I’ve been reading reviews to try and see what people are complaining about and to see if I agree with these comments for when I do our review here, and I can’t say I agree with the complaints. You have to realize this is Dontnod’s first title, and it’s a rather ambitious title. If anything, this is really a testing ground for them and Capcom to see if this franchise has a future. In my eyes, looking at it this way, it does.
Remember Me ties in several great ideas, and does a majority of them well. For starters they took the fighting genre and found a way to evolve it. With every battle you come across, you will have several options to go through and tons of depth to do it. You unlock moves to complete combos, each combo can increase several aspects of your character. You can create combos that will increase health when completed, or unlock special moves. This actually makes you want to do several different combos instead of repeating the same combo over and over again. The longer the combo, the stronger the effect it has. It adds a level of depth for fighting that not many other games can offer.
Another aspect of the game is the Memory Remixing. This is the aspect of the game that had me the most excited. You can get into other characters minds and change how things happen. Through this the character could die, or you can cause something to happen that dramatically changes the characters motive. I find it interesting that there are several different routes you can take, and you can keep watching and twisting things till you get things right.
I do wish these were a little more in-depth however. Possible different outcomes would be awesome instead of searching for one specific one to continue the story. This seems to be my biggest concern with the entire game. Everything is one giant idea, but nothing truly develops into anything strong. Being the first title this developer made though, that’s to be expected. They were turned down from publishers and didn’t have the biggest of budgets, so the sequel will be phenomenal.
That’s not to say this game is entirely lacking though. The music in this game is absolutely breath taking. It makes you want to keep playing on its own, as it swiftly changes from orchestra and mysterious music, to electronic fast paced music during fighting. The story itself isn’t as in-depth as I expected, but the way its told makes you want to hear more and more. You get involved with the main character, and you want to hear her talk more about the story. Her voice acting is rather strong too, in fact one of my favorite voice actors of the generation.
There are some things I expected, but felt somewhat failed so far. For some reason I was expecting this game to be an open world style adventure. Yet it’s a lot more linear than I would have thought. You go into a lot of corridor style environments and are often pushed in a very specific route. The environments look jaw dropping and vibrant, but overall it feels a bit restricted. The combat does get a bit repetitive as each enemy takes quite a while to take down. You will encounter new ways to fight different enemies, but they take a lot of punches to get by. While the main characters voice is awesome, a lot of the side characters are bland and somewhat annoying, heck even the sound quality of some wasn’t too great. I’m pretty much through the whole game and I also haven’t done a whole lot of the memory areas. The entire game focuses on you doing this, but it still isn’t a central focus like expected.
Overall though, regardless of reviews, I am absolutely loving this game. I honestly had to tear myself away from the game to stop and write this quick preview of our later review (Sorry was at E3!). Heck I purchased The Last of Us the same day I got to play this game, and forgot to switch games the entire day. No I’m not saying it’s better than any other games, but I will say this will be one of those overlooked titles people will be loving down the road. I do truly hope Capcom sees this as well and gives the studio another shot with a Remember Me sequel of some regard. I’d love to see these aspects expanded on and the game given an even bigger budget to do everything properly. We will have a full review soon.
