Remember Me (Game Review)

I’m just blowing your mind… in the most unpleasant way possible.

It’s a dystopian future set in Neo-Paris and memories have become a commodity. For a small price, you can enjoy the blissful recollection of someone else’s life. The memory economy has brought great wealth to some, but has left many in financial or mental ruin with its addictive effects. To some, memories are a means to an end; to allow the bending, substituting or complete erasing of a personality.

You play as Nilin, a memory hunter with the unique ability of not only being able to take people’s memories, but rewrite them. Your memories have been erased, leaving nothing but loose threads. Through the guidance of some morally uncertain characters, you’ll learn what is really happening behind the scenes of Neo-Paris’ façade.

There’s a lot to like in Remember Me. Despite being very linear, the game is heavily story driven and the writing is certainly above average. The story twists and turns and does throw a few curveballs, but many are predictable. Without spoilers, it does have a fairly satisfying end and may tug on a few heart strings. I actually found parts of the story very morally questionable, but the linearity meant you had to follow through, which left me frustrated with the story at times. The dystopian future is pulled off very well with some amazing level design with very few complaints. They even tried a bit of a puzzle element, which was completely out of place but a cute effort.

The rest of the game is where it starts to fall apart. The concept is interesting and pretty unique, with the idea of memory remixing very well designed and fun to use. These sequences allow you to review someone’s memory and tweak things to change the outcome. It might be something as simple as taking the safety off on a gun or moving an object. Sadly it was poorly utilised and was only featured a handful of times. At its core, it is a third person fighting/parkour game with shooting tacked on. The combat mechanics were average at best despite the pressens adding an interesting touch. Pressens are basically super-moves that you can utilise at the cost of focus which you build up by attacking enemies. You can design combos (to a point) to have moves that may deal extra damage, heal you or reduce the cooldown on your pressens. While the combos are specific combinations of punches and kicks, you can choose what each part of a combo will do. A kind of ‘memory gun’ is introduced early game which acts as both a weapon and a tool for later levels. Unfortunately, shooting is sloppy thanks to a rigid targeting system and doesn’t add much to the game.

Head-splosions!

I played this on PC, which suffered from a bad console port. The camera is sluggish and sometimes unresponsive and some mechanics were badly interpreted for a mouse/keyboard player. Despite this though, I got used to it and didn't end up grumbling too much in-game from control-related failures.

There's a lot to like to this one, but although I would recommend it, it still leaves much to be desired. It was fun to play and overall enjoyable, only brought down by its technical flaws and some poor design choices. I do recommend this game. It's not a 'must play', but it certainly is a 'should play'.

And 'remember you soon' is a tacky way to say goodbye, just saying.