A question that I find myself frequently asking, and I suspect game developers frequently ask themselves, is what is the value of doing something new. While I hear people cry out for more creativity in games, Call of Duty 73 will come out this year and likely be the best selling game of the year. Last year’s best selling game? Grand Theft Auto Five¹, the gaming industry’s breath of fresh air that just so happens to end in five and takes place in the same city as GTA 3-3. And did you see how many game of the year awards A Link to the Past 2 won? Sure innovation is welcome, so long as it is gradual and contained within familiar packaging. That I think is what makes Remember Me so fascinating. It is a new property, with new ideas and a new world, with borrowed game mechanics. Remember Me is Uncharted set in Mirror’s Edge’s urban future with Arkham Asylum’s combat mixed with a brawler’s combo system, all leading to unique memory changing sequences. It doesn’t do any of these things as well as the games it emulates, but I can’t help but feel that the sum of it’s parts equals a greater soul. Remember Me is a lack of innovation contained within unfamiliar packaging. I really enjoyed Remember Me.

You play as Nilin, a memory hunter who has been imprisoned and wiped of memory by the government or the evil corporation, the game is never quite clear on the distinction between the two or if a distinction exists, and a mysterious ally sets you free and starts you on your journey to bring down the government/corporation that imprisoned you. Much of your past as well as the true motivations of Edge, your omnipresent guide, remain hidden until the conclusion; at which point the motives of everyone involved become so convoluted that I’m not sure who accomplished what and I feel a little like the world is worse off than when I started. At one point you will help to flood an entire district of Neo Paris² and there is only a passing reference to the thousands of people you have just aided in drowning. “Only an extremist believes the ends always justify the means.” says the game, but what does that say about the lackey who carries out the orders?

And what is your mission that you didn’t sign up for but engage in without hesitation? Well you’re taking down the evil Memorize corporation, a company who has found a way to digitize, store, and commercialize memories. Citizens of this world can buy and experience the happiest memories of other people in the world; first dates, promotions, wedding days. They felt the joy and so can you. But you see Memorize is evil, as most fictional corporations are, and they are destroying the world one over stimulated memory at a time.³ Memorize is the most important corporation in the world and is thus supported by the government. Or controls the government. Or is the government. I played the whole game and honestly am not sure. What I do know is that they must be stopped, because Edge told me so. Video game protagonists have a shocking lack of individual reasoning skills.

A quick aside concerning the set up. Can we agree to abandon the amnesia storyline in video games for a little while? It’s getting old and it reflects a level of laziness on the story writers of these games. I get it; you’re dropping the player into a game world that unlike the denizens of your fictional universe they did not grow up in. You need a way to introduce everything about the world to them, and the amnesiatic protagonist provides an easy excuse. But it’s been warn out and better methods have been provided. Mirror’s Edge gave you the basic outline in minutes of opening soliloquy and allowed the story to natural unfold more about the game world without force feeding it to me. Hell even Gears of War, the broy-ist shooter of bro shooters, dropped you into a game world and allowed it to exist and feel real without explaining every part of the game world to me. You know what real world conversations don’t include? In depth explanations of every place and group of people you come across. We learned about context clues in middle school, let us use the knowledge.

I really enjoyed the setting of Remember Me, despite it beating me over the head with warnings about the dangers of global warming and technology. The traversal by ledge climbing is a frequent feature of adventure games, but allowing me to shimmy and climb through an urban landscape as opposed to anonymous jungle/mountain areas was a welcome change. Sure there was an omnipresent waypoint telling me where to go at every step of the journey, but pretending this is too handholdy and implying Uncharted’s glowing ledges and clear paths were somehow a puzzle tells me more about your problem solving skills than anything. Knowing where to go at every step allowed me to enjoy the scenery and appreciate the vast amount of detail put into this game world. And this is a beautiful world, from the slums of Slum 404⁴ to the more ritzy areas, there is a level of detail and information that I truly appreciated. And thanks to your augmented eye, another narrartively unimportant and unexplained feature, you receive a wealth of detail and information everywhere you go, further giving dimension to the world. That’s how you introduce the game world without anyone losing their memory.

I compared the combat to the Batman Arkham games, which is more of a reference point than an accurate description. It is brawler with two attack buttons and a dodge button which can be triggered at an onscreen prompt without interrupting your combo. Unlike the Batman games there is no counter, and it is sorely missed, but the if you’ve played those games you know the basics. Remember Me layers on some depth through its combo system, but it only kind of works. I loved the concept, you create your own combos by combining different “pressens,” pieces of the combo that can either cause damage, decrease the charge time on special moves, give you health or enhance the effects of the previous move. The whole system grows in complexity as you advance and is customizable. I ended up creating a short combo that restored health and a couple of longer damage causing combos that served me well through the most of the game. Unfortunately a few of the different enemy variations broke the whole system apart.

You fight two basic enemy types in Remember Me: Leapers and security guards. Leapers are the forgotten victims of the game world who have overdosed on memories and have retreated to the lowest levels of the city. They look like mutated semi-humans and have super human abilities, because video games I guess. Honestly this is also never explained, it becomes especially confusing when you reach a type of Leaper that can turn invisible in darkness, for no reason, at all. There is literally no in world explanation for this ability that I came across. This would be semi excusable were they not the most frustrating enemy in the game. They can only be revealed through bright light, which in the middle of EVERY fight with them they disable. This forces you to utilize a special ability with an absurd recharge time. I spent likely 2 hours of game time running in circles waiting for my ability to recharge so I could reveal these enemies to fight them.⁵ Running in circles rarely makes for thrilling game play. The second enemy type were the variations of security guard/police/memorize employees who worked for the evil corporation/government.⁶ They have the standard grunt and grunt with a shield and leader of the grunts varieties that served as fun enemies to battle. They also have a variant that inflicts damage every time you strike them that was less fun. Seriously, if you hit them it hurts you. Every time. So any battle with them involved attacking for damage, followed by a combo that gave you more health than they took away, followed by attacking for damage. Somewhere someone thought this was an interesting mechanic and that person should be forced to fight only those enemies in a game until he apologizes to the rest of us.

Back to our convoluted, gaping hole filled story that I still found interesting because I expect so little out of games anymore; Nilin is a memory hunter. She steals memories from other people in order to further her cause.⁷ She also is the only person in the world with a unique ability to rewrite other peoples memories. This process plays out in the games most unique and interesting sequences. You enter the minds of other people⁸ and find memory glitches which you can interact with and change. Retract a cup holder in a car, turn the safety off on a gun, move an operating table, and you can change the outcome of the memory in question. Not every memory glitch changes the outcome, some change it in a way you don’t want, but find the right combination and voila, the person who was trying to kill you now wants to help you in your struggle. These are by far the most novel and interesting parts of the game. There are exactly four and they make up about two percent of the game time. Back to fighting invisible memory addicts.

You progress through the story learning more and more about memorize and yourself, with several twist and turns in the narrative, including one final twist that if you failed to predict I question whether or not you should be licensed to drive, until your final confrontation with the boss of the game. Now I don’t want to spoil the game⁹ but I do have to take a moment to complain about the boss fight. More accurately I have to complain about the presence of a boss fight at all. Despite the telegraphed nature of the games final reveal, there was a real opportunity here to craft a unique and powerful ending. Suffice it say that what could have been accomplished more simply, with more emotion, with more narrative consistency, and with more meaning though a simple in game unplugging was instead accomplished through a wholly nonsensical final boss encounter. It wasn’t just unnecessary, it didn’t even make sense!

I’ll forgive you if your take away from my ramblings is that I didn’t enjoy this game; but the truth is I really did.¹⁰ Yes the game mechanics clashed with story, yes half the enemy encounters were more frustrating than fun, and sure the narrative left me with more questions than resolution. But I really liked this game. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, the forest is greater than the trees, the Clash are the greatest band of all time. Sure these are cliches, but they are also occasionally true.¹¹ What Remember Me did was combine several different elements of games I enjoyed, throw in a wholly new game mechanic, an interesting and unique world, and a narrative that if nothing else was thought provoking.¹² What it was, what it is, is different. It’s the sum of its parts, and that sum is a whole game that I haven’t experienced before, with new mechanics and a new combination of old mechanics, in a world I’ve never been to before. When I start to think of my favorite games of the last generation, a lot of sequels pop up. Elder Scrolls 5, Halo 4, Fallout 3, Assassin’s Creed 2. There is no number at the end of Remember Me, and for that I am thankful. Here’s to the unrefined, convoluted but interesting mess that is the unnumbered game. There is only one Remember Me. I hope there are many more only one games in my future.

Ronny Hutson swears he enjoys video games.  If you want to hear him complain more about the things he loves follow him on twitter @SlackerRon