Remember Me - Xbox 360

Breaking Down And Customizing Remember Me’s Combat

2013-05-07T21:28:00Z

Nilin may not remember much at the beginning of Remember Me, but it only takes a brief overview from her partner Edge to remember how to fight. In our last preview, we took a look at the first two chapters of the game, learned the basics of combat, met Headache Tom, and remixed one would-be assassin’s memory. This time around we made it all the way through chapter four.

In these additional chapters we explored more of Neo-Paris, both above and below ground, and broke into a prison to retrieve Nilin’s memories and restore the inmates’ minds. In this prison, referred to as The Bastille, prisoners’ memories are confiscated until their sentences have been served. It’s a hopeless place with prisoners locked behind bars not knowing why they’re there. Nilin starts the game in The Bastille, and she’s not happy about her return trip. In the interest of avoiding large spoilers for the first half of Remember Me, this preview focuses on Nilin’s innovative combat.

Remember Me’s combat looks – and to a certain degree plays – like most action games. One button corresponds to attacks with your hands, while another connects Nilin’s feet to enemy faces. Different applications of these two buttons lead to different combinations, but the secondary effect of these attacks, and your control over them, is what sets Remember Me apart.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Throughout the campaign you unlock pre-determined combos with your Procedural Master Points. You can’t change the patterns of the combo, but you can define what these combos do. What Remember Me calls “Pressens,” can be assigned to each part of a combo. You might have a Pressen that does extra damage, one that restores your health, or one that speeds up the cooldown timer on your special attacks. These can be assigned to each part of your combo.

The first combo you get is a simple punch, punch, punch combo. It’s short and sweet, so I decide to assign it with all health-restoring Pressens. That way when I am running low on health I can just tap away at punch to quickly pull off the combo and regain some health. I fill another combo with all the cooldown expediters I could. This is the combo I resort to if I need access to a special move as soon as possible. On yet another combo, I throw in mostly attack power-ups with one special Pressen that multiplies the effect of the Pressens before it. This iss my general beat-enemies-up combo, so I use the simple kick, punch, kick, punch volley combo.

This is how I chose to build my combos, but you can put them together any way you’d like. They can be reassigned at any time. The combo lab can be accessed from the pause menu, meaning you can tailor your combos to specific enemies and encounters.

Pulling off combos feels close to the Batman: Arkham series. Like Batman, Nilin’s combos aren’t executed with high-speed button inputs. Punches and kicks are deliberate and precise, emphasizing rhythm rather than frenzied action. A Dynamic Combo Display shows up at the bottom of the screen, giving you real-time input feedback, much like what you would see in the training arena of a fighting game. It makes it simple to understand and define what combos you are pulling off.

Outside of punching and kicking, you also have a long-range Spammer that shoots projectiles. You can charge up the Spammer and fire a Junk Bolt, which unleashes a powerful long-range attack that also destroys elements of the environment. You also gain access to S. Pressens, special moves that are attached to cooldown timers. The Sensen Fury allows you to ignore your combos and wail away on enemies with powered-up attacks. The Sensen D.O.S. freezes all the enemies around you (and lets you see invisible ones) so you can take full advantage of your combos while the enemies just stand there and take it. The Smart Logic Bomb allows you to plant a bomb on an enemy that will explode and damage everyone around them, but it’s crucial that you move outside of the blast radius before it goes off. Finally, I got a chance to use the Sense R.I.P., which convinces enemy robots to join your cause, until they blow up and damage the enemies around them.

Customizing Nilin’s combat abilities gives you a sense of ownership over the attacks you are throwing at enemies. All players will ultimately be performing the same arsenal of combo strings to beat up enemies, but customizing the effects of the combo and its animations gives players a better understanding of what they’re doing, and a sense of pride over their skills. It makes the combat more than just combo string memorization and is an interesting highlight to a game that seems to be full of new ideas.

Video Details Memory-Bending Plot And Customizable Combat

2013-05-02T21:20:00Z

Capcom's newest IP, Remember Me, is a futuristic action game with an emphasis on memory manipulation. Developer Dontnod is presenting an intriguing yet complex story that involves memory sharing and manipulating the present by tinkering with people's recollections of past events. It also incorporates a unique, customizable combo system. Fret not over the intricate combat and story, because creative director Jean Maxime-Moris explains all in this video.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Remember Me hits PC, PS3, and 360 on June 4. If you're still on the fence about the game and want to learn more, check out our hands-on preview with the first two hours of the game.

Playing Through The First Two Chapters

2013-02-14T09:30:00Z

New franchises are hard to find near the end of a console generation, but Capcom is delivering some fresh ideas with Remember Me. The game takes place in the future, where power-hungry corporations have refined the technology to influence politicians by tapping into their thoughts. My hands-on time begins several stages in, assuming control of a woman who once possessed the power to reshuffle people’s minds.

My extensive demo begins with Nilin, the main protagonist, being dragged out of a casket-like pod in the dredges of Neo-Paris. Gangly memory-wiped abominations haunt the seedy underbelly of this 2084 version of Paris, hunting for anything that can give some sort of memory. Nilin can’t remember who she is either, but a voice in her head tells her that she was once a trained memory hunter. Memory hunters are like mental assassins, rewiring or erasing the minds of political enemies. The voice in her head is Edge, a mysterious man who wants to help her rebuild her former memories. She recalls enough to defeat the pack of freakish enemies, then Edge tells her to travel toward a bar run by Headache Tommy.

Capcom previously showed off Remember Me’s unique combo-creation system, but this the first time I try it out myself. Nilin recalls her former fighting prowess by leveling up, and players unlock attacks as she does so. These attacks are slotted into custom combos, which can be optimized to deal damage, restore health, or reduce the cooldowns of special abilities. Button mashing is unacceptable here. Players must time their strikes carefully in order to deliver dramatic, slow-motion takedowns. Enemies will move in to attack Nilin, and exclamation marks above their heads cue players to dodge them. The rhythm of combat feels similar to Rocksteady’s Batman titles, but with a more technical edge.

When players aren’t knocking out groups of brainwashed mutants or private police squads, they traverse the busy architecture of the futuristic, Orwellian city. Nilin’s path to Tommy’s bar is treacherous, filled with perilous jumps and electrified hazards in addition to all the goons. Shimmying across ledges and jumping between high-rise balconies feels similar to the Uncharted games. One sequence involves sidling across a huge vertical support for a gigantic, dynamic billboard. Slats rotate sequentially to reveal a new ad, which players must speed past or to avoid being knocked down.

Eventually Nilin arrives at Tommy’s Bar by following Edge’s advice. Tommy seems familiar with Nilin, but his face isn’t ringing any bells in her addled mind. After a warm yet awkward welcome, Tommy directs Nilin towards a room where she changes into her old memory hunter clothes. Her old get-up comes complete with a stylish black arm sleeve. This combat glove bestows Nilin with the unique power to tap into people’s memories and alter their past. Tommy just begins to warn Nilin that a bounty hunter may be after her when someone suddenly nabs her from behind and presses a blade to her neck. It’s Olga Sedova, a deadly hired gun made even more dangerous due to her desperate need to acquire funds for her husband’s medical needs at Memorize (Nilin’s former employer and the party responsible for wiping her brain).

Nilin takes advantage of Olga’s proximity by tapping into her recent memories with the combat glove. In the flashback, Olga is strapped and hooked up to one bed in a hospital room, while a gray doctor hovers over her sedated husband on the other side of a transparent partition. The doctor is apparently giving Olga’s sick husband a memory transfusion, syphoning past experiences from her mind into his. The game prompts me to fix Nilin’s predicament in the present by manipulating Olga’s recollection of past events, which will make Olga remember a sequence of events more suited to Nilin’s goals: the doctor killing her husband instead. Rotating the left analog stick rewinds time, allowing Nilin to interact with the technology present in the procedure room. I begin by reversing the memory transfusion machine. Upon playback, Olga screams and convulses as the emptiness of her husband’s brain spreads into her own. I corrupted her mind to the point of death. Mission failure. For my next attempt I disable her husband’s anesthesia, tinker with his IV fluids, disengage a wrist restraint, and scoot a robotic instrument tray behind the doctor. When I play things forward, Olga’s husband reacts violently to the faulty IV fluid, jolts awake without the sleeping gas, and reaches out to grab the doctor’s throat with his free hand. The doctor stumbles backwards, crashes over the tray, and calls an emergency order to kill the rampaging patient. Mission success.

Warping back to the present, Olga suddenly releases Nilin. A switch has flipped inside her. Seconds ago she wanted to exchange Nilin’s life for money to fund her husband’s care at Memorize. Now, following the horribly botched procedure, she wants to make Memorize pay. It’s a win-win for Nilin. She’s freed from the clutches of the bounty hunter and gains an ally in the hunt for her own memory.

All of Remember Me’s individual components make it an intriguing new IP, from the unique premise to the custom combat system. But the memory remixing session inside Olga’s mind stands out as a fascinating new gameplay experience. I’m excited to see how Capcom’s ambitious new title shapes up as a whole, but I hope to rewire many more character’s pasts by tinkering with their fragile minds.

This preview is as it will appear in issue #240 of Game Informer

Gorgeous New Screens Show Off Nilin And Neo-Paris

2013-02-14T08:20:00Z

Capcom's newest IP, Remember Me, is a sight to behold. From the intriguing character models to gorgeously detailed city of Neo-Paris, there's a lot to soak in. This huge batch of screenshots offers you a great look at the upcoming game.

Check out the loads of new game assets in the media gallery below. Remember Me arrives on 360, PS3, and PC this May.

New Remember Me Screens Show Off Characters And Locations

2013-02-07T01:59:01Z

Capcom has released a brand new batch of Remember Me screens that show off all kinds of unseen elements from the upcoming game.

You will see new locations and new characters. The screens come from Capcom's Unity blog, which showcases even more screens than our gallery below, if you want more.

Remember Me is headed to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC this year.

Remember Me Developer Diary Examines The Score

2013-02-02T23:20:25Z

The latest developer diary from developer Dontnod Entertainment looks at Remember Me's music, and shows a little bit of new gameplay.

The music is performed by the London Philharmonia as composed by Olivier Deriviere, and then it gets all electronicified to fit in into Remember Me's futuristic world. It feels reminiscent of The Matrix, and I swear I am hearing a little bit of the soundtrack from the movie Paprika in there, too, but I might just be going crazy.

You can check out the video below, and look out for Remember Me this year.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Diving Deeper With Remember Me's Combo Lab

2012-09-22T16:16:00Z

Dontnod Entertainment’s sci-fi action adventure title, Remember Me, made a strong showing this year at Gamescom, so we were excited to go deeper with its combo system during TGS.

When our demo starts, visual glitches and distortions cover the screen, indicating that our protagonist, Nilin, is dangerously low on health. Thankfully, Remember Me’s unique combo system can help solve that problem.

At any point in the game, players can pause and go into Remember Me’s combo lab to tinker with their combat tools. Players can have up to four active combos at any time, which they will want to customize in order to adapt to the game’s many challenges. Combos are made up of what Dontnod Entertainment are calling Pressens – single move attacks that have a variety of benefits. For example, regen Pressens regenerate your health. After setting up a new combo full of regen Pressens, we jump back into combat and Nilin’s vampiric attack quickly refill her life gauge.

Making your own combos gets a lot more exciting when you start playing around with Special Pressens. These heavy attacks are kind of like technological magic. These S-Pressens can really turn the tide of battle. While fighting a group of shielded foes, Nilin uses an S-Pressen called Logic Bomb, which blows away her enemy’s shields, leaving them vulnerable. Other S-Pressens allow Nilin to zip across the screen in a fury of fast attacks or remote hack mechanical foes and turn them to her side.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

These S-Pressen moves run on a cooldown, but regular combos can be programmed to speed up the cooldown of these larger attacks. Other combos can be programmed to deliver more powerful punches or enable Nilin to perform finishing moves that cause enemies to drop PMP orbs. These orbs can, in turn, be used to buy new Pressens, creating a circle of Pressen life. Making combos in Remember Me’s combo lab creates opportunities for you to use powerful S-pressen attacks, which allows you to utilize new combos that help you collect orbs that help you buy more Pressens and build ever bigger and badder combos. Dontnod Entertainment says that Remember Me’s combo lab is capable of producing over 50,000 unique combos. It’s a pretty slick system, and we look forward to playing around with it some more as we build up to the game’s May release.

A lot of the things I’ve seen at TGS are worth forgetting, but Remember Me is one title that looks worth remembering. (Writing a pun off the game’s name is a prerequisite for doing a preview on the game.) Take a look at Remember Me’s Gamescom demo if you’d like to see more.

Combat Requires More Than Mere Button-Mashing

2012-09-21T20:27:00Z

Capcom has released a new video for Dontnod Entertainment's upcoming action game Remember Me. The six-minute clip breaks down the game's customizable combo system, which looks like it should keep players busy for quite some time.

The system is laid out by the game's creative lead Jean-Maxime Moris. Players have four combo slots, which they can tweak in Remember Me's Combo Lab. Each slot has eight subslots, and players can fill them up with attacks and abilities. They're called Pressens in the game's vernacular, and they fall under four different categories: region, power, cooldown, and chain. Watch the clip below to see how players will be able to mix and match different combos to take out specific enemies, such as shielded goons and robotic attackers. It sounds a little complicated, but the video does a great job of explaining it all.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

If you'd like to see more of Remember Me, take a look at this 10-minute slice of gameplay from Gamescom.

Remember Me is due out in May 2013.

A Ten Minute Glance Of Remember Me That You Won't Forget

2012-09-06T19:15:00Z

There were a lot of people at Gamescom this year, but in case you happened to miss it, here's a second shot to check out the demo of Remember Me that Dontnod Entertainment brought to the show.

Get a closer look at how Nilin will navigate through Remember Me's sci-fi world as well as the game's combat in the following video:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Three Key Points To Remember About Remember Me

2012-08-17T00:00:00Z

We spoke with the game’s creative lead about killing, hacking, and controlling time.

...(read more)