Bright Memory: Infinite is a First Person Shooter. It’s fine. That pretty much could be the review.
In all honesty, the game does very little egregiously wrong. The visuals are basic at times, really impressive and at other times not horrendous. The gameplay is simple if a little awkward and the storyline is unremarkable if a little too convoluted. It is the epitome of an average game.
What’s the Story?
As I hinted previously, the storyline is a little short of unfollowable malarkey. Set in the year 2036, you play as Sheila, a woman who is part of the SSRO (Supernatural Science Research Organisation) who is doing something to research a certain phenomenon affecting the skies above the earth. Plus something, something wormholes that need to save the earth from a zombie emperor.
It’s genuinely that nonsensical. I’m not sure if it is something that is lost in translation, but it is absolutely jarring when trying to connect with your character and immerse yourself into the story. If you cannot connect with a game’s narrative then you would at least hope that the gameplay would be especially engaging.
Thankfully, the gameplay is… for a while. As is standard for nearly all First Person Shooters, the controls are intuitive and predictable. There are no major surprises and the standard trigger buttons, jump buttons and action buttons are in play and will feel very familiar to anyone who has ever played a first-person shooter before.
The combat sees you use a variety of weapons; changing from shotgun, machine gun, pistol to samurai sword with reckless abandon. The alternation from gunplay to hack-and-slash melee is done with ease and it is undoubtedly fun for a while. Unfortunately, the enemies do lack variety and the enjoyment of dispatching them using the various weapons becomes a little tedious after witnessing the same death animation over and over again. To combat this though, they do introduce different weapons as you progress in order to add a little variety.
Bright Memory or Something to Forget?
The hit-markers when shooting enemies and the feeling of “heft” with the various weaponry feel a little dated. The “wall running mechanics” are a little hit and miss but it still can’t be derided as being actively “bad”.
With regards to the graphics, they aren’t exactly perfect but at times they are very impressive. It seems a lot more care has gone into the environment than has gone into the character models. They certainly could have been given a bit more of a polish, especially when standing against some fantastically rendered backgrounds.
Bright Memory: Infinite doesn’t play like a current-gen First Person Shooter, and it wouldn’t have looked out of place on a last-gen console. Yet you can’t call it below par either on its visuals or on the gaming mechanics. It is just very average.
And I think therein lies the issue.
There are glimpses of quality throughout the game. It’s fast, it’s exciting for a time, but that is contrasted alongside the extraordinarily complicated storyline. Added to that is the fact that the game has an unforgivable and ridiculously short running time. It wouldn’t be impossible to get through the entire campaign in under 3 hours (and that’s being generous). The game doesn’t give itself the chance to expand on all the things that it does right, and because of that, it only accentuates what it has done wrong.
This game has all the hallmarks of a “what-if”. It probably would never have been a classic, but it certainly could be a lot better than what it is.
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