Developed by Dontnod Entertainment and Published by Capcom, Remember Me is an action-adventure, beat ’em up game that follows the story of a Memory Hunter named Nilin.
Nilin is an “Errorist” agent and a professional Memory Hunter that has been captured, imprisoned in a fortress called “Bastille” and has had her memory erased. The goal of the Errorist is to take down a corporation named “Memorize” located in Neo-Paris. Memorize are the creators and developers of Sensen technology which focuses on storing and trading memories. During captivity, Nilin is being taken to have the last of her memories erased, but before that could happen, Edge, the leader of Errorist, intervenes and helps Nilin to escape the Bastille. Nilin then relies on Edge throughout the game to help her recover her memories and in return she follows his guidance and helps to be a key role in the Errorist movement.
The combat in Remember Me is a Beat ‘Em Up style, where you’re faced with waves of enemies and you get to whale on them with awesome combos. Starting off you only really have 3 buttons that you can use, the ‘A’ button is to dodge, ‘X’ is to punch and ‘Y’ is to kick. To make sure that this isn’t tedious and boring, you can unlock and create your own custom combinations with special attacks called Pressens that you get by leveling up. You can unlock a total of 8, 4 punches and 4 kicks, in each section.
Power Hit: When Nilin hits with a Power attack, she deals extra damage and stumbles that target.
Regeneration Hit: Nilin Regenerates health when hitting a target.
Cooldown Hit: These attacks reduce the cooldown on Nilin’s special abilities.
Chain Hit: Drastically increase the effect of the combo.
As you progress through the game, you also unlock Nilin’s special abilities known as S-Pressens that you can use when you’re being overwhelmed.
Sensen Fury: Allows Nilin to free-flow, attacking enemies without pause. 60 seconds cooldown.
Sensen DOS: Stuns enemies except for enemies with helmets. 180 seconds cooldown.
Sensen Rust In Pieces: Allows Nilin to make an enemy robot an ally, attacking enemies until the duration is over and it explodes. 180 seconds cooldown.
Sensen Camo: Camouflages Nilin allowing her to attack enemies while being unseen. 180 seconds cooldown.
Logic Bomb: An explosive Sensen virus that is attached to an enemy and explodes, damaging anything within it’s radius, including Nilin. 180 seconds cooldown.
While fighting enemies, when you are close to finishing them off, there will be an overload option, where Nilin technically fries the enemies brain. The animation is cool, but the option to do it doesn’t come up nearly enough for it to be as enjoyable as it could be. Nilin also gains ranged weapons while progressing through the game such as the Spammer and Junk Bolt.
The graphics in Remember me suit a futuristic theme quite nicely. You have the slums of Neo-Paris, which are all poor and ‘Leapers’ reside. Leapers are people who grew addicted to Sensen technologies to the point where their brains have degenerated and their bodies have deformed also giving some Leapers special abilities, such as going invisible. The privileged, upper regions of Neo-Paris where the rich residents reside and you’ll mainly encounter S.A.B.R.E Forces. While traversing through the game, when having to go through underground areas, such as the metro, the game’s environment would take a quick turn from the happy day time jumping around building, to a tense atmosphere of the destroyed, decaying areas that will have you jumping at shadows and second guessing every movement you see in the darkness. The deformation of the Leapers really help to add to the tense, dark atmosphere.
I have to credit on the fantastic soundtrack created by Oliver Deriviere. Using his background in classical music and mixing it with electronic to create a truly captivating soundtrack that fit each and every segment of the game perfectly. The voice acting in the game, however, would have been the most disappointing part of the experience as a whole. Getting into the games story, having an intense scene with this amazing background music and then to have the voice actors seem like they were just reading off a script, focusing more on reading out the lines correctly as opposed to giving it their all with expression, emotions and truly immersing themselves in the character. I’m not saying that there’s no emotion and the voice acting is dull, there’s just not as much as what would be expected, especially given the character’s situation. The sound effects in the game really make it feel like a digitalised, technological advanced world. Even during the combat, Nilin’s S-Pressen abilities have a nice start up, or activation ring to them.
The main feature of Remember Me that stood out to me would have to be the remix memories missions. Hands down my favourite part of the whole game. Remix memories missions are when you tap into a person’s Sensen and alter their memory of a certain event, affecting them in a way that could sway an enemy into becoming an ally, or making a person believe they have done something so terrible that it drives them to the point of suicide. These parts are so enjoyable as it feels like you’re watching an interactive movie, rewinding and making changes as you see fit to alter the ending, each remix is a puzzle within itself, having to figure out the right order to do things in and most importantly, gives you the momentary feeling of a God complex, rewriting a false past and bending that person to your will.
I have a rule that I like to follow when playing a new game for the first time, I’ll give the game 30 minutes to impress me and if I can’t put the controller down, then that’s usually a good sign that the game is doing something right and that’s what happened with Remember Me. The best way I feel that I could describe this game is as a rough gemstone. It’s not perfect, needs a bit of polishing, but in the end it’s still worth something. I’m just a little disappointed that there wasn’t as many remix opportunities as I would have liked and the voice acting could have been done a little better, but Remember Me is definitely a game that I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to anyone.
