being reviewed in an Early Access State, the game may change after the release of this review, this review reflects the game at the time of publishing.
The remote-control vehicle scene is an ever-growing mecha serving countless hours of entertainment for everyone. RC cars being as popular as they are, you would think there would be many game equivalents available, right? Well, yes and no; some RC-based games do exist, many of which are very outdated and niche. Does Recharge hit its mark with its early access release, or did they run out of range and just fall short?
Recharge promises to bring a “simcade” experience of racing RC cars and trucks on a selection of outdoor/indoor tracks based on real-life layouts and other layouts based in places like an amusement park or a beach. Each individual track/layout has its own unique surroundings and atmosphere, giving life to each location, with varying difficult layouts for all drivers to master. I did feel the tracks sometimes seemed a bit too large and wide, where most tracks in real life are short, technical, and tight corners. Traction also felt similar to me between each track, no matter the surface, so hopefully in the future that can change, making each track with different surfaces to make it interesting to learn other tracks.
At the time of review, there is very little you can access at the moment, the large majority of it being just a basic race function with the default buggy RC. There are promises of updates for rock crawling, drifting, and road course-style racing, which I do look forward to trying. I do wish there was more here at launch; I almost feel like I should be playing a demo instead of an early access game with the lack of content at “launch.” I also feel as if the physics are not all there, and I hope they spend a lot more time tuning how everything feels; it’s almost lifeless in a way in terms of physics
You will be able to customize your RC car’s motor, ESC, paint, and more in the future, as there is currently only a bare-bones amount of content available in this category as well. As a large RC fan, the ability to tinker with your RC car, truck, or buggy is a huge part of the experience; it’s the never-ending story of changing every piece to your liking. This feature is going to be a huge part of separating Recharge from its counterparts, and with due time I hope to see it flourish with content and maybe even real brands offering their parts as options.
The game’s visuals are very good even at an early stage. I did have a couple performance hiccups here and there on the higher settings, which I assume is an optimization issue at this time. Recharge being built with Unreal Engine is not too much of a shocker. Yes, its visuals are stunning, but whether Unreal will keep Recharge from being optimized well enough for even basic systems to have no issues is still up in the air. I ran into some very tedious bugs in my experience, like the main menu just not doing anything, graphical settings not changing no matter what I did, and I even got locked out of using my controller, which I still have issues with from time to time. There is an option to use an actual radio control receiver, which you would need a specific peripheral for in the majority of cases, which I would have loved to experience, but I will be waiting on making a purchase for that device till a later date. Of course your mileage may vary with the issues, as they are pushing updates fairly frequently and seem to be responsibly quick on community feedback.
Although my expectations have not been met fully, there is a charm to recharge that makes me want more. The future content and overall theme give me hope that Room Games sticks to it and proves they can give a realistic RC experience. Recharge at the time is $19.99 ($16.99 for release currently), which isn’t much in terms of how expensive games are becoming, but I still feel like there isn’t $20 worth of content in its current state, so purchasing early will be more of a pre-order for the future at its current state. Recharge is not bad; the foundation is there to build something actually fantastic. I just hope they stay on track and give us an ever-evolving experience.
