The 'Shroom:Issue LXXVI/Critic Corner: Difference between revisions

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{{User|Crocodile Dippy}}

The best news is no news, and that is what I have for you, my dear readers, this fine Winter day. No, I don't care that you're not in the southern hemisphere, this is my season and I'm sticking with it, and anyone who wants to argue will have to answer to my new picture over there. It's not actually new, it's been around a fair while now, but might as well brighten this corner up a little bit before I lose all my readers.

*''Book Reviews''

*''Wiki Fiction Reviews''

=== June Section of the Month ===

Here is the video if you wanted to watch it yourself. So see you later!

== NSM's Review Corner ==

{{User|Crocodile Dippy}}

{{ShroomStrongContent|harsh language, vulgar content, spoilers}}

{{nonmario

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? ''Remember Me'' is a release from the ludicrously named Dontnod Entertainment, set in a futuristic version of Paris that presumably lost the Hundred Years War because everyone inexplicably has a pronounced British or American accent. It follows the equally ludicrously named Nilin, a character who garnered much controversy from publishers prior to release due to being a – and you'll never fucking believe this one – a '''girl'''! I know, right? And a black one, for that matter; the nerve of those crazy developers going out of their way to frighten away all the good white folk in my community! Oh wait, I'm thinking of Alabama. Anyway, Nilin is introduced with all her memories being taken away by a totalitarian corporation called Memorize, creators of a software-like system that allows the digital storage of memories, complete socioeconomic dominance in the name of eliminating all bad memories, and free lobotomies on the weekend. Nilin escapes with help from one The Edge, of which the obvious U2 joke is too low-hanging a fruit for my tastes, subsequently places blind trust in his rebellion, and sets out to reobtain her memories and maybe restore the balance of power if there's enough time in the day.

The setting for ''Remember Me'' should be everything I want out of a game, and yet things just didn't really click for me as well as I'd hoped. On the one hand, it does that ''Mirror's Edge'' thing of juxtaposing clean, bright, almost clinical environments with a controlling government with absurd punishments in what I like to call '''The Singapore Design''', which is always as visually pleasant to me as a pavlova wearing a top hat. On the other hand, it seems like Nilin spends a very small amount of time actually taking in the scenery, and she seems to just sort of move from one location to another in most cases with loose connectivity at best. The characters aren't really anything exciting, either; Nilin alternates rather jarringly between being a powerful kickass and a whimpering child, and the vast majority of dialogue is either juvenile one-liners or whinging, particularly in the case of the villains who sound like they got lost on their way to the set for an old ''Batman'' routine and just decided to roll with it.

Gameplay is largely just the standard punch-'em-up affair, being built solely on two attack buttons and the occasional special move possessing stupid names like '''Rust in Pieces''' or '''Logic Bomb'''. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the combat in and of itself, after all if a game wants to blow up heads than who am I to question its glorious, twisted artistic vision, but it feels like sort of a waste of concept when that's pretty much all that's being done. I mean, what is the point of basing your game around memory psychology when all you're going to use it for is a justification for the art style? Although I must say, I find it funny how a game where you literally cause people's brains to explode only gets an M rating here because '''at least there's no blood to corrupt the kiddies''', right?

There's something more to be said about the combo customisation that the game places a strong emphasis on, titled '''Pressens''' because we're not quite done with stupid names for this production quite yet. It's a really nice idea and one that certainly deserves a lot of credit, but ''Remember Me''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s definition of customisation is handing you five already established button combinations that you just place different attack effects into. These include extra damage, increased focus for special attacks, chained attacks, and health restoration of all things, because breaking a few noses is exactly what I need when my internal organs are sitting on a coatrack in Brussels. It's just a bit of a waste, and having to pause the game in the middle of the action to fiddle around with the combos isn't my idea of grade-A entertainment, although being able to continue a combo after you've dodged over an enemy during their attack keeps the flow of combat moving along nicely enough to almost counteract the micromanagement tedium.

But I guess what gets on my nerves the most is that the only gameplay acknowledgement of the overarching memory theme is the Memory Remix feature, which primarily entail simply watching a cutscene, and then using your magical memory remote to shuffle back and forth through the cutscene until the game points out something that can be changed. Uhhh yeah, Dontnod, as much as I'd love to sit through your beautiful cutscenes a dozen times, I really did kind of come into this expecting an actual game to play. It is nice that there are several dead end results you can reach by changing the wrong things, which turned it into a personal challenge for me to deduce what needed to be changed ahead of time rather than just shuffling through every option, but the real problem here is that the concept is really insubstantial. You only do it four times in the entire campaign, as if the game is ashamed to be associated with them, and it really does feel like so much more could be done with memory remixing than just this. Hell, throw it in mid-combat, I'd love to go all ''Prototype'' in this shit and make the guards shoot their partners in complete paranoia.  

The game's story really does suffer from predictability, with the entire amnesiac setup effectively shining a big neon sign saying “GET READY FOR A BIG TWIST!” It was so obvious something shocking was about to go down that I really just couldn't bring myself to care, which is just as well since the game lacks the same conviction. There's a bit of an exploration on the ethical issues concerning changing people's memories for the greater good thereby robbing them of their free will, and one scene even shows someone offing themselves because of their altered memory which Nilin exhibits genuine remorse for, but by the end of the game that little point of intrigue is completely dropped in favour of more fisty fighty. And not to be a complete cockweasel, but the final boss is airlifted from ''inFamous 2''; I'm sorry, it really is.  

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