A first-person shooter that uses a combo system is pretty rare in the gaming world. Bright Memory is a mashup of many genres into a first-person shooter. It uses elements from RPGs, combo-based fighting games, and even smaller details, such as lighting a bonfire like in Dark Souls. The look and feel of the game are impressive, not only because of the high-quality graphics and controls but also the fact that the game was developed by one person, using his spare time.
Story
Since the game is still in development, there is currently only one chapter available to play. This chapter serves as a good introduction to the game, both in story and gameplay. You play as Sheila, who is tasked with preventing a military organization from getting their hands on a legendary device that can reawaken the dead. Instead of stopping them, Sheila and the enemies are teleported to the floating island, a continent that hovers over the North Pole. It’s now up to Sheila alone to protect this artifact, which carries devastating power in the wrong hands.
Gameplay
The gameplay was fun and fast. Playing an FPS game with abilities that can be chained together makes for a rewarding experience. Shelia has a rifle, shotgun, and a pistol as her weapons, but she also has some other abilities thanks to her Exo suit. Shelia's abilities can be used interchangeably in and out of combat. One of these abilities is grapple, which can not only be used to get around the terrain but can also be used to jump into enemies, to surprise attack them. The best part of playing Bright Memory was the combat because I enjoyed learning combos to deal the most damage possible while staying safe. Once you learn how to use all your abilities to keep your enemies in check, playing the game will be a walk in the park. Playing the game, you will collect experience that can be used to upgrade your abilities or unlock new skills. Something I found while playing is that you don't get a visual indicator for killing an enemy. Most of the time, shooter games will give you some sort of indicator for killing an enemy, or they usually die very easily. But in this game, I found myself thinking the enemies would be dead after a couple of headshots, but that was not the case. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely an added challenge to the game.
Art
The game is very good looking. Made in Unreal Engine 4, it takes advantage of Nvidia Ray Tracing, so all of the lighting and reflections in the game are breathtaking. While the game is taxing on PCs, using a lot of resources to run, the game plays very smoothly, even when there is a lot of activity on the screen. There was barely any FPS drop even in the biggest fights, and I was able to see all incoming attacks and react just fine. One effect that didn't make sense to me was while fighting enemies, time would slow down at random moments, and it would kill the momentum I had. But other than that, all the textures looked amazing and showed what video games are capable of in this new generation.
Sound and music
Bright Memory was designed and created initially with only voice acting in Chinese, but since its first release, it has now been dubbed over in English. Because of this, the mouth movements are synced to the Chinese voice and lag a little bit behind. This is just a minor thing that I caught when playing the game, but the voice acting is overall very nice. I didn't really like the music while in combat, as it felt a little repetitive, but I'm sure that will change from level to level when the full game comes out.
Final thoughts
Bright Memory still has a while before the full game comes out, so many of my thoughts on how the game plays could change. The developer said he would be working on making the full game, but they will be reworking the story and the stages. People who buy the first chapter right now will receive a 100% discount when the full game comes out, and for a game of this caliber, 10 dollars is very cheap. I enjoyed playing this game, and it combined a lot of things I like from different genres, From the fast-paced gameplay to the combat. I look forward to the story that will continue to be constructed, and I highly recommend that you check out Bright Memory.
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