Remember Me

Remember Me is an action-adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment in Paris, France, published by Capcom, and developed in the Unreal Game Engine, which is normally used in games that require a high level of graphic detail.  Dontnod Entertainment was founded in 2008, making Remember Me the team's first official game release.  The game is relatively short when compared to other games of the current times and can therefore be completed quickly, even on normal difficulty settings.

The Plot:

The game takes place in the year of 2084 in the city of Neo-Paris.  The biggest technological innovation in the world belongs to a company known as Memorize and is called Sensen, a technology capable of allowing people to share memories with one another and if necessary, a person can use Sensen to remove memories that they might not want.

The player takes on the role of the character known as Nilin who is a member of a group called the Errorists.  In the game's first stage, Nilin is in a prison cell and in the process of having her memory wiped, however, she manages to resist parts of the wipe.  As she is being sent off to finish the wipe a fellow Errorist by the name of Edge allows her to make her escape from the prison.  After making her escape, Nilin must take up the cause of the Errorist Movement which is to shut down Memorize.

The Player Character: Nilin

 As the player progresses through the game, the story proceeds in a way that makes the player feel as though the story is being forcibly pushed from one scene to the next, there is no time given to create any form of tension in the story or between any characters until near the very end of the game.  At the start of each level, there is no explanation as to how Nilin arrives at her location, she simply arrives at the starting location of the level.

Additionally, there are points in the narrative that should come back to  negatively affect Nilin's progression through the story, such as the remixing of Olga Sedova's memory to believe that her husband was killed during an operation performed by one of the important characters.  After remixing the woman's memory, she flies off to make funeral arrangements for her deceased husband, part of which might include the recovery of his body.  According to the game, the memory that was remixed was recent enough that Olga should be able to find out that her husband is still alive and that Nilin remixed her memory to serve the Errorist's cause, and yet later in the game, Olga is the person that  drops Nilin off at the starting location for a later level.  

The Gameplay:

Movement:

Movement throughout each level of Remember Me is very simple, the player uses the W,S,A,D keys to navigate through the levels and can use the Space button to jump.  While moving through the levels, there will be times when Nilin will be required to climb onto buildings and use them to move around obstacles that have been placed.  In a similar way to the Assassin's Creed series, Nilin can climb up poles, slide across billboards, and even climb up scaffolding to make her way to the next objective or evade certain enemies.  Unlike Assassin's Creed where the player could climb onto anything to get where you need to go, Nilin can only climb onto predetermined pieces of the environment.  As an example, there are crates in the world that only come up to Nilin's waist and there are also crates that are as tall as Nilin.  If the player were to try to jump onto the smaller crates, Nilin would only do a small hop in front of the crate.  Additionally, if the player were to try to jump onto the taller crates, Nilin would do a small hop about half of the time.  This is because the designers decided which crates the player could climb on.  Overall, the movement system has very basic functionality, however it needs a great deal of refinement.

 

Combat:

The combat system is primarily focused on building up combos through multiple hits, however, there are several factors that separate the combat system of Remember Me from the free-flow combat system of games such as the recent Batman games.  The combos are predetermined and comprised of punches and kicks.  Each individual attack is called a Pressen and as the player progresses throughout the game he/she will unlock longer combos and more Pressens to use in the combos.  Each Pressen is grouped into one of four types of attacks, these groups include attack, health regeneration, special power regeneration, and chain combos.

The Combo Screen outlining available combos and Pressens

When the player is in combat, he/she has to memorize the Pressens that make up a combo and land the hits on a target.  When an enemy moves to attack Nilin, the player can jump over a nearby enemy to evade damage and carry on the combo, or the player can jump out of the way which ends up cancelling out the combo.  Additionally, if the player is close to accomplishing a combo but defeats an enemy, the combo is instantly cancelled out and the player will have to restart the combo all over again.  Although this initially seemed like a minor annoyance to the player, it quickly evolves into a massive problem for players who can't perfectly execute combos, and given how most combat situations prevent perfect execution of long combos it is almost pointless to perform anything greater than a five hit combo.

Memory Remixing:

The final major aspect to the gameplay is the ability to remix a person's memory.  As demonstrated in previous gameplay trailers, Nilin has the ability to enter into a person's memory and find glitches in the memory, which are blurred when they are presented to the player.  Once Nilin finds one of these glitches, she is then able to change them in a way that can alter the final outcome of the memory. 

When Nilin first enters her target's memory, you are required to see the entire memory from start to finish.  Once the memory has been finished you are then given your objective by the system and you must rewind the memory to find memory glitches that could lead to the desired outcome.   However, you must start changing glitches near the start of the memory, because while rewinding someone's memory any changes that you had made will be canceled out and you will have to make the changes all over again.  Additionally, the memories and glitches are implemented in such a way as that you can either achieve the intended goal, change the memory so that the ending is a purely positive experience for the person that you are rewriting, or you can kill the person that you are rewriting.

The ability to alter someone's memory to benefit the player is a truly new and interesting gameplay mechanic, although while it was one of the big marketing points for the game, there are only four instances in the entire game where the player has to remix someone's memory, the first of which is the remixing of Olga Sedova's memory to believe that her husband was killed by the doctor performing a life saving operation. 

Remixing Olga's memory and changes made thus far

Graphics Design:

The Characters:

In most games, female characters are usually designed with several stereotypical characteristics that have become commonplace in the gaming industry.  Two of the biggest characteristics include skimpy clothing and a large chest.  It is a great relief to say that these characteristics are absent from the design of all female characters in Remember Me.  Additionally, each character is designed in a way that provides a great deal of variety, both in physical appearance and character personality.

     Character Designs

The Environment & Level Design:

One of the greatest aspects to Remember Me is the beautifully designed environment.  The world itself is very futuristic and each level evokes its own atmosphere, whether Nilin is moving through a high-class district in the city, moving through lower-city slums, or making her way through the sewers to reach her next target.  Each level is so well done that the player could get lost simply admiring each environment, however, the one thing that could stop the player from doing so is that each level is linearly designed and therefore leaves nothing to really explore. The form of environment that Dontnod had developed would have been excellent for implementing in an open world game such as Skyrim or Assassin's Creed.  In this form of game, the player could truly get to explore the world of Neo-Paris and immerse himself/herself in the world put in front of him/her.  Instead, the developers went with an level design that would be more suited to a modern warfare style first person shooter such as Call of Duty where killing everything that is shooting at you is more important than the environment.

 

Examples of the game world

Final Thoughts:

Overall Remember Me is a good game, especially for a company's first product.  It has excellent ideas for game mechanics, the characters have an overall great design that even shows that game characters do not have to follow the already accepted stereotypes, and the environment was beautifully built with an excellent details.  There are aspects that could be better which includes the combat system, level design, and the plot.  If these aspects were fixed, Remember Me could have easily been a contender for Game Of The Year for 2013.