Bright Memory Review

Let’s get it out of the way from the off: this is not Bright Memory: Infinite. The title that blew us away with its face paced action and visual’s is coming later on. What this is though is a solid, if short, taster of what we can expect from FYQD Studio down the line.

As the first exclusively next gen title – only playable on a Series X or S – initial impressions are a bit mixed. The visuals are sharp and full of effects and filters that give it an almost Crysis vibe, while the character models look like something from early 2000’s era Time Crisis. I wouldn’t say this as a bad thing necessarily as it almost felt like I’d stepped back in time to seeing those huge, next gen arcade cabinets and wishing I had something like that at home; well, now I do! When it comes to the in game action though things look just great, with a lot of flashy effects complimenting the fast gun and sword play – there’s barely a moment to stop and take it all in. I’ll also mention the load times here quickly; they are fast. Not instant by any means, but very fast. From cold boot to action is about 20 seconds, and re-starts are a matter of seconds at most. It makes a good case for the Series X’s SSD for sure.

Enemies come thick and fast and the gameplay recalls classic arena shooters such as Doom or Quake in its pace and relentlessness. There’s a lot of back peddling and jumping while unleashing round after round of bullets at the incoming threats. The combat areas are generally quite small too, so strafing and using the dodge roll are a must. We’re given access to three guns (machine, shotgun, and pistol) that all have a good heft to the feel for my liking, though the damage they output doesn’t quite line up. A full frontal shotgun blast to an enemies face might spray a lot of claret but they’ll still be in one piece and fighting back until we hit them a few more times.

We’re also equipped with a sword and a few extra powers, more of which can be unlocked by using the gained XP. The sword was my favourite part of our arsenal, though it’s also quite limited in use; like other powers it is on a cool down timer. While only around 8 seconds, when th action is this fast it felt far too long, especially as there is no other melee alternative. While it’s in use though there are two extra powers that come with it; one sends out a blinding light slash that rips enemies apart, while the other is an area of effect attack that sends near foes flying back.

Using the guns and sword in combo with the other powers can lead to a cavalcade of explosive looking action. We have a force push that makes enemies hover in the air for a brief while, a AOE dome that slashes at any foes inside it, a grapple to shoot towards enemies, the ability to put a stasis bubble around an enemy, and a handful more too. It felt a little unwieldy to use them all though, as they are mapped to the d-pad meaning we need to briefly stop moving to use them, and some require several presses to activate; the force push is one left push, while the stasis is a double left push, for example. It’s probably the best solution for the amount of buttons on the controller, but it still just didn’t quite sit right with me. There were times when a power wouldn’t activate too so I’d be off of the analogue stick for longer while trying to get it to work.

Combat is fast, frantic and fun then. There are very brief interludes where we need to do some traversal, which are fine, if a little basic. One has us scaling some ruins to reach a lift, but the grapple is used to latch on to certain points; if we’re even slightly out of position it won’t register. I fell off of this section a good half dozen times partly due to this, and one Tavern team member mentioned another area that the grapple icon flashed up for the blink of an eye, leading him to fail. It almost feels antithetical to the flow of Bright Memory but it pays to slow down in this instances. Again though, these sections are brief enough for this to not pose any major issue.

In fact, Bright Memory is perhaps best summed up by the word brief; my first run through was completed in just under 30 minutes, while my second just over 20. I understand this has been out on PC for a while and is meant to serve as a taster of the next instalment Infinite. But unless you’re up for playing the same campaign over and over you’ll likely be done with the game in less than an evening. There is a scoring system to incentivise re-runs, and the gameplay is generally fun enough to warrant a couple of plays, but it’s worth mentioning. Now, that timer also seemed to reset upon death, so my first run was probably closer to about 45 minutes if retries were included. The two boss battles along the way were the culprit here; the first of which is a super tough fight that caused me the most issue. Strangely the final fight was easier, though that could just be that I’d acquired new powers and was more used to how the game plays by then. I also came across a few bugs in the short runtime. One saw an enemy disappear through a wall, preventing me from continuing until I’d killed them. Luckily I was able to grind the wall and shoot through it, but it took me some time to figure out they were to begin with. Elsewhere, the audio took a massive nosedive when using Quick Resume. It sounded like an old, crackly walkie talkie until I hard quit and reset the game. No other game I’ve tried had this issue, so hopefully it can be fixed in time.

Conclusion

As one of the few exclusively next-gen games for the Series consoles, Bright Memory is a bit of mixed bag. It runs excellently, with super smooth frame rates and crisp, 4K visuals and some lovely looking (if slightly over-done) effect’s work. The combat is fast and satisfying, and the extra powers can make the whole presentation look like Doom X Crysis on some kind of strong drugs. That it is so short, the character models look decidedly 00’s arcade era, and some bug and glitches rear their heads means it’s not the must play new title it could have been though. Here’s hoping the full fat Bright Memory: Infinite can use this test bed to launch a truly kick ass, next-gen shooter.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.