Remember Me is an action adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Capcom. It’s set in Paris, France in 2084, which was devastated during the European Civil War, and abandoned soon after due to the chaos and health issues created by the bombing that took place. It’s renamed Neo-Paris after a corporation called Memorize is urged to relocate there and bring life back to the decimated city. Remember Me features a character named Nilin, who has her memory wiped clean and is currently in an institution for people deemed dangerous to the current status quo. Nilin doesn’t remember how she got to this institution or her past, so when she starts receiving a transmission from someone trying to help her escape, she deems that to be better than being led to a fate that would be worse than death. After successfully escaping with the help of her unknown friend, Nilin is told that she used to be a memory hunter, the absolute best, and was capable of remixing memories. And she’s told she was a threat to Memorize and other corporations who monetized memories, manipulated people, and turned them into memory junkies. However she failed and that led to her capture. But with the help of her friend, Edge, will Nilin be successful this time and defeat the conglomeration of corporations abusing the memories of the citizens of Neo-Paris?

GAMEPLAY

There’s always something about new IPs that capture my attention. It’s like a gift that’s put in a completely new box and wrapped in never before seen wrapping paper, so the potential of what’s inside the gift box is pretty exciting. Remember Me is a game that truly had the potential to be a great game. The concept of the game is fascinating and opens up with testimonials of people who have benefited from a brain implant called Sensen (Sensation Engine), where they can relive their favorite memories, delete unpleasant ones and share whichever memories they choose. That showed not only how much it has been incorporated into daily life and being promoted but also how much control Memorize could have over every individual because this gave them remote access to other people’s memories through the access point on the back of their necks. The classic story of an image being projected to make a city appear as a futuristic utopia but the truth being far worse, and dirty secrets being kept to hide a more nefarious plot. Remember Me went from joyful promos for Sensen to the harsh truth of Nilin being in an institution where people’s memories were being wiped clean and they were forced to abandon all resistance. The potential was definitely there.

The initial sequence is pretty much following Edge’s instructions as he leads you to an escape route as you’re given a tutorial regarding some controls. After you escape from this institution you’re thrown right into your first combat scenario against deformed humans who are memory addicts called Leapers. And Remember Me has an interesting take on combat…at least conceptually. Combat is based on performing combos and the twist here is you can create your own combos. The first combo you make is just a simple three button combo and you unlock more combo chains as the story progresses. So you’ll eventually have 4, 5, and up button combos with each having an effect increase. This initially feels very limited because you can’t select the button combination, only the type of Pressen you use for that button.

There are a total of 24 Pressens you can unlock and they fall into four categories: Power, Regen, Cooldown and Chain. Power is just as it sounds with that attack doing more damage than other attacks. Regen gives you back health, Cooldown reduces the wait time for certain abilities and Chain increases the effect of the next Pressen in the combo. So for example, if the combo chain is X-X-X, you have to select 3 X button attacks you’ve unlocked from among the Pressens, so it’s very possible to have a 5 hit combo chain but only 3 pressens available to use. Once you get the hang of it, which doesn’t take long and the in-game explanation is thorough and gradual, it’s very handy because you can change it in different combat situations. If you’re fighting enemies who take away alot of your health, you can change your quickest combo to all Regen pressens to regenerate your health. And even though you have to memorize the combos, the buttons you press do appear on the screen to let you know you’re performing a combo correctly. Later in the game you’ll have access to S-Pressens, which are special moves you can perform when you build up enough focus from performing combos successfully, and after use, the Cooldown Pressen reduces the time you have to wait to use that specific S-Pressen again. I’ll address more of the combat later.

The game’s interface and environment are highly stylistic and can definitely feel like enjoyable eye candy at times. Neo-Paris is the type of location that would have been a joy to explore if it was open world because it’s very intriguing. The backstory itself is fascinating and as a sci-fi junkie, I would love to see more of this world in future endeavors. Unfortunately there is no interaction with the environment aside from the task at hand but Remember Me is a great example of the cyberpunk genre done right, at least in appearances. So despite the platforming required to navigate being visually flimsy at times with Nilin landing clumsily (only visually, mechanics work), I could overlook that when the best part of the game was introduced and that’s remixing memories.

The subject matter for this game was ripe with potential and remixing memories as a game play mechanic was them getting it right and gave them the potential to address this delicate/controversial subject matter in an entertaining way. Aside from being able to steal memories, Nilin is able to enter into people’s memories and change specific memories to her advantage. But they can’t be changed haphazardly, they still have to logically make sense. You can’t cause someone to die in their memories because they’re still currently alive so it wouldn’t make sense. So you have to successfully change things in the environment to achieve the desired outcome. After entering into someone’s memory a scene is played out and you’re informed what you have to ultimately achieve. While playing the memory, certain items have glitches to them, and you can change these glitches so a button turned one way on a machine can be turned another way. And as the memory plays you see the outcome of the change. The key is to create the right combination of changes to objects in the environment to achieve the desired outcome and you can rewind as often as you want and in doing so cancel any changes you made to the memory. As a game play mechanic, this was the most enjoyable one to me. Even Nilin questioned the morality of doing this and was concerned with the power of this ability, especially since the basis of her fight was against corporations manipulating people. This was different from taking or sharing someone’s memory, which was also a game play mechanic called Remembrance, but changing someone’s motivations and beliefs. Remembrance is the virtual projection of a digitized memory in real-time, so you can watch the projection of a character navigate a minefield so you know how to do it as well. It was crucial and used in other similar ways, including the acquisition of access codes or solving riddles. What could be better in a game presenting a serious issue of corporations monetizing memories and abusing that power than to have game play mechanics that would allow you to address the core of that issue in a very enjoyable way? Nothing, but unfortunately that view wasn’t shared. For reasons I do not know, they were sitting on a gold mine with these mechanics and the concept behind them, and either they didn’t believe in them, or just chose otherwise, but I went more than half the game without seeing this game play mechanic again. Instead, it seemed as if a question of what do you need was asked and someone answered in a Keanu Reeves’ Matrix voice, “fighting, more fighting.” (At least the combat in the Matrix was enjoyable throughout).

As someone who enjoys actions in games and who has even purchased purely combat DLC at times, for me to feel combat fatigue is saying a lot. It actually felt like a combat simulator because it became just waves after waves of enemies, and as a result the weakness in the combat system was more apparent.  It was very limited and despite the different pressens, it was just pressing two buttons in different orders. At one point when a third wave of enemies came at me in one location I wanted to say “no mas” to that fight. And there wasn’t a great variety of enemies so it became extremely repetitive, and it felt frustrating because everything else was abandoned. And since it’s a very linear game, it literally became walking from one fighting area to another fighting area. The fighting became slightly more enjoyable late in the game once all the S-Pressens (special abilities) were unlocked because it added some variety to the fights and using these abilities were entertaining. Considering the game play was solely fighting for a large portion of the game, all the S-Pressens should’ve been made available earlier. Or even have a different form of remixing memories where you could repair someone’s memory from the deliberate damage caused by organizations. There was a lot of potential here and the choice to focus solely on combat became more curious as the game went on. As far as the story is concerned, it’s enjoyable with some twists and it holds up in terms of being consistent and believable and has some redeeming qualities. It does manage to address the original premise somewhat, although it lacked a certain conviction in doing so and could’ve delved deeper into the subject matter.

SUMMARY

Remember Me doesn’t quite reach its potential because it becomes bogged down in excessive combat with limited combat options, and goes away from other game play aspects that were more enjoyable. There were a few issues at times with the camera in some fights and the platforming was limited, so more polish would’ve helped with both of those. The backstory of Neo-Paris and the beautifully designed environment created a rich sci-fi atmosphere that makes me want more cyberpunk games to take place in this environment but executed better. And Nilin is a very good protagonist and has a lot of potential so I hope we will see more of her down the line. If you have a strong desire to want to enjoy Remember Me for any reason then you will have some fun, as I did overall, because there are redeeming qualities, as it is a story of healing. That’s the strongest recommendation I can give it because the concept is much better than the actual execution. If there is a sequel, which I somewhat hope if it’s done much better, hopefully they’ll remember to focus more on the best parts of the game.

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