Nilin, a former elite memory hunter, captured by an organization hell-bent on manipulating the minds of the citizens of a futuristic Neo-Paris, must escape and journey to recover her identity. Set in the year 2084, Remember Me pits you in the center of a war, a revolution, where those who want to remain in control of their own memories – Errorists – rebel against the tyrannical corporation, Memorize, that seek to control them. This 3rd-person action adventure game attempts to set itself apart in a rather stale genre muddled with guns, tacky role-playing, or clunky open worlds (nothing of course against those games that do any of these excellently).
How you ask?
Remember Me focuses on a few unique gameplay features – the Combo Lab and memory remixing, and right off the bat we’ll let you know that the latter does not occur as often as we like, especially since it is so unique. Memory Remixing allows you, only at certain points of the plot, to manipulate a character’s memory. You actually get to rewind and fast forward through a section of their memory and change certain factors to achieve a desired outcome. The Combo Lab, while sounding far more technical than it really is, really is a focal point of Remember Me.
The story of Remember Me is a straightforward one, though riddled with plot holes, inconsistencies, and a few glitches here and there; we’ll even venture to say that the story was put together in a haphazard manner and at times can be incohesive and downright frustrating. Stage saving is wonky, well not necessarily wonky but strange, we’re used to quick saves that retain achievements or pickups, but not here, if you die between saves you’ll have to make your way back to pick up any collectibles or powerups you may have found, and yes, this gets old after a while. Oh, and on a similar note, the dialog leaves a lot to be desired as tacky one-liners and rebuttals are abound in Remember Me. That being said though, kudos to DONTNOD Entertainment and Capcom for throwing in some great boss battles and plot twists that keep the game interesting in the later stages.
Without delving into the verbiage of the game, players can unlock moves (Pressens) in four different categories – Regen (self-explanatory, each hits regenerates a portion of health), Power (also self-explanatory, each hit deals a tremendous amount of damage), Cooldown (not so self-explanatory, we’ll get into this in a little bit), and finally Chain (this duplicates the previous Pressen and doubles its effect). Now, you also have special moves (S-Pressens) which require focus (gained whenever Nilin hits an enemy or is hit by one), of which there are five: Fury, D.O.S, CAMO, LOGIC BOMB, and R.I.P. Each S-Pressen once used has a cooldown time (sound familiar?). The cooldown Pressen (move) reduces the remaining cooldown time of all S-Pressens.
Now that we’ve gone over that, allow us to make a bold statement – the combat in Remember Me is akin to that of the Batman: Arkham or, more recently, Sleeping Dogs games, it’s incredibly refreshing and fluid. Combos are relatively easy to pull off, in between dodging hits and attacks; one wish though is that the combos can be continued regardless of whether or not you’re hitting the same enemy.
The visual style of Remember Me presents a stunning and vivid representation of a futuristic city, one that today is the hallmark of fashion and design. DONTNOD Entertainment certainly did the city justice. The augmented reality overlays may take a bit of getting used to, but we did not find them to be obtrusive.
Remember Me features a relatively long campaign, with 8 episodes and a prologue, though there’s not much replay value after that – we’d imagine that an online component would have been pretty awesome.
Overall, we had a lot of fun playing Remember Me, the combat is really one of its biggest selling point along with its vibrant art style. If you’re looking for a game to hold you over for a little while then we’d definitely recommend you get it.
