We got our first glimpse of Remember Me last year at Gamescom, and we were excited, it’s Neo-Parisian, futuristic setting looked plush and the main character’s arse-kicking and memory-bending skills seemed like a potentially awesome combo.
So what’s the verdict now that we’ve had a chance to play through this promising title?
Memorable
- Remember Me contains some intensely rich environments and skilfully crafted set and lighting design, almost every setting from start to finish simply begs for interaction.
- The game features a number of strong female leads, all with believable and dynamic personalities, least of all the game’s main protagonist Nilin the memory hunter.
- The story has a logical and engaging arch, that deals with the battle between emotional torment and the prospect of cutting-edge technology that would enable us to trade and replace the memory sources of that pain.
Forgettable
- The intensely rich environments we mentioned are anything but interactive, the futuristic apartments, shops and stalls populated with locals and androids, minority report-style information boards, and rooftops hovered by maintenance drones are merely window dressing; you can look, but you can’t touch.
- The camera angles can at times lead to irritating mistakes and constrict your gameplay experience.
- The loading sequences between episodes/chapters where Nilin talks to herself are a little too brooding and serves as a clumsy way of framing and progressing the story.
- The ability to create your own combos doesn’t go far enough, you’re limited to a very small number of combos and it takes a long time to open up all of the possible moves.
Remember Me has a lot going for it, it’s beautifully designed and from the onset does great to create a sense of tension and unease that bubbles beneath it’s surface throughout. But there is a but, and like the tension, that but niggled away at me the whole time I was playing this game. The premise is an exciting one, set in a near future, Remember Me sees fugitive memory hunter Nilin on a quest to recover her stolen memories, uncover the truth behind the mysterious memory digitising technology Sensen and bring down the nefarious characters who are using the technology to rule Neo-Paris’ wealthy population with fear, whilst suppressing the underclass and using them as guinea pigs.
In this world, memories have been digitised and stored using a technology called Sensen – it’s the brightly coloured thing that appears to float behind Nilin’s head. Thanks to this technology, memories are traded and stolen like drugs, people replace the things they want to forget with happy memories, whilst the poor line the streets of the slums crying out for “anything, I just wanna remember something happy”, as though they’re begging for food, no longer able to remember the good times.
Nilin, as we discover from the jump-off is an enemy of the state due to her ability to “remix memories” and her alliance with the rebel movement – known as the “Errorists” – who see her as some sort of messiah. Throughout the game, Nilin is guided by the mysterious character “Edge”, believed to be the leader of the Errorist movement. But very swiftly the linear instruction > mission > instruction > mission structure becomes repetitive, and even Nilin refers to the monotonous errand-running nature of the game, getting annoyed at Edge for pulling her strings, to which he tells her she has a choice, whilst calling her the scalpel of the Errorist movement, followed by yet another instruction.
It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with linear platform games with specific mission driven structures, but it’s the fact that the environments you find yourself in are so visually engaging and enticing that it almost feels criminal that you’re stuck on rails for the most part, merely passing by the fantastic and highly detailed locations, unable to reach out and touch it, to explore it, to live it, and frankly I felt robbed by this game. That may sound slightly harsh, but it should be criminal to create such vibrant and tantalizing settings that you can only use your analogue sticks to stare at longingly.
On the gameplay side of things, Nilin is capable of ninja-like evasion moves and some very nifty fighting moves called Pressens that come in four distinct classes:
- Regen Pressens – Regenerate your health, but not very strong
- Power Pressens – Breaks the guards of strong enemies and crushes lowly creatures
- Cool down Pressens – Reduce the amount of waiting time before you can re-use a special skill
- Chain Pressens – Multiplies the effect of any Pressen that occurs before it
The Pressens can be used to create satisfyingly hard-hitting, customisable combos, and once you’ve charged your Focus Energy gauge, you will have access to special skills called S-Pressens, that can be used by holding the second left shoulder button and selecting from one of the five cool powers. The skills include the ability to rain down unlimited combination blows, hack robot enemies and turn them against their allies, and brief invisibility that allows you to ambush one unfortunate enemy and stealth kill them using your memory overload move. The best part of combat is the ability to access the Combo Lab on the fly and adapt your Pressens according to the enemies you’re facing. For example, some enemies cause you damage when you attack them so creating a combo of Regen Pressens will keep healing you whilst still dealing damage.
There is some mild puzzle solving, in the form of using an upgraded power to remotely manipulate highlighted sections of wall or doors to gain access to the next area, but it’s never really a challenge and you find yourself just going through the motions, except towards the end of the game when the puzzles take on a far more intriguing cryptic riddle form that requires a little brain power. However, Remember Me really comes into it’s own during the few opportunities you get to actually remix your target’s memories. During remix sequences, after reviewing the original memory, you can interact with sign-posted “memory glitches” with a number of varying outcomes. You may choose to knock a trophy of the shelf, release the safety on a gun or do something as subtle as nudging a stool a couple of inches to the left – but the aim is to find the right combination to achieve the desired outcome. If you put together the correct combination, the altered memory cinematic will play through with your target remembering a past adjusted to suit Nilin’s objectives, and move the story along accordingly.
It’s incredible fun exploring the numerous options available during the memory remix sequences and seeing how each slight change impacts the outcome, but again, I felt short-changed by the fact that there’s only a small number of opportunities to remix memories and you can only do it at key points in the game. I guess they didn’t want to run the risk of it become overplayed but they went completely the other way and left us wanting more, again.
Final thoughts
I loved elements of Remember Me, particularly the combat mechanics – the intelligent and versatile combinations gave an element of tactics to break up the button bashing, and Nilin’s special moves added further welcomed dynamics to the attacking options. The other thing that sticks in the mind is the level of creativity and detail that went into creating a truly fascinating and visually magnificent futuristic world, populated by intriguing and well styled robot lifeforms and locals.
But the things that really worked about Remember Me contribute to why I’m ultimately disappointed with it. This title promised a lot and delivered a staggeringly awesome premise and environment for the game to take place within, and gave us a solid cast of well-developed characters. But then frustratingly it remained on rails for the most part – only breaking off occasionally if you explored an extra room or apparent dead-end.
We won’t even mark it down for the fact that everyone in Neo-Paris is apparently British and American, but I guess it would have been equally ludicrous if they’d had a cast of French-accented characters speaking English – in France – sacré bleu!!!
