Remember Me

[quantum_leopold]

Yeah, between Last of Us and my plans to pick up a Vita this weekend, I determined that I was either going to finish Remember Me immediately or not at all.  Although I did get through that falling floor sequence, between loading times and repeated fails it probably took me 30 minutes, and that made my decision for me.  I watched the end of the game on Youtube just to further disincentivize me from picking the game back up

[melmer]

This image is a lie maybe they realised its quite rare to actually manage a combo of more than 5 hits later in the game, or maybe it's just because it would've been fucking difficult to memorise all that shit

 

There are only 4 combos in the game, in fact i can list them for you as i've imputed them so many fucking times over the past week

xxx

xyxyx

xyyxyy

yyyxxxxy

 

I didn't like the camera much, it was a bit stiff, i never checked if it could be altered in the option, i'd recommend turning it up if you can.

 

The game has lots of bullshit collectables, and crazily considering how linear the game is i missed a metric shit ton of them. They have these little memory sperms hidden around that you have to shoot and there's 10 in each level, i averaged about 2 per level and i was looking around a lot!

 

I think my problem with the story is that it gets so BIG by the end of the game, what you are doing is effecting effect billions of people worldwide, but you never get a sense of it as you spend most of the game in a corridor. The scale of the story doesn't match the scale of the game at all so it all just falls flat.

[Thrik]

I'm really disappointed that this game sounds like a load of bollocks. I was immediately entranced by the concept, purported gameplay, world, and music. It's incredibly disappointing that they managed to arsehole it, so now it's going off my list in favour of BioShock Infinite.

[lobotomy42]

I finally got home from being abroad and have had the chance to start catching up on my console games, and I started with this game, which I was pretty excited about.

 

I'm in Episode 4 now, and man is this game all over the place.  I agree with a lot of the frustrations cited here - it's not a really very good game, in the normal sense, at all. But there are some neat parts embedded within it if you have the patience to toil through some repetitive combat an atrociously cliched dialogue.

 

The strongest elements are the visual and audio design, which are stellar.  The modernist "augmented reality" overlay on all the objects in the world is maybe not a century's worth of technical advances, but I'm willing to let it slide because it looks so cool.  I'm approaching the halfway point of the game, and it hasn't gotten old.  The "real-world" design is excellent, too, with some cool contrasts between the buildings of old Paris and sci-fi stuff that has sprung up around it.  It's all fun to look at, when you're not trudging down a dark corridor, which, sadly, happens way too often.  The music is even better - when the dissonant techno track starts up I know it's time for combat, and it's so fun to listen to that it successfully distracts me from the really horribly boring button-mashing that is the combat system.  They have their aesthetic nailed down, and I can't get enough of it.

 

It's a shame that so much of the rest of it is so generic.  It's never really *bad* bad, if you know what I mean, it's just all so video-gamey.  It feels very much like someone had a checklist of features and design elements for 3rd-person action-adventure games and the developers dutifully went and implemented all those dumb features at the expense of the interesting parts of the game.  Linear platforming? Check! Lots of zombies to beat up? Check! Special powers? Check! A rebel dude who exists only as voiceover telling you constantly what to do and how awful the bad guys are? Check!  It sucks that all of these features suck so much.   They end up being the core of the game and they are truly dismal.  The writing is ripped from every sci-fi dystopia ever, with not just tradeable memories as a major theme, but also robots and class divisions and explosions and zombies and police in power suits and and and.  It's the kind of crap that might be excusable in some weird Japanese game because I could lie to myself with a "Well I'm sure it's deep and stuff in Japanese" but this completely doesn't work coming from France. 

 

The gameplay and story items that are actually interesting are the parts that are centered around the memory theme: the memory editing segments, the "memorization" of the location in the environment of items, the lead character and her memory loss, memory manipulation as a way to change people from friend to foe or vice versa.  These are the coolest elements but they are just so sidelined that it's frustrating.   

[lobotomy42]

Okay, I finished it.  Halfway into Chapter 5 I got sick of these huge repetitive fights and changed the difficulty to easy, at which point the game became more enjoyable and less stupidly frustrating.

 

I will say that the game is not long, and does manage to improve towards the end.  But it never really gets *good.*  The writing remains sort of hacky and genre-y throughout, like a bad episode of (post-2005) Doctor Who.  It's a shame, because I really wanted the story to be good enough that I could say "Well the gameplay sucks but the story's good" but I can't.  The gameplay sucks and the story, despite having a cool premise and setting, sucks.  *Perhaps* it lost something in translation, but I doubt it.

 

The visuals get better and better creatively and the music remains solid throughout.  Those are easily the highlights of the whole game and the main reasons to keep playing.  If you're still remotely interested in this game, then I definitely recommend going in on easy mode and keeping your expectations low, writing-wise.  If you're just expecting a cool electronic soundtrack and a world made out of augmented-reality UI graphics, you'll be pleased.

[Tanukitsune]

I got this for free with PSN+ and... wow, what a dumb game...

 

The memory remixing is dumb, specially since all the people whose memories you remix know you can do it... The very first remix is for the bounty hunter they sent after you, 

which doesn't make that much sense when you figure out she's the "bad guys" daughter"

, you make them think the contractors killed his husband, but... you don't change the memory of his orders.... Wouldn't the best bounty hunter ever who knew what his target could do be a little suspicious that she suddenly thinks the people who hired her killed his husband? Why would he take the case to start with if it was true?

 

Then he makes a guy think he killed his girlfriend and commits suicide when he "remembers", this scene doesn't make any sense it only exist so Nilin can doubt whether she's doing the right thing or not... Only to eventually think she's right for no reason. Errorists? Do they think they are clever? It's obvious that she's doing as much damage if not more than the "bad guys", she flooded a whole district and DROWNED them and set the Leapers loose to kill those left alive... wow, what a heroine.

 

Then she changes the memory of her own mother to think that the accident that SHE caused was her mother's fault... once again, what a heroine! And she doesn't suspect a thing either? Seriously?

 

At least in the end when he changes the memory of this father he notices. But it still doesn't make sense, If he loves Nilin so much, why did they try to wipe her memory and then kill her? 

 

For a game all about memory if sure counts on us to forget all the plot holes! And I called it earlier that we'd have to kill Edge in the end. Oh, remember when he said his life would be forfeit if he revealed himself? And then in the end he says he wants to die? Oh, Remember Me, you sure are dumb and you make me want to forget you.

 

As for the game play, it's a BAD Arkham Aslyum fighting-wise, the game insists you must make combos but makes it impossible to make the bigger ones. It also adds way to many annoying elements, sure you only have to change ONE thing in the custom combo, but the fact that you have to do it manually and constantly sucks.

 

The style was nice, but once you leave the city and it's just industrial complexes and such, it gets boring.

 

I'm glad I got it free, and I'm not sure it was worth my time, but still, at least it wasn't a shooter and you finally get to play as a female in a "AAA" game? Except I already did that in AC III: Liberation.

 

It felt "gamey" in the sense that bosses seemed to be there because a game needs bosses and the climbing was there because gamers like to climb, right? At least they don't lay down the "lazy lock down arena" too thick?

[syntheticgerbil]

So I started chipping away at this because I was initially very interested in Remember Me and was put off by all the negative opinions concerning the gameplay, but I figured I would just play it anyway and see for myself since I will be playing Life Is Strange at some point. I've only just finished Episode 3.

 

For all of the good things about it, Remember Me seems to have some sort of glaring negative to balance it out. One thing to note is I am playing the game on hard for the trophy so maybe this has a lot to do with my frustration concerning combat. I guess coming off playing DmC more recently, this game feels like a sluggish weak mess when it comes to fighting. The combat animations seem so slow but enemies constantly seem to be fucking hitting me. You have to do the same timing for ever god damn combat since there's no quick or slow moves and usually there's not enough time to press the button on time and evade so I don't get hit, breaking the combo. Fighting is often just such a chore and I end up having to redo certain parts like 20 times over because of some bullshit thing going on. I'm especially talking about the first floodlight fight and the first brute guy in Episode 3. God those were such bullshit and I hadn't unlocked enough abilities yet to easily get through them.

 

In many ways this game is majorly fucking punishing. Not because it's THAT hard despite me having to replay some sequences over and over, but because of poor design in terms of usability. If I fuck a part up, I have to usually wait for a 20 second reload then I may have to watch some cutscene over and over. The brute guy in particular in Episode 3 had a tutorial part on the spammer and using it against guys on the walls, EVERY GOD DAMN TIME. And you can't even hit X past the text, each piece of text that I've already fucking read makes me wait 3 seconds before I can press X again. Yes I am counting my time between all of the bullshit from when I die and have to restart a sequence.

 

And then on the other hand the checkpoints in this game are too frequent, causing the game to be punishing in terms of collectables. if I miss some hidden thing, I often can't go back. Often a door or some kind of blockage just suddenly appears should you ever try to go back. Usually the game has saved itself after this random blockage has appeared. So you fucking have to replay the whole episode to get the items you are missing. And these episodes are not short and sweet chunks like Uncharted, there are eight episodes in the game which have taken me over an hour to finish on average.

 

Also to compound the problem with replaying an episode is that NOT ONE CUTSCENE IS FUCKING SKIPPABLE. None. There is no cutscene skipping function in this game, only pause. Maybe if they were going to be this inept to make cutscenes unskippable they should have just not had collectables altogether since this discourages ever going back to explore and clean up like any other game of this type released now. Like seriously all of these little complaints are game design 101 and are not hard in terms of programming. If you are going to have a story game with lengthy cutscenes there is no reason to overlook this kind of function. There is no reason to constantly bar off going back on every little room you go through. This is not Super Mario Bros. 1!

 

Anyway, besides the weird combat and godawful lack of basic function, I am actually generally enjoying this game. I am amazed first at all of the environmental modeling. There seems to be so much original set pieces that I am in awe of how these assets were crammed into the game without killing the whole art team. Like I don't even think I see the graffiti repeat. That means there was some artist out there just creating a bunch of original graffiti just for eye candy. I often just stop and look at stuff and read all of the little pop up signs and look at all of the ridiculous amounts of detail. I would rather not just run quickly through these levels because I feel like I am missing a city that feels very real in terms of live atmosphere and sense of scale. I love the little remnants of old Paris still hanging around and it makes me really appreciate it since I can often identify that stuff first hand having spent 10 days in Paris 6 years ago.

 

The only thing really bringing the graphics down are a lot of the characters are ugly or badly modeled. Nilin is great, most of the main characters are great but like Kid X-mas looks like something an amateur would have made. His arms are too short, he can't even cup his balls, which is one thing I hate most when it comes to bad 3D models as being able to touch your nether regions is a basic part of being a functioning human being. It's not just him though a lot of the enemies and people on the street are just these awkward blobby models. It doesn't help that most of the mocap in this game is pretty floaty and useless. This is not really just a problem with Remember Me though, I feel like mocap is such a trend for any game that approaches some sort of realism, but it's not that easy to get a good "realistic" performance. Most of the time people are just kind of jittering around and acting awkward. Brothers was a pretty awful example of just throwing in mocap for the sake of mocap. Maybe one day this trend will wear off, I don't know. Nilin's mocap is great though but I would guess many animators spent that time smoothing her out.

 

Also Nilin is just really cool. I like playing as her and hearing her speak. She's tough but not in an obnoxious feisty way. One thing I'm not sure of and could not find an answer to is if the game's original language is French or English. It's a game developed in France but the lip sync seems really broken when you turn on the French language dub. The English seems to be what it was animated to, but I also can't tell since the game seems a little out of sync with the lips matching the voices as well. Maybe that's just the Unreal engine being the Unreal engine? Anyway I'm just playing with voices in English since it is less distracting, odd that that would be the original language of the game though.

 

Also the climbing parts are really good, love this stuff. Not easy like Enslaved but not as punishing as a typical Prince of Persia (which isn't that punishing when you can rewind, but you know what I mean). I love jumping around in the cinematic environments, it's my favorite. Also those memory scenes with the rewind and manipulating things is pretty novel and just has me more psyched to use the same function in Life Is Strange.