Remember Me

With its sterling and startling representation of a dystopian future Paris, and a plot centered around the nature of memories and the way they can be manipulated, Remember Me pretty much has me on side from the trailers alone - it's a concept that marries a novel idea to one that allows it to slot neatly alongside other games I love, most obviously Deus Ex. When I reviewed Mirror's Edge I mentioned that I wished it was two separate games, one to deal with the world it's set in and one to deal with the parkour elements, and Remember Me takes care of the first of those wishes pretty well. And that's before we even think about it being a game where you play as a black (GASP!) woman (GASP!), which is tragically still a pretty brave move for a game to make at a time when it should barely even be worth mentioning.

Still, it's a Capcom game. Now I won't claim to be a person that pays a huge amount of attention to publishers, certainly not the same way I would producers or record labels in music, but Capcom have always stood out for me as a company that seem to let me down a little too regularly. I enjoy the early Resident Evil [バイオハザード] games, but they're also responsible for Street Fighter, Devil May Cry [デビル メイ クライ], Dino Crisis [ディノクライシス], any game with Capcom in the name, a hilarious number of lazy sequels, the worst game in the Tomb Raider series, and the recent Resident Evil games. Sure, nothing in there is atrocious, but when I play a game and think 'this isn't as enjoyable as it should be', I find that more often than not, Capcom's logo is on the back. The game doesn't exactly do an awful lot in its opening few minutes to dispel any notion that this would be the same either, with some faintly hilarious facial animation (the way the voices and lips sync up looks like a parody of a kung fu dub), some pretty heavy-handed dialogue, and a camera that's odd and fiddly.

But largely, it works. The fighting sequences are effectively a simplified version of Street Fighter, with two attack buttons and one dodge button allowing for freeform combos if combined right (though this, too, is fiddly) and simple spamming of one of the buttons if you can't get the timing right. They can get frustrating on the highest difficulty level, but everything is overcome by strategy and patience, as most well-worked fighting sequences in games are. The platforming elements are Tomb Raider-esque, but everywhere you need to go is signposted by small orange arrows, meaning you never land in a situation where you can't work out which way to go and why you can grab on to one ledge but not another, and the exploration carries a little hint of Shenmue [シェンムー] about it, with people going about their daily lives all over the place. It's an immersive world and it glides by smoothly, both in terms of the gameplay and plot, and 95% of each episode rattles along at an enjoyable pace that introduces new concepts neatly enough to avoid confusion, but also moves quickly enough to avoid boredom.

But then there's the other 5%. Unfortunately, it seems like somebody involved in designing this game hasn't realized that it's not 1993 any more, because each episode ends with a boss fight, and they are uniformly awful. Like, brutally bad at times. If I wanted to run around in a circle for 15 minutes I'd join an athletics club, not play a computer game. For example, take the Madame fight at the end of chapter 4 - firstly, you have to shoot her out of the sky with your gun, then beat her up a little bit while she's on the ground, then do that whole thing again while imaginary mooks are trying to fight you as well, then run around for a bit to avoid giants shards of ice falling from the sky, then knock her out of the sky with a power that take 180 seconds to recharge, beat her up a bit, dodge the projectiles some more, wait for the power to recharge, then repeat this about 6 or 7 more times. Then the fight ends....except it doesn't, because it turns out that was just the first half and the second half is about to start. Does this sound like fun to literally anybody? Oh, but it gets better - if you get hit by a single one of those icicles, you lose half your health, and because it takes so long for your character to get back to her feet when she's knocked down, you'll get hit by another one as soon as you're on your feet. So you're dead. And you have to start the whole fight again. What an absolute joy. Just dodge them you say? Sure, but your character has roughly the same turning circle as Scott Parker, so good luck with that.

By the way, if you Google search 'Remember Me madame boss fight', the top hit is a forum thread titled 'ok this madame boss fight is just annoying'. A post in there simply states 'every boss fight in this game is terrible'. I may whinge about boss fights more than most, but this really isn't just me this time.

It's a real shame that the game devotes so much time and effort to a part of the game that should never have been there in the first place and that lets the whole product down so badly, because for the most part Remember Me is great. The combo and S-Pressen systems that dictate combat are threaded into the gameplay really well, explained thoroughly once introduced, and some of the fights against large, diverse groups really do leave you stroking your chin wondering which weapon in your arsenal will be best to use. It's subtle, and subtle isn't something fighting games traditionally do all that well - so why destroy all that subtlety at the end of every episode? This is a game that, thanks to its story and its world, I wanted to blaze through in three days of intense gaming and really savor. Instead, every hour and a half I had to walk away and shake my head, or play another game that didn't actively seem to hate me.