Oooh, elaborate. Noi told me he thought it was boring as hell when he played it at PAX.
Let me tell you about this Remember Me game, right?
In the future of Neo-Paris, memories are now commodities; you can buy cool memories from retailers, take away painful ones, transfer memories to dying relatives, all sorts of shit. Sounds cool, but of course the big company that sells it, MEMORIZE, is of course a big evil conglomerate that kidnaps poor people and rebels, takes their memories with the BRAIN DRAIN and locks them up, and flushes out the ones they don't need to the streets outside the walls of the rich and privileged. Sounds pretty interesting for a premise, and the art is fantastic, but trust me; you will not care about a single character in this game. Not only is every made-up word/terminology annoying("My sensen is my choice!" "Use your S-Pressen!" "Remember you soon!"), but all the voice acting ranges from good(Nillian the main character), to just ok(half the cast), to ohgodjustshutup(most of your supporting cast, unfortunately). So much clunky dialog and weird expositional spiels, and these dreadful between chapter interludes with a lot of flowery dialog of Nillian's talking about her inner struggles with the morality of her choices(because when you can't show, just keep telling us about it). It's never funny(although it tries, especially black barkeep guy's painfully strained attempts at one-liners, "how can a man compete with a sewer full of stinking lizard brains, huh love?"), or subtle, or as interesting as it should be. I'm in chapter 5, and I couldn't tell you where I am, and I don't really care.
It's a third-person action game made in 2013 by a new company following a lotta trends. So that means you got a LOT of this handholding, no skill required platforming stuff that's just boring as hell. God of War has this, but they usually have enemies you can fight, and when Uncharted does it you usually get some snappy banter or something to go along with it, but here it's just mindless climbing everywhere. And there's so MUCH OF IT. More than any one period in Uncharted 2, let me tell ya. Worse yet, there's a yellow arrow you can't turn off that pinpoints EXACTLY where you need to jump to,
every single time. I mean, sometimes in Uncharted 2 I have to figure out which ledge to jump to or how far to swing on this rope or whatever, but there's not even that. They migh as well just let me push a button and let the game start jumping around for me, that's how useless my player input seems to be.
Then there's the combat, which somehow manages the task of being too shallow AND overly complex for it's own good. There's been comparisons to the Batman Arkham games in how you fight, and well...sorta, I guess? In the Arkham games, it has a very simple system of attack, counter, gadgets, and assorted specials you can use after certain hits in a row/enough hits on the combo counter. You just point towards somebody, Batman hits 'em. And it's VERY accurate, at least with a 360 analog; I could pinpoint an armored guy in a bunched up group for a special-armor-breaking special, it'll hit 'em. You get in a rhythm between hits, counters, dodges, and what have you, and your hits feel powerful, because of the animation and the great sounds of leather rustling when you counter a blow, or the POW when a guy gets knocked out with a jump kick. It's not a system with the depth of DMC3 or Bayonetta or even Metal Gear Rising or anything, but it's very satisfying.
Remember Me is not that.
So far(chapter 5, several hours in, maybe something opens up, IDK yet but it's not a long game I hear I gotta be 3/5ths of the way there), you have these 3 immutable strings of combos: XXX, XYYXYY, and YXYXY. You can change up what each one does in the combo lab when the game gives them to you(the game is big on dictating at you when and where EXACTLY you can use abilities). Say you want XXX to do a lot of damage, you put the power Pressens(uggggh) on both the first two Xs, and then perhaps a chain Pressen at the end(which doubles the effect of the last Pressen). There are Pressens that give you health, ones that speed up the cooling abilities on your Sensens(uggggh), and again, the chaining one.
These combo strings are immutable. You can not switch them up. Once you start one, you have to complete it or it'll just reset to some other combo string. You can also only do one combo on one person. So if you do the YXY, dodge, and you try the XY finisher on another guy, it'll just reset. It's not like God of War where you can finish a combo with Triangle at any time in the standard Square button weak attacks, depending on the context of the situation and your timing; no you get three strings, and there's no deviating from them. Also, did I mention the camera gets really close in small spaces and kinda sucks at keeping an eye on everybody without you babysitting it all the time? Also, did I mention there isn't a lock-on? Also, did I mention the auto-lock on thing kinda sucks ass? So what you get is a lot of half-started combos when it's a group of three guys because you're always dodging attacks and your strings reset when you hit another guy or dodge the wrong thing. Not to mention the combo strings have to be hit like a rhythm game, so you spent most of the longer strings looking at the button input bar at the bottom instead of on the screen, praying to God you input this shit right and nobody interrupts you. And the sound effects and animations are REALLY fuckin' weak for combat. In Batman, you feel like fricken' BATMAN when you flying around the room, smacking armored guards and ninjas with your backflip kicks and gadgets and shit; in Remember Me you feel like a 12-year old girl in a slap fight. It's one-dimensional, repetitive, frustrating, stiff, and just plain bad.
The non-platforming/boring immutable strings of combat is occasionally broken up by the world's most rudimentary stealth sections or "puzzles" where you just follow the only path, hit a switch, and go about your way("GREAT JOB, NILIAN" constant voice in your head guy compliments). There's also these the memory remixes, which may be the single interesting element in the game, and it's mostly trial-and-error for the pre-determined elements the game allows you to mess with, and there's only 4 of 'em I hear, I've already played 2. "Neat" would be the word for those.
And it's got some great art, but it's REALLY linear. And you know I'm the last dude to complain about games being linear, but this shit gives FFXIII a run for it's money. Just lots and lots of pretty artwork. Your play space is so closed off and restricted and tiny, you never believe for a minute this is an actual world, despite all the nice set dressings.
This game does NOTHING well. Absolutely nothing. An interesting concept/cool female protagonist design and voice acting are not enough to save complete mediocrity.
