Published by RedDeer.Games, Wrack: Reclamation, a remake of the 2014 original, is an action-packed FPS designed around speedy kills and busting corpses. Although it takes inspiration from booming shooter classics, there is enough here to stand on its own, but it suffers from several oddities.
Aliens are invading and, of course, you are the only option to stop them. Initially armed with a Cloud-like Buster Sword, the arsenal grows over time, including pistols, shotties, and more. The gimmick comes from the kill streak mechanic. The more enemies you dispatch in quick succession, the more powerful you become. Unless you are playing on a higher difficulty, the player can choose to play more slowly if desired, though there won’t be as many super attacks. As a comparison, it feels a bit like Doom mixed with some Serious Sam.
Once you get into the action, it is easy to see the appeal of the caffeinated comic book shooter. Unfortunately, there are some odd technical and gameplay issues that cut into the polish. First, the XSX version that I downloaded doesn’t have a tile icon. Normally, games are displayed with square tile art on the main Xbox dashboard; you click one and it loads. Here, the tile for Wrack is literally a solid black square with no text. Reinstalling didn’t fix the issue either. Then, I honestly thought the game was flat-out glitched because the very first Unreal Engine logo screen remains frozen for a very long time. Like, a really long time. This low-resolution, blurry image is also not animated, so it seems like the game freezes upon initial boot.
Gameplay-wise, stages are much too long. Even though you have the ability to drop a checkpoint at will, which is a cool feature, playing through stages that take almost thirty minutes becomes a slog, especially when you are killing so many of the same spiderbots and humanoid robots in succession. For a game all about action, it is disappointing that it quickly becomes repetitive. Each stage contains some secrets, which is nice, but it isn’t in the player’s favor since there is no mapping system. Stages can be quite large, require backtracking, and the close-quarters hallways often look the same. Without a map or quest marker, losing your kill streak isn’t necessarily the player’s fault; it becomes a struggle to find the next room filled with enemies. The lack of aim assist means shots require precision, too.
If you played the modern reboot of Doom and were disappointed in the XIII re-release, then action fans might want to wishlist Wrack: Reclamation, as the overall approach is similar. However, cutting through the odd technical issues might only be worth it for dedicated fans.
SCORE: 6/10
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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