Remember Me

Remember Me looks lovely… The main character, Nilin, is a good fit as the protagonist and looks nice to boot, although slightly shiny. She inhabits a visually striking cyberpunk vision of the future. Progressing through the game is enjoyable with the next area to be explored being showcased beautifully… You might be climbing up a ladder or along a ledge, listening to a crescendo of music, only to see a beautiful Neo Paris vista appear. Futuristic robots fly around and fembots lean against walls in alleys dimly lit with red neon light. With new and interesting vistas revealed around every corner the visuals are not lacking. The environments are impressive, varied and full of detail, they range from neon light building interiors, rooftops looking out on a futuristic city landscape, and dank rundown lower city streets where Nilin will have many fun encounters with a varied, but not vast, assortment of enemies. The way you progress through the world also adds interest to exploration, with climbing puzzles being your main form of travel other than walking. These puzzles are not always obvious and it can take a while to find your way to a hidden ledge or towards your next goal.

The combat in Remember Me has much potential with interesting ideas such as customisable combos and an unlock system that allows you to change out the different combo moves. However, this system, although fun to play at first, is ultimately shallow. I personally found little incentive to change up my combos once created other than to make the combo animations look different. As you progress in the game you are introduced to new combo ingredients, these adjust the effectiveness of your combos, adding aspects such as health back or extra damage. However, you will most probably settle on a favoured combo and stick to it. That said, the fighting is good. It incorporates dodging and timed button combos to string moves together. The longer the combo, the more powerful the hits/life bonuses become.

The story in Remember Me is interesting and compelling and does a good job in drawing you in, setting up a lot of questions and a big brother corporation that you want to bring down… The characters you meet are not so interesting, with only a few exceptions, most of which being the main story driving character who you interact with almost solely through a voice communicator. As the story progresses, your mission as Nillin is to bring down and undermine big brother’s invasive control of memories. This leads to an interesting and invasive area game play; a memory puzzle. Nilin has the ability to tap into people’s remembering (as the games calls them) and remix them so they are different from the true events. This allows Nillin to manipulate people in the game world and thus further her goals. In addition Nillin can also steal memories, giving her the nickname Memory Hunter. She uses these stolen memories to help solve other puzzles in the game world and help her navigate.

Ultimately Remember Me has a good story with lots of interesting twists and turns and a satisfying ending that has a poignant message that might have meaning outside the game world. The game plays on the struggles that future technological advances might cause. The message being, not all technology is good for us.

Another game that I am glad I have played and would recommend to anyone at a loose end. It starts off slow, story wise, but gets good fast. Replay value in my opinion is sparse other than through a harder difficulty. The combat customisation system looks cool and is fun to play with but ultimately became shallow once you had perfected a combo and customised it to your needs. Puzzling was fun, incorporating innovative memory puzzles and riddles to get through doors. The game had many fun elements but does not leverage all of them to their full potential. A mixed bag of different game play elements thrown together to make a fun and interesting game with an interesting and sometimes deep story. Yet, I come away feeling that it was lacking in places. Knowing where, however, was not always clear as you played.

A well deserved 7.

• Available for:
• PC
• PS3
• XBOX 360