Here is a video (SFW) promoting a new Xbox/PS3 game called Remember Me. Set in Neo-Paris in 2084, a corporation has created a device that allows almost anyone to upload their memories to be experienced by anyone else. You play as Nilin, a former “Memory Hunter” who has no memories of her own.
Even if this video wasn’t about a game, it’s absolutely gorgeous and may even jerk a tear or two.
Remember Me comes out on June 4. I’m preordering my copy today. Thoughts?
I’ve had have an eye on this since I saw some stuff about it at PAX East, but not so excited that I feel any urge to preorder. In fact, why are you preordering? Do you get some free stuff that you actually want? Preordering otherwise is a bad idea.
I guess preordering isn’t necessary for this one… suppose I got a little over-excited. 
Anyway, why is this game generating such little buzz?
What’s there to get excited about? I’m not saying the concept isn’t interesting. I also like the art style and general direction of the game. But there’s not actually a lot on display yet. Aside from some fighting sequences which look so-so, the actual game and its features isn’t very well described.
My big concern with the game is that the only choice I’ve seen so far is “Which improbable super-kung-fu move do you want to buy first?” I haven’t yet seen any evidence of whether you can make substantial or interesting choices about gameplay.
I don’t get it. I skipped ahead in the video because I got bored.
the video had nothing to do with gameplay. i have always held the opinion that videos with no gameplay footage is irrelevant. i was more interested in some of the videos making up the montage than the game.
Preordering (at least on PC) gets you a “combo pack” DLC with three martial arts moves. I don’t know if they are unique to the DLC or if it’s an “early unlock” sort of thing where you ultimately get the moves anyway.
That video shows absolutely nothing about a game, what is there to be buzzing about?
I didn’t click the video link, but yeah, WTF, why link to that when you could link to this?
Does that help, folks?
Joystiq just put up a pretty negative review.
Yeah. Saw that this morning, was disappointed. It’s not doing very well on Metacritic either, though there’s an unusually large spread between the Xbox version (68) PC (70) and PS3 (75). And I doubt that’s due to any technical superiority in the PS3 version.
Vaguely annoyed, because if this doesn’t sell well, publishers are going to be back on the “games with female leads don’t sell well.” podium.
Maybe. I’m not all that convinced that exists, or at least that it exists very strongly. I’m more convinced the developer knew they had a dog on their hands and spent their budget on marketing and press manipulation rather than doing something decent with it. And what better way to get attention than to proclaim how noble you are and how you hd to struggle just to get your vision out, hmmm?
Well, I can’t speak for this game in particular except that they did assert that they had problems finding a publisher because some of them outright rejected the idea of a female lead.
However, there’s actual hard data about the female leads thing.
So yeah, I don’t think you’re correct there.
Also, DEVELOPERS don’t usually spend ANY of their budget on “marketing and press manipulation” unless they don’t have a publisher. Which this game does. I’d also disagree that this game is remotely bad enough to be consider a “dog”. It’s just not good enough to be a hit. Averaging a 70 on Metacritic is not some sort of colossal failure.
Ugh. I’m very disappointed that the review upthread was so lukewarm. Guess I’ll buy a used copy when they start hitting the shelves in 3 weeks.
Nice video, and the “Journal of Antoine” linked there was great too. They must have put a lot of work into it.
Too bad it’s apparently a failure. Not that I was a potential buyer. I don’t have much of an interest in action-oriented games. But precisely, it seems weird to have used this interesting concept for an action game.
Also, I feel a deep repulsion for the implant the characters have at the base of the neck.
Kotaku gave it a pretty positive review.
Not everyone hated it - a Metacritic average of 70 doesn’t mean that every reviewer gave it a 70. It means that for every 90 there’s a 50, more or less. But a lot of people didn’t like it, quite strongly. That’s all.
The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that the combat is boring and repetitive and becomes too button mashy. This surprises me with the customizable combo system. You’d think you could keep changing it if you got bored.
A lesser complaint but the one that actually bothers me the most is that there are only four remix sections.
Still, what I’ve seen on Let’s Plays makes me think the game is rather good. And I don’t mind button mashing.
It’s actually not all that customizable.
You basically have up to four different combos (sets of button presses you cannot change) and a list of moves that you can assign to each of the buttons. The moves are all physically different but mechanically equivalent, take the same time, etc… the only difference being the effect they apply to the enemy (whether it’s more damage, health leech, super-move cooldown…)
Yup. And while the concept is very nice, in execution they’re not that interesting in the end.
Been playing it at a friend’s over the weekend, I think we played through 70% of the game.
I’m really, *really *fond of the art and music direction. The architecture of Neo-Paris, the sights, the way Nilin moves, the neo-18th century fashion… it’s all fantastic (and as a resident of Paleo-Paris, I got a real kick out of niticing all the little touches they’ve added to make it feel like Paris, from the Haussman rooftops, to the Morris columns, even to the way advertising posters (particularly the “red light” kind tend to be clustered all together and on top of each other). I actually went and checked whether Enki Bilal was involved in the project, because it’s very reminiscent of his visual novels (he wasn’t).
I also dig the augmented reality shtick, and the fact that they didn’t even bother trying to explain or even tech-speak what Nilin can do - they could have gone the MGS route of “nanomachines as far as the eye can see !”, or “mass effects, it’s all done via mass effects”, but they didn’t even try. You can move crates with a geometric shape in primary colours that appears on your arm when you need to, and that’s it, that’s just something people do in 2084. Neither the expospeak mentor character nor the heroine comment on it: it’s just something that’s mundane to them. I like that.
Now, having gushed all over the packaging, I have to admit, the “game” part of the game is… kinda meh. Like most games trying to do many things or be many games at once (in this case, Prince of Persia meets Arkham Asylum meets Deus Ex’s stealth sections meets some kind of adventure game with a rewind mechanic), each element is kind of sloppy:
The platforming is easy, and it’s one part where the augmented reality shtick becomes almost insulting, with giant orange arrows pointing at whichever ledge you’re supposed to jump next. Not that it matters since it is, at all times, the only ledge you can jump to from where you are. Assassin’s Creed free-running this is not. Shame, because Neo-Paris would have begged for some some parkouring.
The combat is kind of confusing, albeit rewarding once you get the hang of it. I’ve already covered the relatively bare-bones combo system, and there’s another “problem” : unlike Arkham City or Assassin’s Creed, where enemies are polite and rush you one at a time, in Remember Me they’ll all mob you for reals, interrupting your combos and knocking you to the ground, often. Unless you master the counter-intuitive dodging system and the special moves. I’m still not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing. I really like the boss fights though, most of them are both visually impressive (naturally) and mechanically interesting.
The stealth is like every stealth section you’ve ever seen in a game that wasn’t a dedicated stealth game : frustrating, trial-and-error, if-you-get-seen-once-you’re-dead bullshit. Thankfully, there’s not too much of it.
The memory remixes are disappointing. It’s basically a trial-and-error process, change this one element of the memory, see what it changes, change another thing etc… until you get the result you want. Very cool concept, excellent packaging, meh mechanic. That’s the name of the game, style over substance.
All in all, it’s the definition of a rental game, or a Let’s Play game. Extremely cool to watch, cool to play over a weekend, but not something you’ll revisit every other year for the memories (ha!).