Bright Memory: Infinite – Review

Back in March 2020, a game by the name of Bright Memory was released on Steam. Featuring fast-paced FPS action, the game served as a 30-minute long experience leading up to the follow-up title Bright Memory: Infinite. With its full release finally here, Infinite offers more of what its predecessor brought, but what does that entail?

Story

Bright Memory: Infinite’s (or BMI as it’ll be referred to from now on) story follows special agent Shelia as she attempts to discover the power behind a mysterious black hole in the sky. Throughout the game, she’ll have to confront the terrorist organization SAI, to prevent them from obtaining said power, as well as fend off strange soldiers from a bygone era.

The game’s plot as a whole barely holds up, serving as little more than an explanation for the action. None of the characters who appear in it receive any development or introduction, limiting them instead to talking lumps of meat. This goes to the point where the ending of the game doesn’t actually explain anything, simply resetting the status quo and leaving Sheila where she started.

Graphics

One of the game’s strongest points can be found in its graphical design. BMI‘s graphics feature high-resolution realistic models. While the game lacks variety in its environments due to its length, what is there leans on the impressive side. The same can be said about the character designs for both Shelia and the encountered enemies, despite not being quite as good as the setpieces.

Sound

BMI’s soundtrack is also quite good, although rather forgettable due to being only ever used as background sound. Despite its quality, it’s merely there to accompany the onscreen action, making it little more than something to fill the silence. During the few cutscenes and sections with dialogue, the game also features pretty good voice acting, although it’s ultimately let down by the nonsense that is the game’s story,

Gameplay

BMI’s gameplay consists of a combination of FPS and Hack n’ Slash gameplay, with the first being the main focus. The game will see players going through a series of linear pathways while gunning down hordes of enemies and the occasional boss, unlocking an arsenal along the way.

Right off the bat, players will start with most of their abilities unlocked; these consisting of a parry, a dodge, special shots, melee attacks, and a powerful EMP blast. The latter two will rely on the energy stored in Shelia’s suit to function, recharging naturally when not in use and accelerated while in combat. Thanks to the game’s fluidity, attacks can easily be chained to demolish enemies, starting for example with a gun, only to end with a mid-air flurry of sword slashes.

In order to accommodate the combo system, the game is rather generous with ammo and other resources, only ever being more limited during boss battles. All of the game’s fights take place in enclosed arenas, where a few waves of enemies will attempt to overwhelm Shelia, with ammo scattered around for the player to find. Out of these, the aforementioned boss battles are the most spectacular, with more impacting setpieces and unique enemies to confront.

Later on in the game, players will also be able to improve their abilities with “reliquaries” found throughout the world. These upgrades will unlock new moves for Shelia as well as special effects for her pre-existing ones, whether it be more damage or something else. However, these reliquaries are somewhat limited and the new abilities are inefficient to use in combat, making simply upgrading existing ones the better option.

All of that being said, the game’s combat is not as flawless as it initially seems, as it does have a few issues here and there. The main ones would be the camera during certain attacks, such as the upwards slash, leaving players open to attack while changing their field of vision. Another pitfall the game runs into comes with the shield given to certain enemies, especially bosses. Said shield prevents players from utilizing any special moves or dealing health damage until it’s depleted, slowing the combat to mindless repetition for those enemies who can regenerate their shield.

Besides this, the game also attempts to throw in a few other genres, with a ham-fisted nonsensical stealth section being the most egregious example. During this section, Shelia will mysteriously lose her equipment and has to sneak and assassinate enemy soldiers with a butcher knife, only for her items to reappear out of thin air once this is set and done. The same thing occurs with a 5-minute long vehicle combat section and the few poorly implemented “harder” platforming challenges.

It is also worth noting the game is not exactly bug-free, containing typos in its text, broken collisions with invisible walls, and questionable AI. It is very much possible to get enemies stuck on terrain doing nothing while getting slaughtered by the player, although the comedic value arguably offsets the possible nuisance that may come with this.

Conclusion

Overall, Bright Memory: Infinite is an entertaining game with great combat and graphics but has little more to offer. With a runtime of about two to three hours, it is hard to recommend the game outside of a sale due to its current insanely high €16,79/£15.49/$19.99 price tag for the content it’s offering. While the game contains a few difficulty modes, even the hardest of these will present no challenge for a skilled FPS player, leaving no replay value whatsoever.

Personal Opinion

“Playing through BMI was pretty fun, although I’ll most likely not come back to it. While the combat feels good, everything else doesn’t. The epitome of this was the stealth section mentioned earlier, where you can instead opt to run towards your enemies and kill them with your instakill butcher knife. Having played this while hanging out with friends, I wonder how much of my enjoyment came from simply laughing at this kind of stuff with them, when perhaps I would’ve been a lot more frustrated were I playing the game on my own.”

Noparg

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No longer writing for the site, pursuing other things.

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