PixlBit

Happy Monday fellow Pixlbits!

Be safe in the knowledge that these here waters contain no spoilers.

 

Following on from my initial impressions blog last Thursday, I completed the main story of Remember Me yesterday evening. On the whole, my opinion of the game itself has not changed much to be honest. I still feel that the games balance between good aspects and bad ones pretty much balance each other out. Art design great, combat good, story meh, traversal poor. I do think it says a lot for the games ability to hold the players attention though that I finished it in less than a week.

Some additional information on top of the impressions blog I can add involve the combat. Like many games of this genre, combat becomes more fun as you advance further and unlock more combat options. Diversity is key, you see. Once the combo system becomes second nature (took me maybe three hours to fully grasp), the player can start to strategize on how to approach each situation. The assortment of enemy types is pretty good with maybe five unique units in addition to some minor variations of each. Some enemies require a particular approach but for the most part, our hero Nilin is punching, kicking & dodging her way through the lot. Overall, combat is fun and by the end I felt like a real bad ass which is always a good sign the game is doing something right.

You can run, but you can't hide!

Be warned, combat gets pretty fast paced to say the least and the occasional button press slip up can cause some serious frustration. Therein, you see, lies my biggest issue with Remember Me. Polish. I can say for certainty that there were moments in my playthrough that some of my button inputs were not processed resulting in me either taking damage or missing out on an opportunity. It’s annoying that a game which obviously received a lot of attention in some areas, would allow something so fundamental to go wrong. Fast paced combat only works if the combat system is reliable and at times, Remember Me’s is not. Pure and simple. A shame.

Another issue I ran into last night (which had me close to quitting), resulted in me having to replay a boss battle. A rather tough boss battle I might add. On my initial effort, upon defeating the two bosses faced in the penultimate episode, the game did not read that my enemies had been bested. Instead, I was trapped in the combat zone with no route out. At first, I thought I was merely missing something so I spent some time to review the area but I eventually realized it was in fact an issue. Nothing to do but reload, which I did, and so, when bested for the second time, a video sequence played and I was able to venture onward. There’s a lot of shit I can put up with in games, but bugs such as this I cannot. I’ll be honest and say that if this had occurred in an earlier episode, I probably would have quit right there and then but knowing I was near the end, I pushed forward.

One thing, it would be remiss of me to leave out, are the Memory Remixes. I mentioned these in my impressions blogs but to rehash, they involve our hero rewriting the memory on an opponent to change their existing viewpoint. And……………… they’re great! Players rewind time by rotating the left thumbstick anti-clockwise and are given several options in each remix to change things up. There’s always a target result, so players much choose their options carefully to effect correctly the existing memory. It’s a lot of fun and a great addition to the gameplay experience. If I recall correctly, there are five Memory Remix sections in the game; each being interesting with some rather intense target results.

So Shane, would you recommend Remember Me?

Quick answer: Yes but not for $60. In fact maybe not even for $30 for the obvious reasons mentioned. Remember Me is rightfully so considered bargain bin material by many and I wouldn’t argue against that. I will say though that even with the issues, my 10 hour playthrough proved enjoyable. Great art design and interesting combat make this a worthy pickup and you can’t beat its current price of “free” on PS+.

Anyone else get around to trying this? What do you think?

To continue my PS+ freebies journey, I downloaded Tomb Raider last night. I should be able to start later this week so look out for some opinions on that in the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading as always everyone. I hope we all have a wonderful week!

Later