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Friday, March 29, 2024

REMEMBER ME – 6 GPPs

Neo-Paris 2084, the Memorize Corporation has created the Sensation Engine or ‘Sensen’ for short, a cybernetic implant that enables users to upload, buy, and sell memories on the net. This has given the Memorize Corporation control over a high percentage of the population. Fighting against the oppressive regime of Memorize are the Errorists.

 Remember Me has you taking on the role of Nilin, an errorist captured by Memorize, in the process of having her memories wiped at one of their facilities. A man known only as ‘Edge,’ communicating via her Sensen, helps free Nilin before her memories can be completely wiped.

 With her mind in pieces, Nilin sets out to discover why she was captured and why Memorize wanted to wipe her memory.

 Following on from the critically acclaimed relaunch of Tomb Raider, now seems like the ideal time for games with female protagonists to be in the ascendant. Unfortunately Remember Me, from Dontnod and Capcom, proves to be one of the most frustrating cases of squandered potential in recent memory.

 The most immediate thing about Remember Me is that it looks stunning, the first time you see a sweeping shot of Neo-Paris after stumbling away from captivity it looks amazing.

Taken from expansivedlc.com
Taken from expansivedlc.com

There’s an undeniable cyberpunk aesthetic to the setting of Neo-Paris, the sewers are awash with Leapers, unfortunate individuals who have become addicted to memories and burnt out their Sensen implants reduced to gibbering semi-humans, who squabble amongst themselves and are overly hostile to outsiders in their territory.

 In the squalor of the slums there are drones flying around projecting ads for nearby stalls, the sickly glow of neon signs is everywhere, digital billboards often in a state of disrepair are glaring from walls, steam vents from pipework, graffiti can be found on numerous walls, stalls with questionable owners and even more questionable goods can be seen scattered throughout. Debris litters the streets and a later visit to the Red Light district comes complete with robotic ‘working girls’ leaning against the walls and ‘Bits’ a strip club featuring ‘Girls in the shell’.

 All this is accompanied by constant drizzling rain with the wet streets reflecting back the nauseating neon glow from above.

 Moving from the slums, the opulent statues,shops and architecture of Saint-Michel district is a profound contrast with security drones monitoring from above and robots walking the streets doing chores for their moneyed masters who are oblivious about those dwelling in the squalor of the slums.

 Remember Me is so atmospheric you can almost taste the steam billowing across the screen and the views you get whilst shimmying up pipework on the side of a decrepit skyscraper can be genuinely awe inspiring.

 The glory of Neo-Paris though is a hollow one, as it quickly becomes apparent that you can’t really do much in these richly detailed environments. Whilst the names of shops and stalls pops up via your Sensen, you’re unable to go in any of them. In fact you can’t really do anything besides follow the path that’s been laid out for you, Remember Me is linear with a capital L.

 Remember MeNilin is a great character though, and is aided by some high calibre voice acting from Kezia Burrows being both vulnerable and confused but also being able to kick ass. Not far into the proceedings one of the games best mechanics comes into play as you learn how to remix memories. This involves witnessing someones memory of an event happening and then being able to alter elements in the memory in order to achieve your desired outcome.

 The way this is done is impressively simple with the ability to rewind and fast forward the events to look for ‘glitches’ in the memory, things you can alter, which will change the outcome of the event you are witnessing, however there are numerous ‘glitches’ and only the right combination will achieve your objective.

 This is impressive stuff not only visually but towards puzzling. It puts a completely new spin on the cliched puzzles often found in games and seeing the different outcomes your tinkering generates is worth it even if they don’t achieve the necessary result.

 Another facet of Nilin’s ability with the Sensen is using ‘Remembranes’, where you can see memories playing in real time, seeing someone’s actions and being able to follow them to gain entry to a certain location for example.

 Players are encouraged to create their own combos in the ‘Combo Lab’. There are four different types of move called ‘Pressens’ which can be re-organised and unlocked as you earn PMP, Procedural Mastering Power. These four elements include ‘Power’ for extra damage, ‘Regen’ which heals Nilin, ‘Cooldown’ which regenerates energy and ‘Chain’ which duplicates and doubles the effect of the previous move.

 You can have a maximum of four combo’s active at any time and additional special moves called ‘S Pressens’ can be accessed via a radial menu as you unlock them, these use energy and have various effects from cumulative combos which increase damage with each hit to stunning groups of enemies.

 Additionally you can use other attacks like ‘Memory overload’ on certain enemies after landing a certain amount of hits.

Remember-ME-Game-Wallpaper-1920x1080

 It’s an interesting take on combat and mastering the combination of the different Pressens is key, not enabling any Regen Pressens will result in imminent death pretty quickly. Whilst this combat system seems deep, the actual combat itself often comes off as clunky.

 It’s a rythmic system too, just mashing the buttons will lead to a frustratingly quick death.

 As cool as it can be to fend off a group of several enemies with Nilin flipping over said enemies, before resuming combos, rarely has any weight to it and can often become disengaging; as reliance on Regen can mean employing the same combo repeatedly to avoid being beaten to a pulp .

 Rather than your actual enemies the worst enemy you have in Remember Me is the camera.

 Whilst its skewed angles can add excitement and an element of danger as you traverse rooftops and shimmy along venting pipes, when it comes to combat keeping track of your foes can be problematic at best. This is compounded by numerous enemies only vulnerable to certain attacks or at a later point Leapers who can turn invisible being rendered invulnerable unless you can use a specific S-Pressen to reveal them.

 Often times combat can consist more of frantically running/dodging enemies waiting for S-Pressen timers to tick down rather than actual combat itself.

 Remember Me takes the well known trappings of the cyberpunk aesthetic and adds its own colour to them and Nilin is a great character, however its hard not to look at Remember Me and think what could have been whilst jumping from one ledge to the next or dieing another cheap and frustrating death.

 This game deserves to do well enough to secure a follow up because the setting of Neo-Paris is ripe for exploration but Dontnod may have inadvertently shot themselves in the foot before this can ever happen.

 

Andy Haigh
Andy Haigh
Andy Haigh started writing to counteract the brain atrophying effects of Retail Hell, now it's an addiction. Andy is an unrepentant sequential art absorbist and comics are one of his passions. Other interests include Film, Music, Science Fiction and Horror novels and quality TV like Game of Thrones. He can talk about these at great length if only someone would listen. He lives a somewhat hermit like life in The Shire, spends too much time on social media and is still waiting to go on an adventure.

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