I'm playing Remember Me at the moment, and it seems like a series of missed opportunities. It's a great world and I want to spend time there, but it's trapped in the body of a bog-standard platform action adventure.
The "memory remix" mechanic they spent so much time hyping is great. Each one is a fun little puzzle; not too hard, and not requiring trial-and-error. There's just not enough of them! They're very short, and for a core mechanic they feel massively underused.
One of the other things is stealing memories - access codes, routes through traps, etc. That's a good idea, but it's done as a single button-press; it's too easy. They're telling me Nilin is this elite memory hunter, but the way the mechanic is implemented makes it look like anyone can do it. Plus it makes the ends of sections hunting for memories rather anti-climactic - the simple addition of a mini-game could have elevated this. It feels almost like the developers ran out of time.
There's a similar "finishing move" you can execute that supposedly overloads your target's memory circuits. It wouldn't have taken much to build the memory-stealing idea into combat alongside that or instead of that - have it be a way to unlock goodies like artwork, or little snippets of worldbuilding, or an XP element. It just seems like the game design - the mechanics of gameplay - aren't tied well into the game concept. I feel like someone like Ubisoft would have done a lot more with it.
Actually, now I'm imagining a new Assassin's Creed mechanic where you hack memories so you can play as characters other than your ancestor... that would be cool.
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