Recharge Early Access Preview – That’s Gaming

Racing small cars has been fun since RC Pro Am, Super Off Road and Micro Machine on the NES, Nintendo’s first console. Over the years, we’ve seen an awful lot of those kinds of games come along, although it’s been on the back burner for the last two decades. Yes, some games with cute little cars still come out occasionally, but it is not really ven the level of aforementioned games. Does Recharge know how to change that?

Recharge is a racing game, so you control a radio controlled car (RC car). These RC cars do not drive in all kinds of crazy environments, but on racetracks specially made for that kind of cars. Here you should not expect official racetracks from the real RC car championships, but these have definitely served as inspiration. These tracks always come with lots of turns and usually have an edge on the two outer sides of the track. This can make your RC car a little less likely to fly out of corners, but it could just as easily happen that your little car flies meters into the air!

Online only.
As soon as you start up Recharge, you immediately notice that we are not dealing with a complete product here (yet) and I also assume that it is even a bit early in the development phase. Many modes are not yet available and the menus themselves still look pretty slick. There is an online mode, but unfortunately when I checked, there were no fellow players to be found. There is also no Championship or career mode available yet. So what can you do? A single player race against the AI, thankfully on several available racetracks. Well, then let’s just go for some laps!

There appear to be three different difficulty levels in the game at the moment and we, as a beginner, are presented with the easiest one. The track loads and looks fine, maybe even almost pretty. Not at all surprisingly, since this game was made with the Unreal Engine. Partly because of this, the lighting is immediately noticeable, but also that the details of the environments are loaded later than you would like. This is a ‘feature’ of the Unreal Engine that we already know from, for example, the first Mass Effect on Xbox 360.

Aside from the annoying graphics bug, it is interesting to note that the engine lends itself nicely to racing games. The racing action is nice and smooth, although my PC found it hard work. Now that could be because I’m not using the latest video card (Geforce 3070) and I still run the game at 60 fps without reducing the resolution slightly. It could also be that the game is not yet properly optimized. Aside from the sharp graphics, by the way, it’s also not like the visuals knock you off your couch or chair. This is mainly due to the somewhat boring environments of the racetracks themselves, just like in real life you might say. On the other hand, it may also have been a technical choice to keep the racing itself as smooth as possible.

Sharp steering proves necessary

On the first lap, I apparently had to get tremendously used to Recharge’s controls, which are set very sharply. The slightest movement seemed to immediately send my RC car into trouble, causing some mild frustration. Yet I soon got the hang of it, and it turned out to be just fine that you can quickly turn things around at any time. Recharge is a very fast game with very sharp turns, which you have to take at an almost deadly pace. Yes, you can also slow down, but fast movements in the corners can give you just that little bit of an advantage, putting the other racers at a disadvantage.

The camera is behind your RC car by default, but you can also switch to other viewpoints. For example, a first person view, although it is very difficult to estimate the turns properly. The other camera angles are nice, but unusable during the races themselves. My favorite was the cinematic camera, which allows you to drive barely a few meters straight, but sometimes the eye wants something! The standard camera works best in the end, although sometimes it looks into the corner a little too enthusiastically. Often that is very pleasant, but sometimes you actually have to go the other way and then you are fighting the camera.

It remains to be seen when Recharge is really ready, but they already show some things in the game that are coming. These include more modes, such as a career mode, but also the ability to build your own RC car. They also seem to be working on all sorts of unlockable upgrades for your car, although it’s still hard to see how far you can adjust everything and especially how that makes a difference in the racing itself.

Preliminary conclusion

Recharge is a racing game, where you can expect a serious approach to racing RC cars. The graphics are strong, although the environments are still a bit dull, although that may be part of the atmosphere on real RC car racetracks. This Early Access version does not have that much to do yet, and the online mode is unfortunately not played by that many people. Other than some usual bugs, the racing works pretty smoothly and gives a fine sense of speed afterwards as well. It can still go either way with this game, but there is definitely a lot to be done to make Recharge a topper.