Remember Me

Not to be confused with Remember Me starring Robert “I look like a foot” Pattinson, a movie that we should all wipe from our memories, Remember Me is a game we should never forget. I first caught wind of Remember Me while attending Tokyo Game Show and had the great honour of meeting Jean-Max Moris in person. A truly inspired man with a vision to make a different kind of game, which shows in every facet of Remember Me.

Dontnod, the company behind Remember Me first formed in 2008, started with grandiose ambitions of a game with a female protagonist and a plot centred around global warming and some idea about navigating the globe via jet ski. Later into development Jean-Max Moris decided that change was needed and the company set about changing the story and centring it around memories, an idea which blossomed from interpretations of modern social media. With this being Dontnod’s first outing into the gaming world the game almost remained unpublished until Capcom snapped it up, something we should all be thankful for.

Remember Me is based in the year 2084 where Memorize, a memory editing and distribution service, have all but monopolised the memory trade. Overseeing the control of every living and breathing memory to have ever been experienced, Memorize have created a drug more addictive than ever before, true bliss. All of these great memories start to rot and some users start to degrade with their memories becoming jumbled. Nilin, a memory hunter with a dreadful case of amnesia, awakens to find herself in some sort of laboratory which she associates as a living and breathing hell. This lab full of torture and memory cleansing sets the stage for her uprising and serves as one of the main reasons for Nilin to seek revenge and free everyone from Memorize’s grasp. The story is great and I struggled to stop playing at points, small tidbits can be found lying around as collectibles and others run throughout the story from Edge who explains to Nilin what has happened to the world because of Memorize as she struggles to regain her lost memory. In between chapters there are almost Shakespearean soliloquies that open a road to a distraught Nilin trying to piece together if this is really what she wants; was she born to remix memories? Was this her destiny? Or her curse? I was in awe of some of the twists and really enjoyed a well put together narrative. Although at times the delivery could have been better as actors could seem a tad detached.

The soundtrack and art style complement each other so well in Remember Me that you can find yourself lost in the moment.

The soundtrack and art style complement each other so well in Remember Me that you can find yourself lost in the moment. The radiant white and orange colours contrasted with red is both euphoric and awe inspiring. There were times where I would find myself stopping and just taking in the scenery of Neo Paris. Scenes are not only complemented by the music but they are made by it, the evocative music is created by Olivier Deriveire, who also composed the music to the Obscure games. This fragmented soundtrack gradually builds up as Nilin starts to uncover more about her past and comes together in the final moments of the game. Which in itself was a great way to end the game.

However the game does stumble quite dramatically at times, the camera can be fidgety and when backed into a tight corner during combat it becomes jittery. Although this can be attributed to a fault of the genre as opposed to simply that of just Remember Me. The rather boasted combo system is really just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately one of the game’s core mechanic of editing your combos isn’t quite what it is made out to be. Instead of actually editing your moves in a combo you actually just amend the attribute assigned to it, be that a health boost, power boost or power charge. And there are only 4 of them! I was greatly let down as for the most part you didn’t get the longer combos until the end of the game and after you unlock the longest combo the rest paled in comparison. There is however the other core mechanic which does do exactly what is stated on the tin. The memory remixing. While remixing memories you want to explore every nook and crannie to see all the different outcomes, good or bad, while there was only a finite few opportunities in the game to use them they are perfectly placed and are not overused like many other developers would have with such a unique and innovative idea.

I fell in love with Remember Me and Nilin. It’s a great game with a punchy and compact story. I was lost in a new world that has never been represented in games. Unfortunately the game is quite short and I felt like there could have been just a little bit more in the way of memory mixing. It’s definitely a very strong game, especially considering that we are at the end of a generation of console gaming.