Remember Me (2013)

Remember Me is high quality from beginning to the credits. The developers managed to squeeze out much more than one could expect from the simple formula. The fact that the game was done by the French aided by the Japanese shows even in the main menu – it’s obvious that the artistic side of the project was very important. [CD-Action 07/2013, p.74]

I was more surprised by how well the developers mixed fighting, climbing and exciting history with such an unusual and coherent science fiction scenario.

You get a fascinating vision of the future, in which you have to fill a few gaps yourself, if you don´t want to fall into its holes. But at the core it is a very solid story, entertaining, with a few fresh ideas – something that can’t be said about every work in this genre – and would not have been misplaced in one of the books by Gibson/Sterling. As it is, I experienced Remember Me first as this story and only second as a game of decent climbing-passages and solid brawling, which I enjoyed more as a nice form of diversion.

Remember Me is begging you that simple question. Dontnod wants you to remember the experience of Neo-Paris, but falls flat in a few areas.

Interesting and unique in its design, Remember Me takes a by-the-book approach to the action genre to create an enjoyable adventure.

In general terms, Remember Me works, but it's extremely easy and the new ideas and mechanics don't offer a remarkable addition. We would love to have a sequel in which all these issues are polished and fixed because the universe Dontnod has created is full of possibilities.

An ambitious debut title with lots of style and some promising, fancy ideas. The gameplay however falls short in too many ways: a shallow combat system, undemanding climbing sections and extremely linear level design hurt the experience quite a bit.

The best way to experience Remember Me is to sit next to someone and watch them play this game.

With a little less linearity, some easing of the hand-holding, and more focus to what works in the story, a follow-up could be fantastic. For now, Remember Me is simply a 'Good' way to spend ten hours.

So here we go: Remember Me will either be remembered for being a flawed start of an original and probably eventually very fulfilling and fun game franchise, or forgotten for its reminder of many tired video game tropes that we hope developers can start finally retiring soon. I hope it's the former, but I fear it'll more likely be the latter.

There are some really cool ideas here, and given more attention and space to grow, the game might have been something truly special. But there’s a feeling that maybe Dontnod and Capcom felt they had to hedge their bets — if they were going to make a game under a new IP with a female antagonist and a fascinating future world, they also needed to bring it back to the mainstream with Batman-like combat and Tomb Raider-like climbing. And overall, Remember Me is significantly weaker for both.

Within Remember Me, there's an outstanding game struggling to be set free, held back by a story that never takes off and claustrophobic levels that never allow the fantastic near-future setting to take center stage.

The good ideas need to be backed up with good gameplay.

Remember Me is a third-person action-adventure teenager. It tries to act insouciant, and tells its story with the breathless zeal of a youngster flushed with first love. But ironically for a game that requires you to build ‘Focus’ in order to achieve great things, it feels greatly lacking in that department.

On one hand, it's an okay action game with some welcome twists in the combat, but can be dragged down by the monotony of navigating the line-shaped path of the environment. If the rest of the game could find the same identity as the memory remixes, and even some of the Combo Lab ideas, then we wouldn't be left with a lopsided future sleeper hit on our hands.

Overall, Remember Me is just another graduate of Luc Besson's Style Over Substance Academy. It looks amazing and manages to be convincing in minor cutscenes, but the issues it raises are handled superficially and every problem is ultimately solved through violence.

Remember Me is a competent action game that never really excels. The story is wasted and the platforming is poorly implemented with the rest of the game. Still the combat system is interesting and the framing around memories is at least somewhat original.

There are a lot of ideas packed into this game but I feel like if they would have cut back on a couple of the concepts to focus more on the story then this could have been a real stand out game. As it is now Remember Me is more appealing when it gets cheaper or if you have absolutely nothing to play.

A society with lost privacy is doomed. Unfortunately, this poetic message is not enough to make an entertaining game. Remember Me needs one more instalment to enhance its gameplay.

Remember Me, ironically enough, is never really memorable. The fights have a few fun twists but never really get interesting and the platforming feels very linear. The dystopian fiction that ties everything together is riddled with holes and explained pretty badly in parts. Remember Me isn’t a bad game, it just isn’t enervating.

That art design, the game's intriguing story, and the terrific score by composer Olivier Deriviere are ultimately betrayed by Remember Me's slavish dedication to a game design that just doesn't quite work.

Remember Me doesn't do anything outright terrible, but neither does it come together as something truly great either. An interesting big idea sci-fi setting can't hold a whole game together; it needs to be coupled with equally interesting gameplay.

Will amaze for how thorough the dev team were in taking an exciting, original idea and making it as boring as humanly possible. [July 2013, p.91]

As you can see, Remember Me inspires excuses and an attempt to polish up the parts that are capable of shining, even after making a case for mediocrity. The anxiety over homogenous AAA games is only growing, making us latch on to the odd ones that dial down the shooting and make way for smart heroines. If only that alone was enough to deliver excellence, and not just the kind of game that ought to be remembered for trying.