Review #804: Remember Me

 Ironically forgotten by time.

 Ever since I finished Final Fantasy VII Remake I've been itching for a linear action game, the likes we don't really see anymore but FFVIIR reminded me of. Well, there was this little game nobody remembered, published by Capcom but developed by Dontnod, of Life is Strange's fame, called Remember Me. This is a very linear beat'em up with a very pervasive narrative and the mandatory parkour then-modern games made mandatory since Uncharted.

 You play as Nilin, a Memory Hunter that peculiarly got her memory stolen from her, but a mysterious character named Edge aids her in recovering her memories and finishing what she started: The dismantling of Memorize, the company that has turned memories into a currency that people sell, delete, change or trade at will. I found the story itself OK, and a few reveals later down the line felt a bit half baked, but it's alright. That said, the story had a bit more potential that wasn't explored. For instance, throughout the game Nilin will remix the memory of some people, like turning an enemy into an ally by altering their memories so that their significant other was murdered by Memorize. This character never finds out  their lover is actually alive and that their new ally, Nilin, actually tempered with their memories, how great a plot point could it have been? That aside, I enjoyed the world of New Paris, it's very Cyberpunk, with androids co-existing with civilians, while the lower class people have to be wary of Leepers, broken people that abused their memories too much. Plus, I enjoyed the fact that Nilin is kind of an anti hero, the way she manipulates peoples' minds is all sorts of screwed up!

 The narrative is a big part of the game, so if you hate it when your action games have forced walking segments.... look elsewhere, as calls between Nilin and Edge are fairly frequent. There are also a very few, very simple puzzles to solve, most of them involve using the Spammer, a digital weapon attached to Nilin's arm that works like a machinegun and runs on a gauge that refills over time. You'll have to find switches to shoot with it, objects to pull and push and, sometimes, take away the 'energy' from a machine and put it in another. It's all fairly basic and easy to figure out. On the other hand, there are a few story segments, four in all, in which you remix a person's memory, this involved a small fragment of memory that you have to remove or push forward, searching for memory glitches, which are things you can affect and alter in order to change how that memory works, the objective being finding the glitch combination that'll alter the memory in the way the game tells you to. It's not hard at all, although, to be honest, I felt they were a bit dull, I mean, I didn't care too much about these segments, although I enjoyed the concept of the Hero manipulating a character's memories.

 Movement in the game is fairly stiff, which makes the parkour climbing bits a bit spotty. A few times my jumps should've made it onto a ledge, but they simply didn't. Other times, the game auto corrected my jump while I was on the air which looked SO weird. Once again, where to go is quite obvious most of the time. That said, exploring is in your best interest, since you can find permanent upgrades to your health or your focus.

 Combat feels like a stiffer version of Batman Arkham's, tap the attack button to attack enemies, while being on the lookout for Red exclamation marks, in which case, press X to dodge. It's got a twist, however, as you can create combos using the Square and Triangle buttons. Initially, you start of with a 3-square hit combo, but as you go through the game you'll unlock a five hit combo, a six hit combo and an 8 hit combo, these latter three also using the triangle input. Defeating enemies earns you PMP points, which can then be used to unlock different combo attacks, called Pressens, that are pre-set to either Square or Triangle. Every attack deals the same damage, so it's about cosmetics... and typing. There are four types of Pressens: Power, which deal extra damage, Healing, that heal you, Cooldown, that reduce the cooldown on your Super attacks and Chain that takes the type of the attack that came before it but potentiated. It's a very interesting system, but I think it would've been even better if we could customize the inputs of the combos themselves, like, getting a three hit combo and not a 'three square combo'. I understand why this was done, it's a limitation, since a Pressen can only be in one combo at a time, so sometimes you'll have to pick whether to keep your trusty 3-hit combo or use those inputs for the longer combos, at least until you level up and can get a new Pressen.

 Throughout the game you'll also unlock 5 different S-Pressens, or Super moves. Each super move consume a Focus slot, which refills as you take and land hits, as well as its own cooldown. Cooldown Pressens will reduce the cooldown on every S-Pressen that are in cooldown period. It's a decent system, but... some fight rely on you using super moves, which sucks because it means there's a lot of cooldown waiting between your moves. For instance, the only way you can deal damage to the first boss is by using the Rage super move, that means that you have to use the super, and then.... use your combos as he blocks them in an attempt to reduce the cooldown on the super so that you can use it again. At first I couldn't believe so much of the fight was just waiting, but that was how you were supposed to fight him. Robot enemies are introduce later in the game, and they can only be hit with the Spammer, and every now and then they'll pop a barrier.... so more waiting for the barrier to go down. There were a lot of instances in which battles required some kind of waiting or trying to reduce the cooldown on you super moves, which I felt didn't jive very well. Heck, aiming with the spammer at enemies is sometimes a bit annoying, as it can be hard to get the lock-on to focus on the enemies that you need it to. Later in the game force-field enemies are introduced, which take health away from you on every hit that you land on them. This means that as soon as they are introduced you have to dedicate an entire combo string to healing pressens, otherwise you'll be fighting them at a loss, which was SO dumb. Eventually you get a Super move that can instakill any single enemy, but still.... I shouldn't be forced to retool how my combos work just for a single enemy type, I think that goes against the creative premise behind building your own combos. Oh, and by the by, every boss ends with a QTE. At least they are not too long, but still.

 Besides how janky and stiff both combat and exploration feels, I had the game crash on me once, and from what I could gather, it seems crashes are not a rare occurrence with the game. And chapter 5 has a song track SO bad I thought my disc was faulty, so I searched for a let's play and... nope, it's just that bad.

 They had a vision, they had the budget, but I don't think they had quite the technical know-how to produce the game they wanted. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game, and it has some very neat ideas, but it feels like it was a few tweaks away from being a more memorable game.
 6.0 out of 10