14.4.2017

In the year 2084, in the dystopian Paris known as Neo-Paris, the Memorize corporation has a huge influence on it's populace. A brain implant called Sensen allows sharing and addition/removal of memories. Seemingly linked to this memory modification are Leapers, which are mutated humans who exhibit aggressive behaviours and are residing in sewers beneath the city. A rebellion group known as "Errorists" aims to take down Memorize.You play as Nilin, a memory hunter with a gifted ability to remix memories. She begins the game waking up in the process of having her memory wiped by Memorize. However, when she is in the queue to the final stage, a radio transmission comes through.A guy named Edge quickly introduces himself as the leader the Errorists and instructs Nilin on how to escape. Once Nilin returns to the Errorist hideout, she begins her journey to recover her memory and take down Memorize.Navigating through Neo-Paris is quite the visual spectacle. The presentation of the game is brilliant - with a high level of detail in the environments with plenty of variety in the buildings and street vendors. The use of scripted events, accompanied by a brilliant musical score really brings out the atmosphere. There were plenty of moments where I was slowly walking and panning the camera around to take it all in. It evoked similar feelings when I played Mass Effect, and comparisons can be made in its cinematic approach.However, the game is extremely linear. You are constantly pushed along a set path with no scope to explore which is probably the only downside to the game – although this can be a major downside to a lot of players who are used to the open-world style games.Nilin is very agile both in and out of combat. You will be traversing the environment by climbing ledges and drain pipes, jumping from wall to wall, and leaping across gaps. The way forward is signposted so you cannot get lost and you can only climb on a limited amount of pre-scripted surfaces.In combat, you will be taking down various types of guards and Leapers. Nilin can punch, kick, dodge and use special moves. You cannot block or counter-attack, but the dodge manoeuvre evades damage and allows you to continue your combo.There are five special moves known as S-Pressens that are introduced over the course of the game. These use your Focus gauge which increases when you deal or take damage. The first one you acquire is called Sensen Fury which allows you to attack rapidly; useful against a large number of enemies and break through guarding enemies. Sensen DOS stuns the majority of enemies and is mostly used for type of Leapers that are invisible in the shadows. Logic Bomb has an area of effect and is useful for the armoured Enforcers. Sensen RIP can turn robots into friendly units; then explode. Sensen Camo is useful for taking down the Elite Enforcers by allowing you to assassinate them from behind.The hand-to-hand combat is focused around a feature called Combo Lab which gives customisation to Nilin's 4 set combos. The first combo you are given is a simple three-punch manoeuvre. With each blow, you can customise the effect with what are known as Pressens. These come in four forms: Power (damage bonus), Regen (heals a small portion of health), Cooldown (reduces cool down of special moves), or Chain (increases the effect of damage).You can never change the button combinations themselves, so throughout the game, you are stuck with the four combinations. It sounds limited, but the fact that the combos rely on timing and the game constantly throws various types and number of enemies at you; you have to constantly consider your strategy. Simply mashing buttons won't be effective here. There are many enemies that are resistant or weak against certain types of attacks, so you need to use the Cooldown Pressens to be able to use your S-Pressens again (in a reasonable time). You may switch your combo to use Power and Cooldown, but when you start running low on health, then you can switch them out temporarily for health restoration. Later on in the game, when you have more Pressens available, I liked assigning Regen to the three-punch combo, and assigning the others to the longer combos to give a simple way of quickly restoring health, but giving me the option of a stronger attack.Another interesting idea featured in the game is Memory Remix which is only utilised four times within the game but provides a nice break from the action. Nilin watches a scene play out from a character's memory. You then rewind the scene and must spot objects which exhibit a 'glitch' animation. These can be interacted with which then can change the course of events. Achievement hunters or completionists may want to try every combination to see all the different endings to these events, but there is one particular scenario you are looking for. There is some trial and error involved but you should be able to logically work out what you need to do by observing the change in character behaviour. It's great playing detective, although what Nilin is doing is highly unethical; the change drastically changes the person's outlook on life.When I think about the elements to the gameplay, there's definite improvement to be made. Having a bit more freedom to navigate and discover more of the city would have been amazing and would have made the platform elements more fun. The combat could be improved by allowing the player to create a couple of their own combos (in terms of actual button presses).However, I feel that the game did a lot right with its game design. It keeps things fresh by constantly rotating the elements. Combat will be broken up with platforming sections, but before that becomes overused, you are given more story development, new game-play concepts, or even a puzzle.These days, I find it hard to play games for long periods of time, but Remember Me kept me engrossed for hours at a time and I ended up finding it hard to put the game down. Despite being really linear, if you ignore that and just go with it, you will be too captivated to actually care.

9.6.2013

After I heard what the main theme of the game would be I was heavily intrigued. I decided to pre order it on PC with the hopes it would be a reasonable port. I can't speak for everyone here but I had no problems with the performance of the game with the exception of some stuttering during checkpoints. The graphics are fairly mediocre when close to models which is what you get more often than not with console ports but apart from that it seems to work fairly well. I should mention that I haven't played it with a mouse and keyboard only a controller so I can't speak for the control scheme.Now, onto the actual game it's self. I must start out by saying that the world that Dontnod Entertainment have created here is just beautiful,it's pure cyberpunk science fiction at it's finest. The environments are colourful with fantastic sci-fi architecture, mixing the old with the new in this future glimpse of paris. The level design (which very linear) is interesting, placing you everywhere from beneath Neo-Paris in the sewers to the top of the highest building where the views will make your jaw drop. The main theme of the game is that a giant corperation knwn as M3MORIZE have created a device called the Sensen that allows memories to be shared, stored and in the case of the game... stolen. I was most assuredly not disappointed with this, even after hearing about this theme I thought it would have some interesting ideas behind it but the amount of creativity gone into it is astounding. The voice acting is a bit hit and miss sometimes, but it's reasonable and luckily you character doesn't have a bad voice actress.The story is interesting enough and in my opinion is definatily up there with games such as Spec Op: The Line. It may confuse you sometimes but generally speaking you'll understand what's going on (it's not like the mind-blow that is Bioshock Infinite's story). I don't like to go into details about story because it's something you really have to experiance yourself.Now, onto the gameplay. I won't go into too much detail about your all your abilties but generally speaking they are really the same mechanics you've seen before in other games, the abilities to open doors from a distance, tractor beam style ability that allows you to move door, switches etc. The biggest mechanic of this game is the ability to go into someones memory and remix it, altering what they remember in order to change a decision they would have made in the future, the way they present this mechanic is very interesting. You can fast forward or rewind the memory to find glitches that you can use to your advantage and alter to give a different outcome. Unfortunatily these scene are few and far between and are only part of certain sections of the game, which was a slight disappointment.The combat system is more or less an Arkham Asylum/Arkham City style combat system, the combo system is fairly different though. Not to get into too much detail but you have different combos that can restore focus, give you health, reduce the cooldown time on abilities and double the effect of the previous combo. The problem is that because the combat system onto uses 2 buttons to attack the combo chains are preset so you can't just have an X or Y ability (I played it with a controller, like I have said previously) anywhere in the combo, you can only have an X ability where it lets you or a Y ability where it lets you, quite disappointing and you can only perform one combo at a time you can't string 2 combos into each other for a multiplier. Overall the combat is probably what lets it down, too simplistic and not enough veriety or freedom. I should also mention that this is half a platformer as well but thankfully it's not one of those platofmrers where it's impossible to die when jumping from ledge to ledge (such as in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West)All in all I give this game a 4. The creativity that went into it is amazing, the world is beautiful and you should really experiance it for yourself as long as you can get past some generic puzzle-like mechanics and a fairly restricting combat system.

26.2.2015

It's a shame that this game flew under the radar for so many people, because it deserves a lot more attention than it got. While it is by no means perfect there are still plenty of good things worth mentioning, especially considering that this is the debut game of French development stupid Dontnod Entertainment.You play as Nilin, a freshly memory-wiped amnesiac who has no idea what is going on and has to piece everything together with the help of a mysterious bloke called Edge. The year is 2084 and apparently it's all the rage to store your memories digitally within the hands of one giant mega-corporation.The setting of Neo-Paris itself is gorgeously designed and they've done a brilliant job setting the scene.From humanoid robots to technological displays on windows to drones doing all the work it all sets the scene quite nicely and in great detail. The music is great too and the voice acting is also pretty good, though admittedly it's a bit weird that we're supposed to be in France and the cast are mostly posh Britons.Unfortunately, the story disappoints. Despite having a very interesting premise and a very good introduction Remember Me doesn't build on that at all. There are all sorts of things they could've touched on about technology or ethics or privacy but instead you're spoon-fed the plot about how this major corporation is really really bad and how you have to take them down without giving it a second thought, with there only being a few exceptions here and there where they do something that makes you actually care about what is going on. This starts to become downright nonsensical towards the last third of the game when they beat you over the head with the same message, and the final boss fight seems to have been put in to the game for no apparent reason because it doesn't actually make any sense within the context of the storyline. Ironically, then, the narrative quickly becomes forgettable.Luckily, the combat is a lot more interesting. You're given a lot of room to customise your attack combinations where you can focus each hit on something like improving damage or healing Nilin or reducing the cooldown timer/s on your special abilities. This allows for plenty of room to experiment and create a play style that suits you, which was great fun to play around with.One thing that's odd is how there aren't that many opportunities for you to actually remix other people's memories. The whole reason Nilin is special is because she has this gift that no one else seems to have, yet in the eleven hours of gameplay that it took me to finish the game you only get given four opportunities to do this, which is odd given that this seems like something that should've been one of the biggest features of the game. The remixes themselves work like mini-puzzles where you get to make a few changes here and there in order to alter the outcome of an important event. They're quite interesting to use and mess around with, but again, they're very rare and it's disappointing that there aren't many more of them.The parkour elements on the other hand give you very little room to manoeuvre and there's always an obnoxious orange arrow which holds your hand and tells you the precise way to get around, which itself seems pointless since the game is very very linear in the first place. This too is a missed opportunity since Neo-Paris seems fascinating and yet we don't actually get given a chance to look around much.All in all Remember Me is pretty good. Despite it being linear and having a stupid story there's still fun to be had with the combat system and the memory remixes, plus the game world itself is gorgeous and very well presented. Four stars.

9.6.2013

IT would be a shame if this game did not sell well because of the luke-warm reviews from the so called gaming journalists. I've completed it, on hard mode and enjoyed it immensely.In terms of visual and aural design - it truly is above ALL other games of this generation. It is to the xbox360 what Rez was to the Dreamcast. I've had the same reaction to the graphics as I had when playing Metro Last Light, which was I would not have believed an 8 year old console capable of pulling off such highly detailed, crisp graphics with such smooth, glitchless performance. But ofcourse there are glitches... the game is filled with them - the deliberate visual glitches and digital effects injected by the games designers that,along with the augmented reality elements, gives Remember Me a unique and beautiful look.The Music is at times astonishing. If judging the complete OST I would rate it the best on xbox360. Mass Effect 2 might have the unforgettable Suicide Mission theme but that is just one track. Remember Me takes a great orchestral score, but mashes and remixes and adds digital flourishes that transcends it above your typical hollywood/orchestral soundtrack. The synergy between the excellent visual or aural design is like that of Rez - it empowers your experience, creating something unique to gaming.The combat has been far more enjoyable and far more compelling than the mainstream reviews led me to expect. As well as the pressens that regenerate you and shorten your cooldowns, there is a focus system, 5 special abilities and a ranged attack called the Spammer to unlock. After the first couple of simple battles, which are the ones you'll have seen in a typical review on youtube, the battles will become increasingly challenging. They off logical problems, not just skill challenges, as there are enemies with a variety of qualities that require you to alter your strategy in each fight. For example, some enemies can only been seen or hit when they are in bright light - this may require you to interact with the environment to activate floodlights while fending off attackers. I played the game on hard and after episode one - every single encounter brought its own problems and each one was a challenge, not just the bosses.The weakest part of the game is the platforming, but again its not as bad as some make out and offers a change of pace between the fighting and story moments - there are puzzles which become increasingly taxing (though never mind-boggling) as the game progresses.Finally the story - not only is it a fantastic sci-fi story far superior to boilerplate throwaway storylines tacked onto many high-selling game franchises, but it uses the medium of gaming in a unique way in order to help tell that story - and this is ultimately why I give this game 5/5. I will try to explain without spoilers. The memory remixing immerses you into the emotions and experiences of characters and by extension the story itself. These aren't just memories you the gamer are exploring and remixing - they are reasons - reasons the major characters do what they do - reasons the world exists as it does - and you are altering them. And so the game makes us reflect on the nature of our own personalities - what are we if our memories can be altered or stolen. Like great sci-fi it asks the big questions but utilising the medium of gaming - a highly underutilized medium. This is what disappoints me most about the gaming journalists who dismiss this game - that they do not recognize the rich storytelling innovation pioneered. Yes there's not enough of it - but we are unlikely to see anymore of it anywhere if this game fails to sell.

10.6.2013

I'd read some bad reviews, but gave this game a chance anyway.Turns out to be one of my favourite games in recent years.I can see the point of some negative reviews - firstly - the settings, are exceptionally beautiful and well designed (even better than Bioshock Infinite in many ways - in Remember Me, even the indoor warehouse/sewer type sections, are interesting and feel authentic - as well as the beautiful outdoor sections.But your path through them, is very linear - so long as you can live with that, it's a beautiful city to be in - and lack of exploration doesn't really impact on the gameplay here.And the other common criticism - the platforming is also very linear - pretty much one route only to get through the section.The combat,although it has depth - perhaps lacks the variety of something like Bayonetta - and it relies heavily on getting you into the habit of choosing your next attack at the moment your previous hit impacts - almost like a rhythm game - once you master that, it becomes very satisfying - but until you do - it feels a bit hit and miss as to why your combos don't seem to work.And it can take a while to understand that dodging over an enemy will let your combo continue, but dodging away from an enemy, will break it - once you grasp the rhythm and the "dodge over, not away from" technique - it becomes incredibly satisfying to play - and to be honest, I find the combat more enjoyable than Bayonetta.Bayonetta had more visual flair and spectacle - but here, you feel like it's tight and focused and intense - as you have to strategically balance choosing attacks to regain health, or to do damage, or to cool down your powerful attacks to reuse them quicker - the balancing of risk/reward in real-time intense combat makes for extremely rewarding gameplay as you start to master it - it never feels like just button mashing/healthbar checking/use healing item/repeat type combat.The only criticism of the combat is that it makes you wait perhaps just a little bit too long before giving you access to more and more of the interesting moves.The music is beautiful, with a very Fifth Element feel in places as it switches between move conventional orchestration and high energy electronic music during combat.The story is well-written and well acted - with mostly well-drawn characters (although there are a couple of over the top enemies that seem to belong in a less mature game).The ability to switch to the original French voice track with english subtitles is nice.Overall, it's a stunningly beautiful game, with a good story, and gameplay that is very enjoyable once the basics are mastered - and if you can live with the lack of an open world, and fairly linear platforming, it's hard to fault the game.Unlike Bioshock Infinite (the last big story-driven single play game I played) - by the end of this one, the gameplay and combat mechanics hadn't outstayed their welcome, and I'm looking forward to the next of many replays.

9.6.2013

Have you ever fancied playing a science fiction game that takes its visual cues from Blade Runner and I-Robot whilst combining gameplay elements from Tomb Raider 2013 and Mirrors Edge before being topped off with a tiny sprinkling of Uncharted? Then Remember Me is the game for you.The lead heroine certainly takes her look and attitude from Lara Croft and Faith which is definitely no bad thing at all. Now I'll be honest, I'm a sucker for games set in the far future especially when things have all gone a tiny bit wrong so maybe I'm more enthusiastic than most here but to me, the developer Dontnod has created a beautifully rich world and a fantastic artistic vision of the future.

6.1.2014

Gave it a go off the playstation store. Was very suprised how good it turned out to be, though some of its goodness takes a while to show through.The story regards a future of digitzed memory that can be copied, shard and deleted. Invented for reasons like being able to remove bad memories, it has turned society on its head for the worse. You are a rebel fighting to break down the corporation responsible. As this game involves memory, you can bet theres some twists involved.The gameplay is mainly split between clambering around walls and rooftops, and fighting gangs of copporate soldiers and those afflicted by the actions of said organisation. Clambering is easy enough,

24.7.2013

I took a chance on this game.I'm the kind of guy who doesn't bother to read reviews as I find they are very picky in the modern age of gaming. Too many bad marks for graphics. I'm a gameplay kind of guy.However, I promised myself I will write one for this game as I was pleasantly surprised.Story:The title kind of gives it away. You play as a woman who has had her memory wiped where you follow her through her journey to discover who she is. She questions her resolve throughout. I will not spoil anything but I will say the plot made me want more.The characters are creative and the mystery behind everything makes you really want to progress in the game. Top marks for the writers of this game.

8.5.2014

This is a severely underrated game. For any fans of the sci fi genre it's a must have.The environments are well designed and it's a brilliant and unique story to be a part of. Admittedly some parts of the story are a little cheesy, but games are supposed to be fun, aren't they? These are also well outweighed by the sheer richness of the setting and the intrigue of the protagonist's journey.The visual style is magnificently beautiful. While the graphics aren't the absolute best I've seen, they do hold thier own. The bright colours, various interfaces and art styles combine in such a way that it doesn't matter, and some of the backdrops are just amazing to look at.The game style is linear,

8.6.2013

As we reach the end of this generation of gaming we have seen some great titles that push the boundaries of what the gaming experience can be. Then we have games like Remember Me. A kind of new IP made up of other great ideas. Deus Ex backdrop? Check. QTE's from pretty much every similar title. Yup. inFamous type echoes where you follow a ghost. Sure. This is the gaming equivalent of Spaghetti Bolognese. Perfectly fine meal but would hardly win you points for creative flair al la Masterchef.Not that there's nothing to like about Remember me of course. It's fun to play, visually impressive and has a decent if not overwhelming story. Just don't go in expecting a whole new experience.The theme of changing,

18.7.2013

When I bought Remember Me I didn't know what to expect, I had a vague insight into what it was about on YouTube and that was enough to convince me it was probably worth buying.When I started to play the game though, I was shocked. The environment and scenery are beautiful and the opening cinematic was brilliant. Capcom have done an amazing job on the lighting of the world and all the small details as well, One area I would tell them to improve though is character's hair. At some points throughout the game Nilin's hair really did look like a torn up rag. This doesn't detract from the game in anyway,

28.10.2013

EDIT: 13/12/13Just finished the game and I was very impressed. The main reason I got it was due to the memory hunting aspect of the game, where you are given the ability to alter a persons memory so they believe something different happened. I myself would have liked to have remixed a few more memories as I enjoyed seeing how altering the memories would play out to different situations.The mixing up of combo's can really save your life, like having a health combo or a cool-down combo can be crucial when you need to quickly activate one of your special abilities. Certain enemies are resistant to hand to hand combat so attacking them with a health combo can dish out damage and gain health.

22.7.2013

NO SPOILERSThis is one of those all too rare games that have a solid and satisfying story underlying the gameplay. More than once I found myself thinking, "I REALLY wish they'd make this into a movie."Lots of ARKHAM ASYLUM style hand to hand combat, lots of jumping and swinging from ledges, and lots of (not-too-difficult) puzzles to solve along the way, but this game also has lots of truly innovative features that I've never seen before in any game. For example, you can totally customise your melee sequences, balancing the extent to which they do damage, restore your health, restore your abilities, etc.And there are some REALLY cool sequences where you can get inside someone's head, see their memories,

21.7.2013

Having now completed the game, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the sci-fi story. Despite the flaws in the combat system, I'm glad I persevered with this game as the last 2 of 9 chapters really did conclude the story well. Nine hours of gameplay in it for me, which is reasonable.The combat is bad. Dull, repetitive, and to be honest boring. I wish more moves had been animated for this game with more flexibility. It wound me up a *lot* that the QTE finishing moves for bosses of the same type are always identically animated. In fact, it was even the same QTE keys/buttons.The platforming and puzzle solving was quite fun, a good mix of jumping around and triggering switches all over the place.

19.8.2013

I would say in terms of sheer sci-fi design matters and as a realisation of a mega city 1 esque,multi tired future city,Paris in this case,Remember me scores very highly.It is one of the best I've seen in term of detail,colour and texture and believable architecture.Ok,it doesn't let you go wherever you want,and there aren't so many buildings you can go into but it really does look great.Gameplay is mainly button bashing fighting,with some memory altering play which so far consisted of a cut scene where you see the memory play out and then alter it a key points when a memory glitch appear,thus changing the persons memory and altering the course of the game.This has only happened once so far

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