Remember Me PS3 Review

Imagine if your memories were able to be remixed, giving you the chance to remember things differently to how they were in reality, impacting on who you are in the present day. How about if you could relive happy memories over and over again? meaning that you’ll never be unhappy again. It’s this interesting premise that Remember Me goes with.

The game takes place in 2084 and is set in Neo-Paris, a futuristic revision of France’s capital. Memorize has came up with an inventive technology that can digitize memories, giving people the chance to vividly remember past events of their life at will, of which turns into somewhat of an addiction for some.

Memory hunter Nilin is a heroine who has the ability to remix the memories of others to her advantage and is an Erroist of a rebel group, which is trying to take down Memorize. Nilin is a likeable and well rounded character who, somewhat ironically, is suffering from memory problems, and the intrigue of her past as well as the powerful themes running throughout makes for a highly engaging, if at times, silly narrative.

Memory remixing is incorporated into the game, but isn’t employed as much as you might imagine. Such sections see you entering the minds of others and changing their memories, impacting their world view in the present day. These play out as puzzles, which sees you manipulating objects and such to make the memories unfold differently to what they did in reality. It’s an interesting and well implemented gameplay mechanic, but would perhaps of benefitted from a bit more freedom.

Away from this, there’s rudimentary platforming, which functions like Uncharted, requiring little in the way of player skill, but Neo-Paris is a beautifully imagined environment that makes it a delight to simply absorb, and there’s also optional journals to find that details the interesting backstory of the world and its denizens that are well worth hunting down for those that want to add extra texture to the universe.

Combat is one of the more prominent elements of the game, but this has some interesting ideas that helps to set it apart from other melee based combat systems. Nilin has just four combo strings that are gradually unlocked during the course of the game. This might not sound a lot, but you’re offered the freedom to customize your combos with Pressens. There are Pressens of varying effects: ones that simply damage opponents, ones that recover your health, ones that recharge your special abilities and ones that multiply the last move in a combo. The further a Pressen is placed in a combo, the bigger the effect it will have. In terms of depth, it never manages to match the likes of Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but it’s beautifully animated and ultimately good enough for what it’s trying to do.

Remember Me’s gameplay is more than functional but is elevated by a lavish world, an interesting heroine and an intricate and cleverly constructed universe that makes it into something more memorable than it otherwise would have been.