Remember Me Review

Achievers Review of: Remember Me

This review will touch on the main aspects of game design, as well as the game's fun factor, and its achievements. At the end will be a small set of positive and negative points for the game, as well as it's score. Enjoy, and any feedback is more than welcomed



Gameplay (Story, mechanics, and difficulty)

In 2013, Remember me was one of my most anticipated games for many reasons. I liked the unique aspect the game was presenting in terms of story and design. I was interested in art style that seemed to breathe life into today’s brown and gray covered industry. Lastly, IT WAS A NEW IP, something that seems restricted to indie games and the occasional  triple A game.

Remember Me takes inspiration from many Sci-Fi movies and novels for its world and story. One which is Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which there is even a neat little call to in the game. Anywho, the game has you playing as Nilin, a memory hunter whose own memory has been remixed and now she has near total amnesia. So the story basically sees you trying to regain Nilin’s memory all while getting involved with a terrorist group called the Errorists, and their plot to take down Memorize, the company responsible for taking away Nilin’s memory. To be completely honest, the story is a tad slow to start, but very quickly gets incredibly interesting as you delve into Nilin’s personal life, as well as the workings of the Memorize corporation. I actually quite surprised that this game doesnt come up more often when talking about great game stories, because Remember Me actually has a deeply personal story revolving around Nilin, and delves into some complex and different themes than we normally see in games. The story itself is also highly rewarding in its own right, getting the player involved within the world, and Nilin’s conflicts, to create an amazing story worth going back to, and most of all, worth remembering…..excuse the bad pun.

Outside the story, we control Nilin in a somewhat vast array of gameplay styles. The most fledged out and common of the bunch is the Arkham Asylum style combat system, that differs just enough to stand on it’s own. Nilian moves great and has a great feel to her combat style, chaining combos as you move from enemy to enemy feels great, and you feel a great sense of satisfaction once you are done dealing with a group of baddies. As the game moves on you unlock two different techniques that mix up the combat. The first is the ability to control your combos, by this I mean, you get to control what each punch will do. From a punch that will regain some health, to maybe a punch that does some extra damage, you get to customize how your combos effect you and your enemies. The system itself is just barely built up enough to warrant a wide variety of different combinations, and because you can change them at any time, there is plenty of flexibility for the game to play how you like. The second technique are the numerous different powers you get throughout the game called Pressens. These range from an area stun that allows you a decent amount of time to wale on your enemies, to a smart bomb that you attach to one enemy but will cause damage to any other surrounding that one.



Remember Me also features an Uncharted style parkour system, which sees you traversing through Neo Paris in a linear fashion. The game doesnt allow for nearly any deviation from the path, so you dont get to chose your path like in Assassin’s Creed, but againn, rather a linear path to where you need to go, like in Uncharted. The climbing flows nice, and there is always an orange little arrow to tell you where to jump next so there is rarely any confusion. Although at a few times, I felt as if the controls got a little odd when you are telling Nilin to jump backwards, I could never fully tell if I was going to leap to my death off to the side, or actually jump backwards. The other and last style of gameplay are the environmental puzzles. Often times it is just a “shoot this” or a “move this here”, there is almost never anything too complex, although there are two puzzles at the very end of the game that had me stuck for a while.

Aside from the puzzles, and wave after wave of baddie fights, you are treated to a boss fight every now and then. These can range from really great, to just pretty much okay. I dont want to spoil who you will be fighting, or the details, but in the game its pretty obvious who you will be fighting a good bit before you actually fight them. The only bad boss fight was the one at the end, that somewhat felt like a throw away, and didnt really test me as a player and what I had learned throughout the game.

Lastly, my favourite feature of the game is the sections that require Nilin to remix someone’s memory, to alter their motives and aspirations in the game world to further benefit herself and her cause. This requires for Nilin to go into someone’s memory to a specific point, where a cut scene will play out and eventually end, telling you to rewind, at which you are allowed to manipulate certain objects in the environment to have the scene play out differently. This is a really unique feature and its really fun to see how one event can change everything. It gets even more entertaining once you start piling up all your changes until the scene is nothing like what it was before. My biggest complaint is that these were not in the game enough and I would love to have seen more than just 4 in the 7-10 hour campaign.

When all is said and done, the game is fairly difficult. Nothing of the likes of Dark Souls, or even the later levels of Arkham City, but the game is still can still offer up it’s fair share of challenge. Where the game gets by is the combo system that I mention earlier. Because you are able to land punches that restore health, that means you yourself can regenerate health at any moment. This can make even the most overwhelming encounter seem passable with a little patience and time. As mentioned before, any puzzles you come by are nothing vague and are usually clear as day to its solution (aside from the last few puzzles). Platforming goes by easy, and with the marker leading your way, its hard to get lost. The camera can sometime limit your view, and the controls make some movements awkward at time, but overall the parkour works just fine.



Technical Aspect (Design, Graphics, and Bugs)

Graphically, Remember Me is astounding, on many fronts. The Character models are alive and full of detail. The textures render nicely, and create a nice crisp look. Overall the game just looks great. The designers liked to put in many things around rectangles and cubes, and oddly enough, the clean and sharp shapes lend themselves nicely to the futuristic setting.

Speaking of which, this game tops itself among the likes of Bioshock and Deus Ex as far as world building and atmosphere. The game truly feels alive, all thanks to the impressive amount of detail put into the game. Instead of a world revolving around the player character, the world feels as if it was alive long before you ever took control and are thrown into the midst of world itself. The game actually does a great job at creating an established world, from the technology the citizens and stores use, to the division between classes inside Neo Paris. There is a lack of spoken detail that works in favor of the game, instead of explaining everything to you through lines upon lines of exposition, you are instead told to experience the world for yourself and learn how things work your own way.



Level design is fairly linear for the most part, and also fairly predictable, but thats not a bad thing. The game follows a formula, because it knows what works for what we are working with. It goes along the lines of, cut scene, small open area, climbing sequence, small puzzle, climbing sequence, enemy wave, and repeat until the level is over. The fact that the game is constantly adding new ideas and mechanics into the game even until the last chapter means that even though the game follows a formula, there is always something to mix up the repetition. Add on top that there is a wide variety of settings where you go. From a mutant riddled subway station, to a prison full of insane inmates, each place feels different from one another and because of the beautiful amount of detail, each place feels alive and beautiful.

The same can barely be said for the enemy design. Although the game always introduces a new enemy type up until the last couple levels, all but one enemy feels outstanding from the rest of the gaming medium. The mutants are just skinny, malnourished, and frantic freaks. The rest are robots and guards that could have been taken out of anything Sci-Fi. The one exception is this Metal Gear looking robot, that looks pretty bland, but does these really cool and interesting effects by displaying human facial features. When it screams, it projects an image of a screaming mouth, and so on and so forth.

For the most part, Remember Me runs fairly smooth. Rarely did I experience any slow down, only when things got real crazy on screen. For the most part, the game didn't present me with any glitches I could think of. On a technical level, the game stands pretty amazingly among the giants of the industry.



Achievements

If you like some variety in your achievements, look no further. Although the game does feature about 15 different story based achievements, the majority of the achievements belong to side objectives. These objectives range from being collective based, to even death based. There is a good amount of variety to keep you working, but the game itself doesnt hold your hand to give you the achievements, youre going to have to work for them.



Fun Factor

Personally, I had an amazing time with Remember Me. I know that I can forgive terrible gameplay and horrid graphics, as long as the story is good, luckily, I loved almost every part of this game. The gameplay was varied, with the combat being responsive and flowing, and the other gameplay elements bringing a welcome reprieve from the fighting. The world was beautiful and detailed where I loved just taking in everything. The mixing sequences brought a new gameplay feature to the table that I loved every second of. So yes, in the end, I had mass amounts of enjoyment.


Conclusion

Although, I gave some complaints here and there, I really love Remember Me. The story itself was one I consider worth revisiting, but the gameplay and the world would draw me back anyways. I fully realize I game some complaints, however, please realize that a 5/5 or a 10/10 does not mean a game is perfect, but rather, I consider it to be amazing, and Remember Me is truly amazing.

+Amazing Story
+Varied Gameplay
+Deep World


- Not Enough Memory Remixes
- Bland Enemies

Good work mate!

I have this free on PS3 as it was part of PS Plus, so will check it out.

Sounds like a good game. Might be tempted when FBG moves in if I can find a cheap copy as he is bringing the ps3 with him. Good work fella

Been tempted by this a few times
Your review is very helpful, cheers.

Nice review and an interesting perspective as I think this has received mixed reviews. I did definitely want to try it though, and now I want to try it even more. Thanks, I think!

Nice review mate, been looking at this for a while but never got round to getting it.

Nice work mate. I've always wanted to buy this when i find it at a good price. Despite the flaws I've always read about from narrow minded reviews, I've always thought it seems to have some great qualities.

Hopefully your review will bring the game to the attention of a few more gamers.

I enjoyed it too. No mention of the terrible voice acting though?!!

Hopefully there will be a sequel on the Bone in the future

DaddyLongLigs wrote:I enjoyed it too. No mention of the terrible voice acting though?!!

Hopefully there will be a sequel on the Bone in the future

To be honest, I only thought that Edge had mediocre voice acting, all the rest, I thought fit well within the game.