Remember Me was a video game by newcomers Dontnod Entertainment and published by Capcom. You might have heard about it due to some controversy that was stirred up before its release. In an interview the developers went on record that no one wanted to publish the game because it starred a female character, a black character, and because it wasn't violent enough. Of course this makes the industry look really appalling, coincidence of coincidences the game didn't end up being well reviewed, and Capcom gave it almost no marketing. I was really skeptical about the kind of critical scores it was getting considering the toes they stepped on (and how many of those same critics routinely give Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed 10/10), but it's not unbelievable that a new studio might make some major mistakes in game design. I wanted to support a game with a female lead, but I still got the game for free on Playstation Plus and waited a whole year to play it.
I didn't expect it to be my favorite game of its generation.
Remember Me is astonishingly similar to Okami. Coming in at the end of its generation, it's a beautiful game with amazing art design, made by a team of talented people that Capcom would screw over, and it's my favorite game of its generation in spite of numerous flaws. And as of right now, I will own it multiple times. It's half off in a Steam flash sale for the next 5 and a half hours, so I advise everyone to purchase it.
GAMEPLAY
Remember Me is a beat-em-up with a lot of platforming and some very creative puzzles. There are two things that make the gameplay unique. First, you build your own stylish combos. You get four different combo strings of varying punches and kicks, and assign attacks that either deal extra damage, heal you, or reset your cooldowns. It's up to you if you want attack chains that specialize in one effect or another, or if you want to combine effects for maximum utility. Second, you have a set of five special abilities that MUST be utilized in order to deal with the very unique enemy types in the game. They are each very good, useful, and required to complete the game. These abilities function on a cooldown, but you can use your attack chains to reduce those cooldowns.
When you compare Remember Me to character action games, you might think to yourself "I sure am using the same combos over and over again". This could have been improved if there were more attack chains and attacks to utilize, you unlock more at a steady pace but it can be slow going at first. And this especially problematic once you've reduced a group of enemies down to a single foe, which is gameplay the game does not excel at. But here's the thing; a variety unique enemy types and combinations requires you to use combinations of your special abilities, which requires you to use your cooldown attacks. You know what I do in most fights in Remember Me? I stop and think about how I want to engage the enemies. So yes character actions game have better twitch action gameplay. Did I ever use my noggin when playing them? Noooooooo. It's pretty refreshing. If I have low health and there is a group of tough enemies, should I use my power attacks to relieve pressure, or my healing attacks so that I don't get killed easily?
For a very linear game, there's also a surprising amount of exploration to it. Another innovative feature is that you can find hidden caches of health powerups. To find these, other members of the resistance left image clues to their locations. This turns finding things from being "use a guide on my second playthrough" to a game of Where's Waldo, and the visual cues work well because did I mention this game is beautiful? I'm sure I will again. You can also hunt down "memory bugs" using audio cues, and this gives you points to upgrade your attack chains. Finally plot blurbs are genuinely well hidden, and while they aren't necessary to understand the plot or play the game, they are fascinating reads and I like exploring enough to try and find them. All in all it was a very fun game to 100%, which I did in my second playthrough immediately after I finished my first.
Yes, it's linear, and many critics complained about the Uncharted style platforming. I wonder why they didn't complain about every other game this generation that was linear and had that style of platforming (including Uncharted, Prince of Persia did that shit first). At least Remember Me sometimes incorporates timing and puzzles into its platforming, and you can actually die while doing it. But even if all the platforming was replaced by FF13 style hallways, I'd probably be ok with it cause it gives breathing room from the action and you get to see amazing scenery. God it's hard to not talk about the story and art design while talking about gameplay, or vice versa. I guess that's what they call a gesamtkunstwerk.
I said there were creative puzzles, and one the things critics actually raved about was the memory alteration segments. These are awesome puzzles, and there could not have been enough in the game. They are littered with easter eggs, and my favorite thing to do is kill someone in their own memory. This doesn't actually advance the game or anything, obviously you can't remember being dead so it's not a solution, but it's fun so I made it a priority to do it in every puzzle. The other puzzles littered throughout the game suck and take no brains to finish (even memory alteration is more fun than hard), but that's pretty par for the course this generation.
I played Remember Me for ten hours the first time, a really fair amount of time for an action game, and then I spent six hours replaying it. I dunno, you could probably beat it faster, but I just want to stop and smell the roses sometimes y'know? The game is immaculately paced, almost on par with Half Life 2 if only the puzzles were better. Unlike many games these days hordes of enemies never outlive their welcome, and each level introduces new gameplay elements and powers. Individually these new things don't make the game amazing, but they keep the pace brisk and enjoyable throughout.
I have two legitimate complaints about the gameplay in Remember Me. I hope my honesty about this makes you MORE willing to buy the game, like I'm not some gushing goober not experienced enough to see genuine flaws where they are. I just hope you take my word for it when I say this game is worth these flaws. First, the checkpoints are fucking terrible. Many times you will die only to have to rewatch a cutscene, go out of your way for a collectible, or worst of all, you spend minutes reworking your combo chains and none of it gets saved. Second, the game is too easy. YEAH, I KNOW, THIS GENERATION RIGHT? But it's still unfortunate, I would recommend everyone play the game on hard mode, which still isn't hard but it's better than normal. I still enjoyed the game immensely on normal mode, but I enjoyed hard more, and I'd have liked it to be even harder. The controls and camera are not perfect, I got my camera stuck in a corner once in two playthroughs, but they would be above average for the PS2 generation so I don't really understand this complaint, it's not a big deal.
STORY
The plot and world building of Remember Me are easily top 10 as far as video games go. This is a story that demands to be experienced twice to fully understand the intracies and character nuances. The first time I played the game, I thought Edge was the least interesting character. After my second playthrough, I now think he is one of the most fascinating characters the industry has ever produced.
The well explored theme of Remember Me is memory, so it's for once fairly fitting that you start the game with amnesia. It's actually a cool way "metroiding" the protaganist, who has to regain her memories to regain her abilities. Anyway you break out from a prison that takes its prisoner's memories away, and in short order join a terrorist group with some questionable ethics. There's a lot of moral ambiguity going on in this game, much of the real genius here lies in the complex web of character motivations and interactions and I don't want to spoil any of it, but like I said it really demands that you replay it to understand everything.
In a post global warming Neo-Paris, memories have become a commodity that have given their company Memorize a great deal of political power. However, they are blind to some pretty bad side effects the now ubiquitious technology cause, and to the horrific experiments led by their own employees. The Errorist movement wishes to topple Memorize and put an end to Sensen technology, but this isn't some goody two-shoes fantasy hero squad, these are fucking terrorists and they do some bad things too. Their leader, Edge, says you were one of their best members, but can he be trusted?
The characters and their designs are absolutely brilliant. There are some characters that show up for like five seconds and left me thinking "wait, who is that, I want to know more about THAT person," which is really how you know the writing is impeccable. I also got genuinely attached to this fucking douchebag named Bad Request. He's an extreme douchebag but I love him. Certain plot threads could have been expanded upon in interesting ways, but it's a ten hour game from a new developer, so I can't really fault them for it.
Some critics called the memory stuff window dressing. Oh, you mean gameplay and story and art were combined? Isn't that what they call a gesamtkuntswerk? Yeah a lot of the memory doesn't have a profound gameplay effect, but things that don't make perfect sense in other games have a gameplay and story correlation here. For instance, as Nilin steals memories and regains her own, I can totally believe that she can kick more and more ass. It'd be like that new movie Lucy, if it wasn't stupid. It's also really nice that all in all you only kill (or defeat? it's not clear, but it's not gory) 200 or so people over the course of the game. It really busted my balls last year how games like Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us that claimed to be gripping stories also had you kill amounts of people that would make John Matrix blush. It also just gets tiring killing the same enemies over and over again. Hey some games can rain bodies, but some games really shouldn't.
There's quite a bit of exposition in Remember Me, particularily before each level as Nilin talks about the events that have passed and her feelings about them. It gives an insight into our character's head that you only generally get from books, and given how Nilin is used by people and what she is used for, without this inner dialogue it could have made her look as dumb as TV Ned Stark compared to Book Ned Stark. Still, Remember Me is not a book so it might feel awkward. I don't know how I would have done it better, I just know the end result is really good. One particular oversight it is that while you can pause cutscenes, you cannot skip them. It's pretty ridiculous for a 2013 game, but I don't understand how some people think it's this conspiracy to extend game length. The game is of a decent length, cutscenes aren't long, and if you are skipping game cutscenes your first time through then I have no sympathy for you. Hell, like I said, you should really rewatch them the second time too. Still, eventually you might want to replay the game and not rewatch cutscenes, so it is complaint.
ART DESIGN
The game is beautiful. I don't know how to do it justice other than showing pictures. Every environment just feels real and looks stylish. I'm in no way a proponent of obsessive graphical detail that has popper up in this generation, but the result combined with the art direction is stunning. I mean just look at the look the use of color! Even in fucking swamp slums there is color in this game. Remember those collectibles I said were fun to collect? Well playing a second time to find them all, I was able to use a written guide to find them all. From a written description, I understood where EVERYTHING was after having only played the game once. That has never happened before, and I'm not particularly good at visualizing written things.
The characters are simultaneously more realistic looking than contemporaries, but also subtly cartoonishly stylized enough to make every character memorable.
The music is fantastic and varied, using a mixing a variety styles seemlessly to suits the needs of the story and environment at any given time. It also interacts with your fights, amping up as you land combos and stuttering as you take hits. That moment when I realized this in the first level was when I knew I was in love.
If there's one flaw in presentation, it's the English voice acting. The main character does a good job, but everyone else is a little off. There is a solution however, you should set the audio language to French (unfortunately the subtitling sucks too but this is still an improvement). I'm not a SUBS>DUBS kind of guy, but the French voice acting is certainly better, feels more natural for a game in France, and I dunno call me weird it just makes the story feel more delightfully pretentious. That's a compliment, I swear. It just works ok.
Its flaws are numerous, but they are all pretty minor, and are just crushed under the wave of good things the game has to offer. It's unique, innovative, and forwards the medium artisticly. The devs fought the system to provide us with one more game that doesn't star one more white dudebro, and they suffered for it. Like I said, Remember Me is on sale for $15 for the next five and half hours. And you know what? I'm going to buy it. Yes, I already own it. But I didn't pay for it, and these developers deserve it. The world needs more Dontnod games, and their next game is another new IP. I'd have loved a Remember Me 2 to iron out the flaws, but I can't fault them for not endlessly making sequels like other developers would. Dontnod wasn't ruined by Remember Me, but they are in some financial hardships, so even if you miss this sale please buy it at the more than reasonable $30 it usually goes for. You will not be dissapointed, and you'll help one of the most promising new developers stay afloat.
One thing's for sure. I will remember Remember Me. Thank you for your time.
EDIT: NOW THIS GAME IS $10
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