In the year 2084, in the dystopian Paris known as Neo-Paris, the Memorize corporation has a huge influence on it's populace. A brain implant called Sensen allows sharing and addition/removal of memories. Seemingly linked to this memory modification are Leapers, which are mutated humans who exhibit aggressive behaviours and are residing in sewers beneath the city. A rebellion group known as "Errorists" aims to take down Memorize.
You play as Nilin, a memory hunter with a gifted ability to remix memories. She begins the game waking up in the process of having her memory wiped by Memorize. However, when she is in the queue to the final stage, a radio transmission comes through. A guy named Edge quickly introduces himself as the leader the Errorists and instructs Nilin on how to escape. Once Nilin returns to the Errorist hideout, she begins her journey to recover her memory and take down Memorize.
Navigating through Neo-Paris is quite the visual spectacle. The presentation of the game is brilliant - with a high level of detail in the environments with plenty of variety in the buildings and street vendors. The use of scripted events, accompanied by a brilliant musical score really brings out the atmosphere. There were plenty of moments where I was slowly walking and panning the camera around to take it all in. It evoked similar feelings when I played Mass Effect, and comparisons can be made in its cinematic approach.
However, the game is extremely linear. You are constantly pushed along a set path with no scope to explore which is probably the only downside to the game – although this can be a major downside to a lot of players who are used to the open-world style games.
Nilin is very agile both in and out of combat. You will be traversing the environment by climbing ledges and drain pipes, jumping from wall to wall, and leaping across gaps. The way forward is signposted so you cannot get lost and you can only climb on a limited amount of pre-scripted surfaces.
There are two types of secrets. One type of collectible boost your health/focus gauge. You get a picture hint to show you where these are. Some of these I felt it would have been better being a proper secret, wheareas others felt like puzzles as you may recognise part of the scene, but have to orientate youself or work out the path to get to that area. The other type of collectible unlock concept art and lore, and are found in similar places but no hints are provided for these.
In combat, you will be taking down various types of guards and Leapers. Nilin can punch, kick, dodge and use special moves. You cannot block or counter-attack, but the dodge manoeuvre evades damage and allows you to continue your combo.
There are five special moves known as S-Pressens that are introduced over the course of the game. These use your Focus gauge which increases when you deal or take damage. The first one you acquire is called Sensen Fury which allows you to attack rapidly; useful against a large number of enemies and break through guarding enemies. Sensen DOS stuns the majority of enemies and is mostly used for type of Leapers that are invisible in the shadows. Logic Bomb has an area of effect and is useful for the armoured Enforcers. Sensen RIP can turn robots into friendly units; then explode. Sensen Camo is useful for taking down the Elite Enforcers by allowing you to assassinate them from behind.
At certain points, you will encounter boss fights. These are varied, so sometimes it's a one-on-one fight, whereas others have waves of minions to take down . When the bosses health is reduced, you need to perform a quick-time-event to finish them off. The strange thing is the button prompts sometimes give you exact buttons, other times it gives you icons. Not sure if that is a bug or intentional, but it is confusing.
The hand-to-hand combat is focused around a feature called Combo Lab which gives customisation to Nilin's 4 set combos. The first combo you are given is a simple three-punch manoeuvre. With each blow, you can customise the effect with what are known as Pressens. These come in four forms: Power (damage bonus), Regen (heals a small portion of health), Cooldown (reduces cool down of special moves), or Chain (increases the effect of damage).
You can never change the button combinations themselves, so throughout the game, you are stuck with the four combinations. It sounds limited, but the fact that the combos rely on timing and the game constantly throws various types and number of enemies at you; you have to constantly consider your strategy. Simply mashing buttons won't be effective here. There are many enemies that are resistant or weak against certain types of attacks, so you need to use the Cooldown Pressens to be able to use your S-Pressens again (in a reasonable time). You may switch your combo to use Power and Cooldown, but when you start running low on health, then you can switch them out temporarily for health restoration. Later on in the game, when you have more Pressens available, I liked assigning Regen to the three-punch combo, and assigning the others to the longer combos to give a simple way of quickly restoring health, but giving me the option of a stronger attack.
Another interesting idea featured in the game is Memory Remix which is only utilised four times within the game but provides a nice break from the action. Nilin watches a scene play out from a character's memory. You then rewind the scene and must spot objects which exhibit a 'glitch' animation. These can be interacted with which then can change the course of events. Achievement hunters or completionists may want to try every combination to see all the different endings to these events, but there is one particular scenario you are looking for. There is some trial and error involved but you should be able to logically work out what you need to do by observing the change in character behaviour. It's great playing detective, although what Nilin is doing is highly unethical; the change drastically changes the person's outlook on life.
There are times in the game where Nilin acquires a gun like device. In combat, this can be quickly fired like a pistol, or unleashed fully charged like a shotgun. Outside combat, this can be used for opening certain doors, either by blasting them, or simple puzzles involving transferring energy from one source to another. There are some light stealth elements too where you must avoid patrol drones. These situations are usually as simple as observing the route, then timing your run to the next safe area. There are a couple of times where you must open and shut doors to trap the drones inside.
When I think about the elements to the gameplay, there's definite improvement to be made. Having a bit more freedom to navigate and discover more of the city would have been amazing and would have made the platform elements more fun. The combat could be improved by allowing the player to create a couple of their own combos (in terms of actual button presses).
However, I feel that the game did a lot right with its game design. It keeps things fresh by constantly rotating the elements. Combat will be broken up with platforming sections, but before that becomes overused, you are given more story development, new game-play concepts, or even a puzzle.
These days, I find it hard to play games for long periods of time, but Remember Me kept me engrossed for hours at a time and I ended up finding it hard to put the game down. Despite being really linear, if you ignore that and just go with it, you will be too captivated to actually care.