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Remember Me
Available on PS3 (Reviewed), PC & XBox 360
Remember Me is nothing short of
wasted potential; a game with such a strong opening premise and
narrative it almost saddens me that it only turned out to be mediocre.
Developed by DONTNOD studios, this rather beautiful looking action
platformer is let down by uninspiring, complicated combat and a very
linear world that leaves the very original story flat.
You
play as Nilin, an Errorist (memory hunter) who has nearly all her memory
wiped by Memorize, a corporation who has made it possible for all
memories to be stored and shared by its users. Nilin escapes from
Memorize’s headquarters in Neo-Paris, a futuristic dystopian reimagining
of the Paris we know today. With the aid of others Nilin must restore
her memory and the memories of others to bring down Memorize and
squander their plans of total control over people’s minds.
Remember Me opens with a beautiful cinematic of people talking about
how they use SENSEN, the product created by Memorize which allows memory
storage. It’s well animated and voice acted, creating a contrast between
the rest of the game which shows the chaos that SENSEN has created.
Neo-Paris is an ugly yet visually impressive world, but the linearity of
the environment prevents you from exploring it further, and you’ll
definitely want to. Though she’s lost her memory Nilin has a freakish
ability to scale walls and ledges, so much so it borders on being
ridiculous. It doesn’t help that the camera moves and locks on by itself
when you’re completing jumping puzzles, making it disorientating and
difficult to work out what button combination is required to jump to the
next ledge. I use the term ‘puzzle’ very loosely as the game tells you
where to jump and warns you of oncoming dangers well before you are near
them. It makes the 6-7 hours of gameplay feel that much shorter.
Characters don’t have shadows, a small complaint but the fact they
omitted it to protect an already choppy frame rate is disappointing.
Depending on how well you can adapt to the controls has an effect on the
length as well. Early in the game Remember Me throws its combat
system at your feet and runs away leaving you, for the most part, to
work it out for yourself. The games is all about making and chaining
your own combos together; cool ideas in theory but in reality it feels
like an alpha build of Batman: Arkham City, which Remember Me
is clearly channelling.
On
higher difficulties the game is pretty unforgiving when it comes to
health and enemies. One of the first beat-‘em-up sections I encountered
starts you off with minimal health and expects you to know how to pull
off a health regenerating combo right off the bat. A longer and easier
tutorial would have been appreciated, because after dying 10 times in
the first half hour all the immersion from the beginning of the game was
gone.
Remember Me’s highlight are the memory remix sequences, in which
Nilin must access another character’s memories and alter them so another
outcome is achieved. While it is certainly different from the rest of
the game and games to come before it, every alteration you can make is
scripted and necessary so the linearity is still present. A very cool
idea, but wasted.
As
terrible and overused as this statement is, Remember Me is
definitely not worth remembering, from a gameplay perspective at least.
It’s unpolished, unoriginal and can be found done much better in games
before it. It’ll be interesting to see where this game goes in terms of
sequels (judging by early sales this franchise is already over), because
there is a terrific narrative and world lying under the lacklustre
surface. |
