Review: Remember Me

Remember Me is a game about the world having the worst case of amnesia. In the future, mankind has created a way for people to store and contain memories that they either don’t want to have or want to keep forever. It’s called the H3O network, and everyone is tapped into it via their mind implants called the sensen.

If this sounds remotely familiar to some degree, that’s because you’re dead on. Remember Me borrows the digitized world from Watch Dogs, the neural technology interface system from H3 the Digital Series, sprinkled with a dash of human ethics issues from the Metal Gear Solid universe, and the Matrix from the Matrix.

Mostly unoriginal story aside, the game has an otherwise great concept. Tap into people’s minds and manipulate their memories to your will. Sound neat? GUESS WHAT IT’S NOT. Even though this is THE MAIN MECHANIC OF THE GAME and IT’S ON THE FUCKING BOX, you perform this ability a total of six times (and two of those times are debatable). The control system for changing people’s memories is absolute trash. Worst off, it’s arguably the most buggy part of the entire game! This is the sole point of this game, and it controls like flaming ass!

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Turns out everything is the left stick. Selection, pausing, rewinding, stopping. Yep, everything. Also you need to be EXTREMELY precise with timing in memories!

While that’s a bit of a downer, maybe the rest of the package can pull it together? The graphics are drop dead gorgeous. The art style, level geometry, lighting and design tone really bring the piece together. I was quite amazed at the fact there was extremely minimal asset re-usage.

It's like modern day Assassin's Creed!If anything, I must mention the soundtrack for Remember Me, because dear god the music is WONDERFUL. Normally I hate the usage of dubstep in anything, but this is an exception, one I do not make lightly.

The mix of electronic, dubstep and orchestral just works out so well for this game. Words cannot describe how much I enjoyed the musical masterpiece found in Remember Me.

Remember Me rips off a lot of the implementations of game mechanics from other successful games, the biggest being the platforming from Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed. It’s recreated rather well when the engine wants to work. Yet, I consistently ran into problems with the engine forgetting how to climb up onto ledges or not displaying the waypoint interaction marker, leaving the player stuck for ten minutes waiting for the game to catch up.

Combat in this game is a bit floppy and it’s obvious that the developers wanted to implement a system that would rival the ones found in the latest Batman titles by Rocksteady. To subvert comparisons between the two games, Remember Me introduces a combo system where you design what each predetermined button sequence accomplishes.

Get used to looking at that bottom bar now.
Get used to looking at that bottom bar now.

Neat idea, but the developers failed to see that NO ONE LIKES PAUSING IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT. In addition, I would assume that PEOPLE DON’T REMAPPING THEIR BUTTONS DURING EVERY BATTLE.

Sure, it’s just a predetermined button sequence, but the method of changing what each button does is really just control configuration mixed with inventory management.

And most of the time, you will be paying attention to the bottom of the screen at all times in order to see what combo the game is thinking you are about to do, since sometimes it gets stuck. Because of this, combat gets extremely monotonous later on in the game, even more so with the addition of cooldown timers for the specific enemies that require special moves to defeat.

But that sounds like it could be mastered, right? Not if the game allows them to teleport around the screen and throws several of them at you at once! Oh and the cooldown is 140 seconds on average (and you can’t hit these guys without taking damage cause they are on fire).

Hope you like waiting it out.

Just doing what you asked lady.
Okay!

Verdict: PASS

Review: Metro Last Light

Metro: Last Light is the sequel to 2010’s Metro 2033, a survival horror game that I wasn’t too fond of. Yet, despite not liking the first game, I decided to give Last Light a chance and to be honest, I’m really glad I did. Metro Last Light puts you in the position of a man named Artyom, a Russian man who almost everyone seems to know by name. The year is 2034 and basically everyone fucked up and launched nukes at each other because that’s the best way to solve problems, right?

Turns out that makes everything worse, and what’s left of humanity is forced to go into hiding underground in the Russian metro system. The surface is extremely contaminated, because one nuke won’t cleanse the sin of butthurt, millions of nukes were launched. Since these atomic missiles tend to be well, atomic, the surface is heavily irradiated, leaving everything horribly mutated and hating your guts. Great job, diplomacy!

Still hanging on to the old ways.
Still hanging on to the old ways.

The developers paid close attention to drowning the player in delicious immersion. Let it be known that any other time you’ve ever felt attached to the story or characters, Last Light takes that experience and smashes it into the pavement.

I was honestly surprised, I went into the game with the standard “meh, this game is probably not that great and it’s just overhyped” but I found myself unable to keep up that attitude.

I was trying to avoid battles, listening intently to side conversations, exploring every nook and cranny, panicking when monsters started to get close by, slowly creeping around and taking out Nazis (oh also, Nazis magically survived the apocalypse, it was probably explained in the last game better) by shaking them in the face rather than shooting them.

It’s way more stealthy than Dishonored, which is surprising considering that Dishonored is a game based on stealth (and is hard as hell to actually do). And when you do manage to screw up the stealth, the combat isn’t that bad (it is a huge improvement over 2033’s). Bullets are rare, and when you run out, legitimate fear sets in. This is a game that has a realistic melee attack (in which it’s not an instant kill and has a believable range), which is dreadful when you have to fallback on it.

Even with its delicious atmosphere, I actually found myself hitting the “Oh I haven’t seen [INSERT CHARACTER NAME HERE] in awhile, I wonder where they are,” and then shortly afterward you’ll be catching up with them. Normally when games do this, there’s this sort of unreal aspect to it, like “if they were going to get here before me, why didn’t they just give me a fucking ride to the destination?”

Amazingly, Metro manages to subvert the NPCs can travel at the speed of light to a destination through various means, but the most important thing to take away from it is that the story doesn’t leave a billion plot holes everywhere and then try to tie things up at the very end.

Even the tragic post-apocalyptic surface is amazing
Even the tragic post-apocalyptic surface is amazing

The biggest problems I have are actually just things I would have liked to see implemented, such as subtitles on minor character dialogue that still is related to the story. In one instance, the game fails to put subtitles on a scene where a couple bandits were setting up a trap, and unless you were listening super closely, you totally would have missed it.

Overall, the graphics are beautiful, the soundscape is fantastic and the atmosphere is quite wonderful. However, whoever was in charge of the sound the grass makes in the game, fuck you buddy. It sounds like a million monsters breathing down your neck and it is the most horrifying, spine chilling thing to hear when the sound kicks in.

All in all, Last Light is one of the best I’ve played in awhile.

Verdict: BUY

Review: Deadlight

Ever wanted to parkour your way through depleted buildings, crushed hopes and lots of undead people? Deadlight is the game for you.

At the core, Deadlight is an incredibly linear sidescrolling action game or simply put, a “metroidvania” game. Oddly, Deadlight deviates from the metroidvania style, because being labeled as such a game would suggest a huge emphasis on exploration, in which Deadlight has none.

Huge surplus of pretty graphics, though.
Huge surplus of pretty graphics, though.

That said, Deadlight is a game that I very much adore for the graphics, gameplay and overall story. Yet, I believe the reason I love it so is because it reminds me of a lower budget Shadow Complex clone mixed with The Walking Dead.

Big Bird is unhappy PBS went off the air
Even Big Bird wants you gone.

The game starts off in the post apocalypse where you play as Randall, a former Washington State Patrolman who now looks like a hobo version of Solid Snake. As with all zombie stories, Randall has to split up from his group and claims he will meet up with them soon. Thus he gets to walk around the zombie infested world until he finds a gas station.

On approach he believes the occupants of the building to be friendly but surprise surprise, all the other survivors want to kill anyone that moves because why the hell not? Along this journey to meet up with his group again, he often splits off to go find his wife and daughter because every protagonist not only has to live in a zombie scenario, but they MUST break character and be super clumsy and somehow lose their family.

So he sets off trying to get to Seattle, only to find that Seattle is home to a lot of dead things. Not just the Mariners, but tons of zombies.

Despite having Gimli's Axe, you really can't do much here.
Haven’t done anything for a while, let’s force the player to fight a bunch of zombies, with an axe that barely does anything! YEAH!

As such it’s up to the player to navigate around the city and try to find shelter. The levels feel very surreal and feature a LOT of atmosphere despite because of how desolate things are. Despite some of its pitfalls, the story is fairly well written, and leads up to a very gripping conclusion.

If you’ve played Metroid or Castlevania or Shadow Complex or any metroidvania like game, Deadlight is basically no different. You need to crawl, roll, run, jump, skedaddle and get smacked in the face a lot to survive. The gameplay formula is exactly the same, leaving the player with a classic playing experience seasoned with the addition of the undead. And the occasional moment of bad gameplay pacing.

In games such as these, you would hope that the physics would feel tight and fluid because of the amount of running and maneuvering you have to do to get around. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

PLEASE MAKE IT
PHYSICS, PLEASE DON’T FAIL ME NOW.

See Deadlight suffers from “You can only grab this ledge if it’s a Wednesday and the little indicator appears” syndrome. This disease can lead to annoying symptoms such as “your jump distance will change based on how awesome we can make this jump look” and “You haven’t really climbed the wall all the way, even though you are gripping the edge and should totally be able to move over the wall.”

This became really frustrating in some levels because you have no idea if you’ll make that jump reliably or not. And of course, when you miss, the physics engine acts like the kid on the playground who never plays by the rules and taunts you on how you died for the 40 billionth time.

Sadly, Deadlight is not a very long game. At most it lasts about four to six hours, but it really offers a really interesting twist on zombie games. If anything, it’s definitely worth a look.

Verdict: BUY

Review: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine

WE ARE THE SPACE MARINES, OUR ENEMIES DIE! Warhammer 40k: Space Marine is a pretty major turn from the earlier Warhammer games. Instead of being a strategy game like the previous iterations, the developers decided it would be much more interesting to try a third person shooter.

And they pretty much nailed it on the head. The combination of quick gunplay and vicious hack and slash mechanics really makes Space Marine’s combat rather enjoyable. Granted, the fight mechanics are nowhere near the level of the Batman series, but the game does pretty well on its own. The easiest way to picture is Devil May Cry gameplay but with less puzzles and more fun.

The story is rather interesting, the planet is invaded by orks and so the empire sends in the Space Marines to save the day. It’s the typical “we must save the day and defeat the enemies!” story, however, the plot twist that happens near the middle of the game is quite unexpected and executed fairly well. Unfortunately, the campaign is plagued by waaaay too many cutscenes. There is literally a cutscene for just taking a step forward, there is a cutscene for picking your nose, and there are several for acknowledging that you are a Space Marine. There are just way too many pointless cutscenes.

The multiplayer is rather enjoyable, featuring a lot of gamemodes and quite a few maps. Sadly, multiplayer games can be rather laggy due to the lack of dedicated servers, leaving players to rely on p2p hosting. Basically, your mileage may vary with the multiplayer. However, if you get a couple of friends together, you’ll probably not have to run into a lot of the network problems that hurt the game’s public matchmaking.

Overall, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is a fun game that can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone that likes third person shooters/hack-n-slashers. Being a Warhammer fan is not required, and you won’t be at a disadvantage for having no knowledge of the franchise.

Verdict: BUY

Review: Fable 3

I’m going to cut to the chase: Fable 3 is one of the biggest downgrades of a franchise in the last decade. It is full of so many stupid design choices and idiotic features that it makes Fable 3 not worth playing.

The story is incredibly predictable, despite all the support characters gasping in shock every four seconds at plot details we learned two hours ago. Pokemon Red had a better implementation of reiterating plot points and it’s not even the same kind of RPG! It as if Lionhead Studios assumes that people playing RPGs won’t be paying attention to the story.

That is if you can even call this game an RPG. Fable 3 is split up into two parts, where the first section is rather enjoyable, but extremely tedious, and the second part is just sit on the throne and do QTEs. Oh yeah, spoiler alert: You become king, as if it wasn’t obvious already because the marketing material gave it away.

Your first order of business as king is to make decisions that affect the racial community.

See, the first part is an RPGish thing, it’s more of an adventure game than anything. Sometimes the game throws in some stupid moral choice stuff with options that range from “yeah fix the burning orphanage” to “DESTROY THE WORLD WITH A WANNABE NUKE”. They did add a middleground to some of these choices, but you’ll very rarely choose it.

I'm not joking.
Interacting with cardboard cutouts of NPCs actually sounds more enjoyable, now that I think about it.

But the critical flaw of Fable 3 is how it handles NPC interactions. This is a critical mechanic for RPGs to implement, and Fable 3 just tripped over a spec of dust and completely fucking flopped on this task. In order to interact with a person, you must stand somewhat nearby them and wait quite a while before a “Interact” button will fly over their head.

Only then you are able to interact with them. There’s no more group interactions, and with it went the lock-on-targetting NPC interaction system that took literally no time at all.

Once the game has recognized you want to interact with an NPC, it transitions to a black screen before you’re able to do anything. It actually loads up the interaction that you are about to have. That’s stupid. If I want to talk to someone, I don’t want to have to wait for the game to load up the person before I can say something to them. I’m standing right next to them, what the hell?!

Additionally, Fable 3 introduces four EXTREMELY ANNOYING mechanics that make me want to throw my computer at the wall:


Fuck the hand mechanic.
This guy cannot pay me enough to make me want to continue doing these “Hold hands with the criminals” missions. It’s so frustrating.

First: The hand mechanic. To get a person to follow you or to be able to escort them, you must hold their hand. To do so, you wait about 10 seconds for the “Hold Hands” prompt to pop up. Then you have to walk at their speed to wherever your destination is.

In very rare occasions you will be able to run, but then other NPCs (and your dumbass dog) will decide it is a good idea to cut inbetween you and the NPC you are dragging, thus causing the hand link to break, which is frustrating. And to make it worse, if there is more than one NPC in the area, the game will reset everyone’s pathfinding.

Basically, towns and bridges become a clusterfuck really quickly.


Second: The “Accept this item” mechanic. No matter what you do, should it be having bought an item, getting a quest reward or receiving the key for the quest from an NPC, you must accept the fact that you have this item by pressing a button. This is a great addition because there is no button to deny receiving the item, THUS RENDERING THIS STEP UTTERLY POINTLESS.

It’s just yet another stupid button press between getting each item. So when you buy an item and accept paying it, you then have to accept the fact that you just got the item. Thank you Peter Molyneux for making getting rewards annoying as hell.


Third: The “I want to be your friend” bullshit. In order to do pretty much anything, the villagers have determined that you must earn their trust by doing remedial fetch, courier and/or gift missions.

This means that you must take whatever item they have and chuck it into the nearest firepit for them to consider you a good person. Luckily, Fable 3 does not require-OH WAIT, IT TOTALLY DOES.

There are several main quests that require you to be friends with people in order to build a better standing with the town/place. To do so, you must interact with every NPC individually. Fantastic.


Fourth: The “there is no health bar in real life, so we don’t have one” mechanic. A good RPG would have a life bar during fights, or atleast some extremely obvious way to tell that you have 5% of your health left. It would also be reliable, and would show up at the first sign, all the time. NOPE, we can’t have that. You are assumed to know when you are about to die or not. The first and only warning sign is your world becomes incredibly gray and there is a faded red border around your screen. The issue here is that the hint appears sporadically, ranging anywhere between 65% of your health, to 5%. There is no way to tell I was about to die until it happened.

What the hell. If I’m supposed to fight a billion enemies all at once, I’d atleast like to know how much health I have before I die, dammit.


All in all, your dog is an idiot, and you should skip Fable 3.

Verdict: PASS