Recent reviews by lopert

What an awesome game. As an avid Android:Netrunner player, I really enjoyed how the theme and story fit really together with the mechanics to create a great experience.

The game at it's core is split into two sides.
- the "prep" side where you chat with your contacts, choose what missions you'll accept, and what programs you'll bring.
- the "mission" side, which is an action-economy boardgame where you traverse a network of nodes towards an objective, break / avoid ICE, all while a trace timer counts up to your doom.

With such a solid core system, I would have expected any other developer to just "phone in" the actual level design, and just procedurally generate the missions, but this is not the case here. Instead, every mission is hand crafted, unique in it's own way, and you can really feel the attention to detail and love that was put into each experience, which is just so refreshing in the current state of gaming that ask you to just to the same thing over and over with minor variations.

On RNG
Much of the criticism I see in other reviews talks about the "RNG" of tracing and ICE placements, but I have to disagree. Choosing between putting more of your resources into delaying the trace to play it slow and steady versus making the calculated mad dash to the finish is PEAK NETRUNNER. I will say that I started out playing very cautiously, and managing cloak slices while waiting for dagger to break through felt tedious. By the end, I had freed myself from my safe shell and embraced the run, preferring to sidestep, bypass, or just facetank ICE instead.

On Playstyle
On a similar note, I do think that this game heavily encourages you to use different programs due to adapt to different the missions, so if you're a stickler for your favourite deck setup, you may find like you're trying to brute force your square solution into the circular hole. There's a bit of information revealed before you start a mission, letting you know if you should even bring a specific type of program. From there, you bring your favourite set and hope for the best.

Should you fail, the game lets you quickly restart, or even backout to the pre-mission deck configuration step. A few of the other reviews find a way to complain about this, stating that "the game expects you to just lose on your first run, so that you can back out and come back in with perfect 'meta' knowledge", but again I disagree.
- The initial run is thrilling, in a "discovering the unknown and doing my best with what I've got" way, which again, is PEAK NETRUNNER. I completed most missions with my initial deck configuration.
- The follow up / reconfigured / "meta informed" runs are also satisfying, in a "I am the ultimate runner, witness how I effortlessly defeat your defences" way. I found I preferred to swap to more "informed" setups after failing some of the harder story missions.

Conclusion
I really recommend this game. It's fun, the mechanics and theme work great together, and the missions are all lovingly crafted and unique. I found myself saying "wow this is so cool" constantly.

I'm glad I stuck with this game long enough to get through my "safe shell" phase of tediously chipping away at ICE and managing cloak slices. While everyone starts out playing safe, it's nice when new programs become available to let you run a little more recklessly.

Always be running. -Lopert[alwaysberunning.net]

I really wanted to like this game.

The environments look beautiful, and beg to be explored. I particularly liked the "memories that were left behind" that pointed to pickups. However, all the work that was put into creating a really captivating world is not enough to overshadow how stale moving across it feels. I've never had a problem with non-open (linear) worlds, but this game felt like a corridor. There is only ever one path to get from point A to B, and the parkour / wall scaling movement is very stiff and chunky. The best way I can describe moving towards the next objective is "tedious", and I was always looking forward to when I would be interrupted by a cut-scene. That being said, even the story felt like it was on rails, with multiple opportunities being presented where you were led to believe you might get to make a meaningful choice, but ultimately the game will always steer you towards, and wait for you to push the right buttons to keep you on track. I would have loved to be able to decide to not remix some characters, or to have a few possible results, however insignificant, but no such luck.

Combat felt promising, but ultimately didn't deliver. The pressen combo system seemed interesting, but I didn't seem to have enough pressen to actually use all (4) combos? This led to me filling up two (and later 3) combos, a short combo that refreshed cooldowns that I would basically spam due to a lack of alternatives, and a longer 8-hitter (to get dat sweet combo bonus XP) that I never used since any hit taken will interrupt the chain, and fights are mostly comprised of swarms of weak enemies that surround you. The focused based abilities were cool but not always super useful (with even the lower tier enemies becoming immune to some of them later on).

The most interesting part of the game to me were the remixes. Although mechanically very simple, it was fun to explore all the different paths you could take through someone's memory by altering subtle things. The first remix you complete really gives you a feeling of "wow, this is some pretty crazy stuff", as the result leads to a completely different interaction with the remixed character. I think the game missed the boat by not making these sequences, and the associated moral questions ("Is it right to re-write someone?") the main focus of the game.

Overall, I feel Remember Me is a game that got caught up in trying to be to many things at once. The resulting gameplay is sub-par to mediocre at best, with an accompanying story that feels cliché and is filled with characters that you'll be left wondering if you should have remembered (haha get it?). If you stripped away the bland combat, the tedious "parkour" map traversal and focused on the story, it could have been a solid adventure game.