Remember Who?

Remember Me: not particularly impressed.  I'll give it a few brownie points for trying but everything about it was kind of disgustingly sub-par.  It's kind of a mess to critique because you can see where so much work was put into it to make it into the alarmingly bland experience it was.

The premise for the story was interesting but commits the cardinal sin of not properly exploring its depth.  Here's the gist of the background so I can give an example of what I mean: in the near future a genius inventor has created a method of digitizing memory so that memories can be stored, transfered, quarantined, or deleted and the technology is so developed and so ubiquitous everyone has implants that allows them to network with virtually everything (Plot immersion breaking point #1: everyone?  Seriously?  Nobody thinks this is a bad idea?).  You play as Nilin, who is a memory hunter--a type of criminal who specializes in memory theft--but as a twist her abilities to manipulate memories are so advanced that she's able to "remix" memories, altering them so as to fiddle with the fabric of her victim's personality (Plot immersion breaking point #2: it's hard to sympathize with a character who wants to take the moral high ground when she's literally meddling with the fabric of people's identities and in numerous instances flat out cleaning out everything.)

Anyways here's the example-of-what-I-mean about the game not exploring the depth of its own ideas: midway through the game you break into the office of the CEO of the big evil megacorporation you've been fighting against in order to alter a key memory in their past to make them suddenly decide to take the company in a less evil direction.  First of all, it's weird that it's one event--and secondarily right from there the event is a car crash that they bitterly blame on their child.  Second, how is changing one memory from 20 years ago make up for everything that's happened since?  I mean the CEO literally just got done telling their secretary to prepare a list of everyone who went home early that day so they could be summarily fired the next day.  It's never hinted or mentioned anywhere that further memories are altered recursively (which would have cleared all this up)--in other words, they're going to remember each and every decision and action taken along the road to being CEO of Evil Megacorp Inc.  Third, what's to stop them from realizing they've been tampered with the instant they consult another human being and discover their recollection of events doesn't match others' and/or the physical or historical evidence?

Maybe that's a weak example.  Anyways, the game conceptually treats memories as distinct, almost-physical objects but fails to really explore how memories interact with each other to form the fabric of one's collective experience and identity.  Instead memories are absconded with, deleted wholesale, and generally mucked about with without really exploring the consequences.  They kind of deal with it in a very nebulous way in the form of the Leapers but it's wholly unsatisfying.  Lots of the plot is, frankly.

And also, like Yahtzee put it, the moment you establish at the beginning of the game that the main character can manipulate memories you might as well throw up a big gigantic neon sign saying TWIST COMING.  READY FOR THE TWIST?

The setting is pretty disappointing too.  We have this rich environment in Neo Paris and it's really elegantly fleshed out and put together--in the background to all the linear corridors you run through.  The camera is both hilarious and frustrating in its un-cooperativeness too, it really seems to fight back when I'm trying to move around and inspect the details of the environment in a way that's really baffling, like they were so obsessed with adhering to some sort of cinematic vision, the developers are actively fighting against your efforts to take a moment and look around and appreciate the art direction.  And even the game's attempts to direct your attention to some big scenic background are poor--there was one segment where I was climbing a pipe and would have missed a very nice image of the sprawling city if I hadn't suddenly noticed the music was doing some awkward swell and I was probably supposed to be looking at something other than the precarious ledges I was climbing.  The worst part is you're in a sprawling future metropolis and you literally visit 3-4 of the same general locations 2-3 times each.

The gameplay is likewise a bit disappointing for different reasons.  The keystone gimmick--memory remixing--is really, really cool but is very limited in scope and only shows up about 5 times.  The game gives you periodic ability unlocks in a kindasorta Metroidvania style but the entire game is pretty hardcore linear (if something branches off to a tiny detour you can be sure there's a collectible hiding somewhere).  The combat is slightly interesting but very samey.  They made the excellent choice of using an Arkham City style combat system but then watered it down but then give you the neat little cookie of customizable combos.  And, while this is nice, there's no real depth to it, no cost-benefit decisions to make, it's just simple pick-what-you-want-put-it-where-you-want-it visual dickery that's frankly kind of hard to appreciate when you're busy dodging shit and keeping an eye on other enemies in the thick of combat to really appreciate.

The bulk of the gameplay is the acrobatic conveniently-placed-ledge crawling and it's applied liberally and everywhere, and while it's not atrocious the game sure beats that dead horse into a pulp.

The director was some French guy and the entire first segment of the game was pretty reminiscent of Indigo Prophecy (I hope it's not the same French guy who directed that because I haven't taken the time to go make sure it wasn't).  The entire experience screams game-that-should-have-been-a-movie.  Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was trying to decide how possible it would be to just record the entire game and edit it down to an un-interactable movie.

Overall it wasn't an unpleasant experience.  The real star here was the art direction and the visual themes--the concept art for the game is gorgeous and it really came through.  Unfortunately they're the face of a superficial and dull plot and a gimmicky excuse for a video game.