Bright Memory: Infinite (PS5) – Review

In its original form, Bright Memory: Infinite was just a single episode called Bright Memory that got a lot of notice for its impressive visuals and gunplay. But it was extremely brief, and this second episode turned feature-length movie would appear to rectify that. Despite being about three times as long and featuring comparable hectic gameplay, Bright Memory: Infinite feels overly rushed and lacks refinement.

The combination of melee attacks and first-person shooting gives Infinite its high-octane gameplay. What could have been a disaster or two weak systems is instead perfectly balanced by Infinite. Like Titanfall 2, the pace of the gunfights is determined by acrobatics and rapid mobility. The responsive controls make dashing and double jumping around easy, and although though each of the four firearms is a generic archetype, they each do their job well and offer good secondary attacks that expand their usefulness. Although the wall-running mechanic is awkward and the grappling beam is poorly designed, Infinite is a respectable addition to the modern landscape of more mobile first-person shooters when the other tools are used in tandem.

The same responsive controls are used in a unique manner to make its melee combat less traditional and more intriguing. The sword may be used for more than just fast slashes; it can also be used to catapult opponents into the air, tug them around, and deflect strikes. It’s reminiscent of Devil May Cry in that controlling enemies in this way provides a great deal of freedom of action during battle. It’s satisfying and encourages more innovation than the usual kind of gunfight to toss a soldier into the air, slash at him a few times, and then kill him off with a tremendous shotgun blast.

It’s not only a first-person Devil May Cry thanks to the game’s defensive mechanisms and upgrades. Not only does parrying prevent damage, but it also deflects incoming bullets, quickly depletes an adversary’s defensive gauge, and reloads the magazine of the active weapon. When facing off against waves of several enemies, it is essential to prioritise your attacks and use parries well so that you may maintain your momentum and keep taking out defences as rapidly as possible. The ground pound and the ridiculously overpowered rocket punch, which, if completely improved, destroys practically anything with a single explosive strike, are just a couple examples of the upgradeable skills that give even more variation. With so many customization possibilities available, combat in this game is a satisfying power fantasy, even on the hardest difficulty setting.

Bright Recall: Infinite’s mechanical heart is let down by its paper-thin skin, which either completely fails to protect it or limits its effectiveness. Even though games tend to drag on for too long, Infinite doesn’t give players nearly enough time to master its arsenal, and can be finished in under two hours. It builds up at an impossible rate and stops before its mechanisms have time to mature or be completely tested. This is particularly noticeable in its upgrades, and despite the fact that upgrade points are distributed quickly, many players will likely not have enough to unlock all of the game’s content.

The fact that it will take some time to get used to the game’s unusual and hectic control scheme is another evidence that the campaign is too brief. The story’s fast-paced action is enjoyable enough to play through again, so doing so is worthwhile, but that’s about all players can do. Given its limitations, the campaign could benefit from a wave-based survivor mode or some remixes. Its short length is made even more frustrating by the time devoted to a horrible stealth portion that unfairly punishes players for being discovered and invents a stupid rationale to take away the game-changing abilities and equipment.

Its presentation and functionality have both been plagued by bugs. Occasionally, enemies will get stuck in the setting or go straight at the player without attempting to attack. It’s possible that, even if you disable the subtitles in the settings, they’ll persist while playing. Issues like these aren’t game-breaking, but they are frustrating nonetheless, and they rank right up there with the most serious technical difficulties that gamers will face. At the point where credits should have started rolling, the game just froze on a dark screen. After starting the game over, all of my progress was lost, and the options were in Chinese. The game’s completion trophies didn’t unlock, either, which further added insult to injury.

The errors are symptoms of a larger problem with the way it’s presented. The game runs smoothly, and its visuals, while visually dull, are technically remarkable. However, the game’s animations, particularly the stealth kill ones in the forced sneaking segment, can be sluggish, and the main character’s model is jarringly simplistic. She doesn’t just look bad compared to the rest of the game’s cast; she also looks out of place, as if she were spliced in from a hentai game designed solely for cranking.

Unfortunately, Infinite is taken far too seriously for its own good, because it could have benefited from embracing that quirk or at least making light of it. The game’s premise—involving dimension jumping, demons with swords, and a battle atop a crashing airplane—sounds like the makings of a ridiculously campy action flick, yet it’s presented as if it were a tightly scripted drama. This game fails to make the most of the personality of its over-the-top gameplay because the story is unclear and poorly developed, yet the developers chose to play it straight instead of embracing the absurdity of the situation.

The hybrid first-person shooting/melee swordplay elements in Bright Memory: Infinite are fun and satisfying, but the game as a whole fails to showcase them. The poorly implemented stealth mission slows down the otherwise fast-paced action, and the game’s lack of replayability means that there aren’t many ways to enjoy the gameplay beyond playing through the sometimes clunky 90-minute campaign again. Even if it’s fun to shoot and slice during a second playthrough, this game is more of a proof of concept than a fully realised one. In the end, Bright Memory: Infinite is just a demo, but it’s one with some impressive gunplay that should be developed farther than a teaser with a cruelly hilarious name.