REVIEW -- Remember Me

If you asked me what two games I was anticipating at the start of 2013, it would have been Platinum Games' Anarchy Reigns and Capcom's Remember Me. I ended up picking up the game early in 2014 after neglecting to pick it up in 2013 after hearing not many favorable reviews to take the time to work on other games plaguing my gaming backlog, but over the last weekend I finally had a chance to knock this sucker off my gaming backlog.

Remember Me is an action-adventure video game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Capcom. It was released in June 2013 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game's plot focuses on Nilin, a memory hunter working for an underground resistance called the Errorists. When the game starts, she has been stripped of nearly all her memories by mega-corporation Memorize. With the help of a mysterious man named Edge, she goes on a quest to bring down Memorize and recover her lost memories.

Plot: (FULL Spoilers)

Setting:

The game is set in the year 2084, in a futuristic version of Paris called Neo-Paris. The Memorize corporation has invented a new brain implant called the Sensation Engine (Sensen), which enables roughly 99% of the population to upload and share their memories on the net, as well as remove unhappy or unpleasant memories. This gives Memorize an immense degree of control over the population and enables them to establish a surveillance state. This, in turn, leads to a small group of rebels forming under the name "Errorists": their mission is to bring down Memorize. The invention of the Sensen has also resulted in the creation of Leapers; memory-addicted humans who have absorbed so many memories that their Sensen has degraded and they have mutated into a subhuman form, now living in the sewers of Neo-Paris.

Story: 

The game begins as Nilin (Kezia Burrows), an Errorist imprisoned in the Bastille Fortress, is having almost all her memory wiped by Memorize. As she is taken to have the last of her memories wiped, a mysterious man called Edge, leader of the Errorists and a man she only hears over her comm device, helps her escape. Edge tells her that she is an Errorist with the gift of both stealing and remixing memories. After escaping into the slums of Neo-Paris, Nilin encounters Tommy, a fellow Errorist. Suddenly, Nilin and Tommy are attacked by Olga Sedova, a bounty hunter chasing Nilin. Nilin dives into Olga's mind and remixes her memory to make Olga become an Errorist ally and she transports Nilin to her first destination.

Arriving in the Saint-Michel district, Nilin, who is aided by another Errorist codenamed Bad Request, is told by Edge to steal secret codes from Kaori Sheridan, Neo-Paris' top architect. After retrieving and uploading the codes to Edge, he uses the codes to open the Saint-Michel dam, flooding the district. Due to the flood draining out the slums, Nilin is able to infiltrate the Bastille and heads to the memory servers to free the stored memories of herself and the inmates while taking down Madame, the sadistic manager of the Bastille. After defeating Madame, Nilin releases the memories of the inmates and partially regains some of her own. She remembers the crime that landed her in the Bastille; on a mission, Nilin remixed the mind of a Memorize commander and made him believe he had killed his girlfriend. The altered memory pushed him to commit suicide.

Nilin reluctantly goes along with Edge's next plan: to remix the CEO of Memorize, Scylla Cartier-Wells, to make her see the harm her company's technology is causing. Nilin makes her way into Scylla's office and enters her mind, remixing the memory of a car crash which left her with a bitter taste against the world. As she changes the memory to make Scylla a more compassionate person, Nilin discovers that she is Scylla's daughter. Nilin is then told by Edge to head for the Bastille basements to save Bad Request, who has been taken captive. She finds Bad Request, but discovers that his memory has been fully wiped. Nilin then discovers that Memorize scientist Doctor Quaid is trying to find a way to control the Leapers through their Sensens to create a private army for Memorize. However, Johnny Greenteeth, a former co-worker of Quaid's who was experimented on and turned into a Leaper, kills Quaid and prepares to self-destruct the Bastille. Bad Request helps Nilin take down Johnny at the cost of his life and Nilin escapes the destroyed facility.

With all of Memorize's secret operations taken down, Edge presses Nilin to find the Conception Cube, Memorize's central base, and destroy H3O, the Memorize Central Server. Once there, she encounters her father, Charles Cartier-Wells, the creator of the Sensens. Upon finding him, she sees that, fueled by the car accident that injured his wife, he has become lost in a dream of an ideal world free from painful memories, all inspired by the desire to help Nilin forget about the accident. Nilin makes him see the harm his technology causes, and Scylla arrives to convince Charles to help Nilin enter the Central Server. Once in the presence of the Central Server, it is revealed to Nilin that Edge is a self-aware entity created by the amalgamation of unwanted memories within H3O. Nilin, who unwittingly started Edge with the memories of her unhappy childhood, enters the Server and, at H3O/Edge's will, she destroys him and releases the memories back into the general population.

As the memories are released, Nilin remembers Edge's words about the mind being a fortress, and says that Edge died to remind people that memories should not become open to all, and that painful memories should be lived with rather than forcibly removed. She finishes that outside her now-restored mind she has a family again and a damaged world to heal.

The Verdict:

Visuals & Sound:

This is simply gorgeous to watch and play. I'll admit that this is one of the prettiest last-generation games to behold in HD settings. I had friends enter the room while I was playing this game and they thought it was a live-action movie from how detailed the character models and environments.

Olivier Deriviere composed the game's soundtrack that compliments the game's visuals in every way possible. There's a few tracks that stick out above the rest, namely the awesome musical drama that was the Madame boss fight. You would think it was the final boss from the tone of the music.

That's how the environments and overall atmosphere of this game tends to catch you by surprise. There's always something visually or audibly stunning in this game that sticks out.

Controls: 

Xbox 360

PlayStation 3

Gameplay:

Basic gameplay consists of maneuvering Nilin throughout Neo-Paris with Assassin's Creed/Uncharted-inspired platforming and navigation, while engaging in hand-to-hand combat when enemies present themselves. When Nilin's not in combat, she has no access to her S-Pressens (see below) and can only use the Junk Bolt to destroy environmental hazards. Unfortunately, she cannot use this nor the Spammer on security drones.  

Combat: 

Feel free to apply these combos to your own Nilin.

The fighting system in Remember Me is in many respects unique. Thanks to the option of developing own combinations you can determine what types of attacks Nilin is supposed to launch, and what their purpose is (regeneration, inflicting heavy damage etc.). Just to remind you, there are five types of moves in the game:

• Basic moves (grey) - Every combo, regardless of whether it consists of three or even eight hits, starts with the basic move. This type of attacks inflicts regular damage and there are no additional "properties" to them.

• Power move (Power Pressens - red) - this category unlocks during the first battle you fight with mutants i.e. right after episode one starts. The main property of this kind of moves is that they allow you to inflict heavier damage.

• Regeneration moves (Regen Pressens - orange) - this category unlocks after you meet one of the larger swarms of mutants on your way to Tommy's bar in episode one. The main property of these moves is replenishing Nilin's health bar with each blow that land properly.

• Cooldown moves (Cooldown Pressens - purple) - this category unlocks after you meet a big group of enforcers at the beginning of episode two. The main property of this type of moves is that they cut down the waiting times for the regeneration of special attacks (S- Pressen)

• Chain moves (Chain Pressens - blue) - this category unlocks during the crossing through the second part of the slums in episode three of the game. The main property of this type of moves is that they boost the effectiveness of the previous moves in that combo.

No matter how many times I saw this in-game, it NEVER stopped
looking extremely bad ass...

Nilin acquires 5 S-Pressens over the course of the game's narrative to assist her in combat.

There are 5 S-Pressens in Remember Me, all unlocked throughout the story:

Pressen         Description
Sensen Fury 60 second cooldown - Allows Nilin to chain critical strikes similar to Batman: Arkham titles.
Sensen DOS 180 second cooldown - Stuns all enemies onscreen and reveals hidden or camouflaged enemies
Sensen RIP 180 second cooldown - Manipulates mechanical enemies to turn on their masters, causing them to either self-destruct or direct their fire towards other enemies
Sensen Camo 180 second cooldown - Turns Nilin invisible and allows her to instantly Overload one enemy
Logic Bomb 180 second cooldown - Sticks a bomb to the nearest enemy and detonates, delivering massive damage to all within the blast radius

I loved the custom combo system, but the game doesn't push players hard enough to experiment with it - at least not until the dreaded boss fight against Johnny Greenteeth. 

That being said, I don't see why most people struggle so much with that boss fight, but my advice is keep your combos VERY short and save your longer strings for Johnny after he's stunned from Sensen DOS or slap him with a Logic Bomb to deal with the crowd of enemies swarming you during this boss fight. The key with ALL of the harder fights late in the game is to use your cooldown attacks in your shorter strings to shave off your cooldown for you can use Nilin's Sensen abilities again more frequently. For example, my basic 3-hit combo string was had the basic default attack, followed by a cooldown Pressen, then ended with a chain Pressen to amplify the effect of the cooldown. If I needed to dodge or evade, then I could move out of the way and do this string again and again, hitting and running until my Sensen abilities were available again. I don't recommend other players doing this, but I would manually exchange the cooldown for the regeneration Pressen in my basic 3-hit combo in enemy encounters that reduced Nilin to near-fatal status. 

The same combos win most enemy encounters and longer strings are discouraged by enemies frequently interrupting them with their offense because of those strings' length and the time to execute them properly. I finished the game on Normal difficulty without EVER using the final combo string in its entirety.

Yes, combat actually looks THIS damn good during gameplay.

I want to cite one major issue with the game's enemy AI. It likes to swarm you to the point that Nilin is almost to brink of not being able to mount an offense. In the Batman Arkham games, you're able to simply do a few redirects/evasions to position yourself in a more favorable position to continue your offense. In this game, the enemies continuously maintain that swarm mentality, so you're forced to dispatch them as quickly as possible before they overwhelm Nilin with their numbers. 

The Sensen Rust In Pieces (RIP) was a really unique skill that allowed you to control robotic enemies and turn them against their humanoid allies, but the game doesn't provide you with enough robots to really take advantage of this ability. The same could be said about Sensen Camo against the Elite Enforcers. The Overload status effect was something I wish that could have been done more enemies than just the token few it was limited to. 

That being said, the game doesn't give you enough enemy variety in terms of opponents to mix up your tactics until the last two levels of the game. By this point, you're going to wipe the floor with these guys as they are a cakewalk to dispatch as you have been facing these clowns for majority of the game anyway, so it's pretty much a trip down memory lane. (Laughs) See what I did there?

I thought it was pretty damn stupid that the game gives you the Spammer and Junk Bolt abilities, but you cannot use them on the security drones in the game's "stealth" sections.

The targeting sucks, plain and simple. You have to be looking directly at whatever it is your trying to target and switching targets is very difficult to achieve. Would it have killed the developers to simply add a lock-on button in this game? Capcom did this with the Devil May Cry (DmC) reboot and now this. Not every action game can get away without having a targeting/lock-on button.

Keep an eye on your combo gauges when you attack. Nilin will sometimes start a combo over if you wait too long to press the attack button again or if you dodge over a different person you are attacking. Dodging can be a little finicky. Be really careful where you hit the stick, you may wanna dodge left but she could front flip forwards right into an pending enemy attack or one that has a ton of active frames. God, you can tell that Capcom wanted this to be a legit fighting game at times...

Another thing annoyed me with the gameplay. The cameras can spin around uncontrollably in the middle of a fight, especially in tight places like hallways. It could cause you to mess up a combo or dodge right into the hands of another enemy. This is a PlayStation 2-era problem - there is NO excuse for camera issues to still be plaguing games a decade later. 

The game does have some enjoyable boss fights (despite most people's disgust with the Johnny Greenteeth fight) that tests your handle on Nilin's abilities:

• Kid X-mas - Tests your grasp on understanding the Combo Lab at this point of the game and how to create a powerful combo to breach Kid X-mas' defenses. 

• AV-78 Zorn - A simple exhibition on using your Spammer and Junk Bolt abilities in combat.

• Madame - Tests your understanding of how to successfully use Sensen DOS with Nilin's other abilities. This was easily my favorite boss fight in the entire game just from the visual presentation and strategy used to beat her alone.

• Johnny Greenteeth - This boss is a lot like the fight with Madame, but it tests your meter management skills as you deal with multiple Leapers and Johnny as he teleports around the arena. Proper usage of Sensen DOS and the ability to cooldown Nilin's S-Pressens as fast as possible are a must here. 

• H30 (Phase One) - This boss tests the player's ability to build up Focus meter for Sensen Fury as fast as possible. Once again, this builds upon the strategy of knowing how to cooldown Nilin's S-Pressens as fast as possible from the Johnny Greenteeth fight. 

• H30 (Phase Two) - Same as the previous phase, but this time Nilin is relying heavily on Sensen RIP instead.

• H30 (Phase Three) - Same as the previous phase, but Nilin is going have to deal with a LOT of crowd control as she relies on Sensen Fury, Sensen DOS, and Junk Bolt to defeat the final boss. 

The total game time to complete the game accumulates to roughly 7-10 hours and there's little to no replay value unless you're hunting collectibles, such as the Mnesist files, Scaramechs and SAT Patches and Focus Boosts to boost Nilian's stats and focus points, or replaying the game on a higher difficulty setting.  

Narrative: 

Nilian's story was interesting for the most part, but by the end of the game it got cliched and VERY predictable, especially the ending. It's a damn shame too as I really hoped that Capcom and Dontnod would have pushed the boundaries and dug deeper with this concept of a corporate conglomerate monetizing memories. At the end of the day, you get a rather bland, yet predictable narrative. The plot comes across more like the story of a rebellious computer hacker (especially during the game's final boss fight) than a story about the importance of memories.

Speaking of memories, I wish the game took the time to allow players to remix more memories. There are only roughly five of these sequences in the game, but it feels like the game is simply forcing you to play film editor and move around the pieces of the clip to complete the cutscene the developers were too lazy to finish during the game's development.

A part of me wishes that Dontnod pushed the envelope and made the memory remixing concept have a cause and effect system on the narrative, much like the Mass Effect series or TellTale Games' take on choices in The Walking Dead video games. It just seems like a huge opportunity that was missed here in terms of the narrative. To it's credit, it was an interesting and unique concept, but I wish Dontnod went further with it than they took the concept here. Instead, the narrative comes across as

Closing Words:

I regret that I didn't take the time to pick up and play this game earlier. It's not as bad as most reviews out there say it is, but it's a far cry from being a game of the year candidate. All this game, along with Dontnod Entertainment, is asking from gamers is a mere weekend of your time to see their vision through from start to finish.

Among the trend of female protagonists gaining popularity over the past year with Elle (The Last of Us), Clementine (The Walking Dead: The Video Game), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider reboot),  and even Elizabeth (BioShock: Infinite), it's a nice breath of fresh air to see a different race used for the female protagonist instead of the typical white Caucasian female, even though Nilin is later revealed to be a mixed breed of African-American and Caucasian. This is a step in the right direction for more races to have something to identify with in gaming.

Nilin is a character that I had the pleasure of getting to know her over the course of the game. She, much like this game, isn't perfect and rough around the edges, but if you stick around to hear her story from beginning to end, you would appreciate taking the time to experience what this game had to offer.

I'm giving Remember Me an 8 out of 10.

This is Nilin's personal "fuck you" to all gamers who haven't
given her game a fair chance.

It sucks to hear that this game never would have came out period if Capcom didn't jump on board as the publisher when Sony scrapped the idea of this game originally being developed as a PlayStation 3 exclusive called Adrift. I would like to thank both Dontnod and Capcom for making this game available to a widespread audience as a multi-platform title.

If you want to see what this game has to offer, Kotaku has a nice article here, highlighting the top 5 things that you should know about this game.