Remember Me

Remember Me is an ambitious game.

First, it is gorgeous. It is a rich, lush, futuristic world bordering on Blade Runner-esque that changes-up enough as you play that you never tire of the aesthetic. The soundtrack compliments the style and the way it is mixed into the actual game play is quite clever.

The story is not mind blowingly original, but it is not shabby by any means. You want to know what comes next, right until the somewhat surprising end.Though the dialogue is written poorly on a few occasions, the voice acting is generally very good.

The only place where the game really falls down is the actual gameplay mechanics. Primarily, the combat. At least half of the game is spent platforming in a very Nathan Drake way. You'll usually jump where you mean to when you mean to, but there will probably be a few unintentionally slip-ups that can be blamed on the controls or the interface presentation (which is generally appealing). This platforming can get to be a bit much, though. You'll start to wonder if there is a flat horizontal surface that she could just *walk* on in the entire damn city.

The rest of the game consists of combat -- and possibly entirely too much of it. It gets in the way of the story and the full experience of the game. It presents undesirable hurdles to an experience you are otherwise plowing through to enjoy the world and the story. Many reviewers have opined on the complexity of the combat, but it's not that bad.

You have several set strings of button presses (combinations of X and Y on a gamepad -- which is really the only way you can successfully play this game and have a prayer). Each string is longer and more complex. Each button has to be assigned an action. That is, X, Y, X doesn't really "do" anything until you assign something to them. The first button is always automatic, but you could then assign "heal", "attack", "regenerate special powers", or "extend the previous button" to each of the subsequent buttons. These can also be changed on-the-fly (unfortunately, you may sometimes hit a boss or a battle where you keep dying and need to change the settings you entered the battle with, but it wont' remember what you changed them to after you die in that battle... becoming frustrating as you have to spend time in the menu system rebuilding your *new* strings just before approaching that battle, yet again.

Remember the sequences (especially as you adjust them) can sometimes be confusing. Getting hit by guys and breaking your chain becomes all to frequent and aggravating. It also likes to throw a ton of guys at you at once and in several waves. It can take many deaths to devise the right plan of attack; what the weakness of the opponents are in this instance.

Adding to the problems with combat is the sometimes cumbersome QTE presentation. The first time I encountered a Zorn, I fought it repeatedly for more than an hour. I quit. I returned the next day for another half hour. It told me to press a button when he was "down" to terminate him. When I pressed it, he came alive and stomped my body to death. I simply could not figure out what I was doing wrong. It wasn't until I caved in and watched videos on youtube that I saw it actually had a whole series of button presses and was a full quick-time-event. Unfortunately, it placed these instructions above the giant robot's head . . . which was not visible on my screen when I was close enough to attack him.

That wasn't the only such frustration. There were also other QTEs where it would present an action (such as rolling the thumbstick) that you had not been presented with previously. It just pops up on the screen (also, QTEs are sometimes shown far too briefly - almost impossible to catch) with a crazy looking icon and you have to guess at what the hell it means. After a few deaths, you'll usually figure it out.

Ultimately, this game is far more polished and entertaining than reviewers have claimed. It's imperfect, but the writing is not as bad, nor is the voice acting, nor is the combat. With some of the comments about the story, I almost have to wonder if many reviewers actually completed the game before publishing their articles. Again - not groundbreaking stuff, but better than this generally unknown game has any right to be. The biggest flaw is the frustration of the combat and some of the QTEs. If they toned down the combat (especially the bosses) and improved their method of conveying QTEs, this game could have been a hit (and it still might become a sleeper hit, frankly). It borders on great, but just shoots itself in the foot too many times.

I'd call this a solid attempt and worth the time to play (especially if you have a beefy machine -- the world is stunning). DONTNOD needs to give a game in this same world (or similar) another attempt, affording it a bit more care and polish. They are so close to a truly breakthrough game.

Due to the combat, I don't know that I could say one should dump the full $50 on it -- but if it's on a decent sale in the near future, it's a buy. You'll get 8-10 hours out of it and as long as you're somewhat persistent, you'll find your way through the ridiculous spots to enjoy the end of Remember Me.

Performance:

I've heard some complaints about how this game performs. I can only comment on my experience in the context of my system, but present it here for any comparison it may offer. On an i7-3770K with 16GB RAM and dual 4GB GTX 670s, I can run 2560x1600 with every setting maximized and still get 75-90fps. This is maintained through nearly the entire game - until the eighth and final episode, when it suddenly tanked down to 15-30fps for the most part.