“What’s your name?”
That simple question sets the scene for Capcom’s stunning new 3rd person, action-adventure game, Remember Me. Set in Neo-Paris, 2084, you play as Nillin, a memory hunter who had her memories wiped by the corporation Memorize. In this dystopian world, science has found a way to allow people to share their memories…directly. Originally meant as a diplomatic tool to help reduce war and crime, its commercialization has devastated the world. Leapers–people who became addicted to memory swapping and lost connection with their actual selves–attack anyone unlucky enough to stumble into their lairs. Memory junkies populate the streets of the slums, anxious for another fix. This is the world that Nillin wakes up into, with nothing more than a name and the disembodied voice of her employer to help her make sense of it.
I’m a sucker for dystopias, and I was excited to see that Remember Me has continued the recent trend of female, dystopian protagonists. As with Hunger Games, Pretties, and–more relevant to the world of games–Mirror’s Edge, Nillin is a matter-of-fact, capable, complex woman. She’s athletic and attractive, but her proportions are realistic and her costuming is practical for the action-heavy content. In the first hour of gameplay she didn’t say much, but what she did say showed how disorienting and frightening waking up without your memory would be without turning her into a damsel in need of saving. Edge (her boss) might be the one pointing her towards the exit, but Nillin fights her way out by herself.
I was happily surprised by the controls. Like Mirror’s Edge, Remember Me uses a lot of rapid, parkour-type movements, but it requires slightly less precision and the tutorial is spaced out well within the first Episode, making it pretty easy to get the hang of the different possibilities. And, right near the end of the episode, you discover a mini-game of sorts where Nillin can go into the memories of her enemies and “remix” them in order to convince them that something in their past happened differently. It’s almost Inception-like, with the ability to rewind and fast forward in order to find glitches Nillin can manipulate.
My one complaint is that a few of the controls were not particularly user-friendly when it came to the menus or the remix session. Both required complex key combos that are not easy to do with one hand (RMB together to slow down the remix, and LMB to speed it up), in moments when you really need to be using both the keyboard and the mouse. I’m sure it will get easier with practice, but it’s a bit frustrating to have to stop and stare at the keyboard when you would rather be focusing on the game at hand.
Beautiful, intuitive and (so far) female-positive…I will definitely be playing this one a bit more.
