Recent reviews by TURBO GAMER

9.5/10
So... You're here to take me to the moon?


To The Moon doesn't offer much in the gameplay department. It doesn't present stunning visuals nor is it particularly exciting... But it doesn't pretend to offer any of those things. It's short, honest, beautiful and emotionally consuming. A solid piece of masterful storytelling.


The story follows the whimsical Dr. Neil Watts and level-headed Dr. Eva Rosalene, high-ranking employees of the Sigmund Agency of Life corporation, a service that specializes in altering a terminal person's memory before time of death in order to make their dreams come true. Basically, they're selling deathbed happiness.

To The Moon isn't a comedy, though it's hilarious. It isn't a tragedy though it's heart-rending. What it is is brilliant. The dialogue is as powerful and relatable as the thematic is harrowing. I don't want to go into too much detail about the story; I want you to experience the twisty narrative of it by yourselves.


At first glance, the game plays like you'd expect an RPG to play, minus any form of combat or statistical management. The gameplay mechanics are bare-bones: You walk around, talk with people and interact with objects to progress in a linear fashion. The walk-and-interact gameplay is briefly diversified every now and then with a series of flip-tile puzzles. These are never too difficult and are not detrimental to the experience in the least. Other unexpected gameplay elements are also introduced for brief segments, all of which are an appreciated change of pace.

Dr. Watts and Dr. Rosalene enter the mind of John (their patient) and start off in a late memory. They need to understand the patient's history in order to progress farther back into his past and construct variables to influence the patient's future. The goal is simple: Work your way through John's memories and spark the changes that will alter his future forever.


The original soundtrack may be the strongest aspect of the game. It's strongly in-tune with the emotions that the game attempts to pull out of you and often feels like it leads the resulting impressions. I can't lie, I had to hold back tears to Laura Shigihara's "Everything's Alright" when it ripped the limelight from the scene during which it's presented.


Though the game isn't a technical marvel in itself, the user interface is pretty bland and appears "cheap". The lack of options or settings is odd and the game does not support the Steam overlay. These are all very minor shortcomings and I could only bring myself to shave off a fraction of a point for these. The game otherwise runs well, saves automatically to prevent progress loss and it all just works.


An engaging fable of love, waning time and the human condition it encompasses. A tale of fabrication and untruth. This is a story you likely won't soon forget. It lingers with you. A tragic comedy.

To The Moon is a success. A brilliant, sense-shattering success.

7.5 / 10
Remember you later.


Remember Me is an action adventure game set set in the fictional city of Neo-Paris of 2084. You play as Nilin, a young, recently-turned-amnesiac woman who has clearly been having a pretty bad day. Nilin must regain her memories through hurdles presented both by the engrossing, eccentric environment that is the city and the evil entity that is the Memorize corporation.


Being set in the future, the game naturally attempts to present a futuristic atmosphere and encompassment to the setting. Remember Me does a great job with this. Neo-Paris is a fascinating city saturated with surreal ideas like fancy heads-up holographic signage for nearly anything of even minor interest and, of course, the capitalization of the human memory (blame Memorize). The story holds up fairly well and, though sprinkled with a few cliché set pieces, has some very interesting twists and ideas that give it fair value. A heavy start that occasionally crawls to a furious finish.


When you are presented with the first combat scenario (the major gameplay aspect of the game), this is where Remember Me either pulls you in or whispers "Uninstall me". The combat unfortunately feels a little stiff. It's not bad by any means (and I'll explain why) but it has its limitations. The entire combat experience feels somewhat grounded, which comes off as odd because the rest of the game suggests furiously-free, fluid mobility. Nilin hits fast and can leap around by somersaulting over enemy shoulders, but it feels ''on rails'' to some extent.

Stiff combat acrobatics aside, fighting in Remember Me is redeemed by the clever Pressens combo system. Through experience, Nilin acquires Pressens, combat moves that can then be creatively placed into one of four combo chains found in the Combo Lab at any given moment. How you mix these up as you encounter different situations will greatly affect your performance. If you never change your combos, you will not progress through the game. Pressens come in three varieties: Power, Regen and Cooldown. Power hurts, Regen is obvious and Cooldown converts hits landed on bad guys into shaved time off of cooldowns for your S-Pressens, unique moves that specifically target or damage particular enemy types. Some S-Pressens are a necessity to defeat certain enemy types, and that's where your Pressen combos come in handy. You need to calculate (usually through trial and error) what Pressen sequences you'll want to assign to which of your combo chains depending on the enemies you face, or just go all-out Power and succumb to repetitive failure. I suggests learning about Pressens.


Remember Me did leave some bitter impressions on the technical side of things. Gorgeous visuals aside, the game leaks memory very easily and performance issues become easily noticeable. After anywhere from 1 to 3 hours of gameplay, the slick 60+ fps framerate would non-subtly dip to a variable 30-40fps (it only takes up to 30 minutes for this to occur when soaking in-game). A reboot of the title temporarily fixes the issue, but you will need to repeat this process every few hours.

Throughout the 26 hours of game time I have with Remember Me, I've stumbled across 6 instances of very severe progression-breaking bugs that each left me needing to restart the entire chapter. I encountered only one of these during my first playthrough. During my follow-up playthrough, knowing how to progress quickly, I fell upon the other 5. Most of them seemed to be caused by simply interacting with or completing objectives too fast which is a shame, epecially since Remember Me doesn't let you skip any cutscenes or cinematics. Some of these are long and they're quite abundant, so when you're trying to speed through a second playthrough for some missed achievements, you're gonna do a lot of waiting.


All in all, Remember me is a solid 7.5 / 10 for me. Fair points lost for noticeable technical flaws of the PC port, but a strong overall note thanks to the creative setting, solid visual work, a soundtrack so fitting that it's practically transparent and a mostly-pleasant gameplay experience. Here's to a sequel that hopefully delivers even bigger.