I know that there are plenty of people that don't like this game, but really, Remember Me is amazing, and this is coming from a guy who's not really into sci-fi stuff. I get that there are certain things that people have issues with, but for me, there was very little that I didn't like about this game. I'll give a basic runthrough of my thoughts on each element. Setting The game takes place in the year 2084, in Paris (now known as Neo-Paris), and there's a special kind of technology called "Sensen" that's been created by the corporation "Memorize". The Sensen allows people to transfer memories with others, and almost everything in Neo-Paris revolves around this tech. However, there are darker aspects that this technology can be twisted into, and the game takes full advantage of it. The extent of the darker elements are undoubtedly a prison known as "La Bastille" that wipes the memories of their prisoners and then disposes of said prisoners in the slums of the city, leaving them reduced into malformed creatures. The game even touches on political corruption, something that I don't often see explored in video games (probably for fear of offending the IRL government), and it's done incredibly well and realistically here. I mean, as realistically as you can expect for a future that utilizes a technology made for transferring people's memories. But yeah, as a fan of darker themes in video games, I really like what Remember Me did with the Sensen. With the way it works, it can very obviously be used in corrupt ways, and the game knows that and fully realizes it. Nilin There are several notable characters in the game, but I'll dedicate this section to talking about the main protagonist - Nilin. In a nutshell, she feels like a futuristic version of Lara Croft, from the athleticism to the accent. She's a character of mixed race, and I feel like we don't often see characters like that in media, but it does give her some uniqueness, which I always enjoy when it comes to character design. People have complained about her personality feeling pretty stiff and emotionless, and while she does have a pretty blunt demeanor a lot of the time, there are also plenty of moments in the game where she shows more emotion and depth. Her outfit looks great as well, making her appear both stylish and badass! Thanks to the artbook, I know that the development team wanted her to have an outfit that struck a good balance of modern and futuristic, and I think that was pulled off incredibly well here. And I gotta say, she's hella attractive as well. You can tell that the game knows that, too, which is why a lot of the cutscenes give you a great view of her butt from time to time. There's been some complaints about this as well, seeing it as gratuitous and even sexist, though I personally don't see it like that. It's not like she's got the biggest female butt in all of video games or anything (I think that crown goes to Haydee), but it's still sizable and very shapely, without looking proportionally unbalanced to the rest of her. So I don't think it's that big a deal. Gameplay This is what the game is most criticized for, and I can see why. I did struggle with the fighting and parkour mechanics at first, but I got the hang of them soon enough. I'll start by talking about the fighting aspect of the game. The fighting is done by building combos beforehand and then delivering them onto the enemies through a combination of left-clicks and right-clicks of the mouse (on PC, anyways). Some attacks do more damage, some attacks heal you, some attacks help to regenerate your powers... there's a nice variety, and arranging them properly in the Combo Lab can help you be more effective in combat. There are also five powers that get unlocked one-by-one throughout the game, each one providing a different beneficial effect while fighting enemies, and there are even a few types of enemies that can most easily be taken down by the usage of a particular power. Nilin's Sensen also notifies you of when an attack is coming your way, giving you a second or two to dodge out of the way with a cool flip. It's almost like Spiderman's spider sense, in a way. The only real issue I have with the combat system is that the auto-aiming with the Spammer (that's the weapon that looks like a bunch of broken glass on Nilin's forearm) can sometimes end up locking onto the wrong enemy, but this mistake only has the chance of happening if there are a lot of enemies in a group. Otherwise, I think the combat system works fine enough. And the parkour is pretty cool as well. It does a good job of showing how fit and athletic Nilin is, and best of all, her Sensen also points out all the possible paths that she can take in every parkour section, which is incredibly handy. But the coolest game mechanic (and arguably the one I had the most trouble of getting the handle on) is the memory remix one. It shows a cutscene playing out, and there are glitches in the cutscenes that allow you to alter things, and therefore change the outcome. You move the mouse in a counter-clockwise motion to rewind the cutscene, and a clockwise motion to move it forward. I had trouble with it because I didn't know that you could right-click to pause the cutscene so that you can properly select a glitch, and I was just playing and rewinding on glitches to try and select them right as they happened. It wasn't until the final memory remix scene that I realized I could right-click to pause it. But yeah, as difficult as it was for me for a while, the memory remixing is a REALLY awesome game mechanic, a mechanic I've never seen anything like in other games. Visuals One of my biggest praises for this game are for the visuals, because they are BEAUTIFUL! The environments are so large and rich with visuals, and while it can occasionally make it difficult to tell where you're supposed to go, it still looks incredible. Keep in mind that this game was made back in 2013, too; you wouldn't expect a game made in that year to have this much detail put into the environments. I did find out that the reason that Neo-Paris looks so incredible and expansive is because Remember Me was originally supposed to be an open-world game, where you could explore where you wanted to. But somewhere along the development line, it got changed to be more linear, and while that's perfectly fine, it does feel like a shame that so much effort was put into the environments, only for the players to not be able to explore all of them. Though there are over a dozen points in the game where the camera pulls back and gives you a big view of the background, and it was nice when that happened, since it shows that the development team were aware of how good the environments looked and wanted to show them off. And the great visuals often extended to the cutscenes, too. The motion capture for the characters and enemies add a lot to the cutscenes, and made them feel very smooth and polished. Granted, it could use some work when it comes to the faces, but the bodies move realistically enough. Conclusion Remember Me is an underrated gem. It ironically got forgotten to time, but I'll always remember it. As cool as it is as a game, I would honestly love to see a live-action movie about it. I've seen a few people saying that the plot would've worked better in a movie rather than a video game, and while I don't know if it would be BETTER, I do think it would still be amazing. Y'know, so long as they don't inject modern Hollywood tropes into it, mainly the whole "strong female character" thing that borderlines on feminism. I've seen plenty of bad examples of that in movies, and I'd hate to see Nilin get that treatment, since she's already a greatly-written character in this game. I give Remember Me a solid 8/10!
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