
You use the XP you gain in combat to improve Shelia’s suit, giving you new ways to traverse the environment, absorb damage, and destroy your foes. The pilot episode doles out XP quickly, so you can play around with several suit upgrades and new sword skills. That XP, in turn, goes into several suit upgrades that increase mobility, survivability, and combat effectiveness. The flow of combat – avoiding hits, continuously dealing damage, and landing combos – all ties into a scoring system that ranks your performance and modifies the amount of XP gained from each encounter. It’s a satisfying gameplay loop that, while not as refined as its peers, still feels great. As a result, combat is all about dealing as much damage as fast as possible, withdrawing to shake off any damage, and then charging back into the fray. Shelia takes damage quickly but also regenerates health at a brisk pace. This basic move-set, modified by gear like a grappling hook, is also used extensively for traversal and a few puzzles (and the grapple can also be used to slam you forward into enemies, stunning them briefly). Time a dash just right and you trigger a perfect dodge, opening enemies for bonus damage. Shelia moves quickly, with a multi-directional dash to get you in and out of trouble. Tearing through your enemies, while mixing up weapon and sword skills, will result in a higher rank and increases the amount of XP dropped by fallen foes. You can trigger an initial powerful slash, followed by several unique moves that can stun or launch enemies into the air, setting them up for additional combo damage using a firearm or ranged energy slashes. However, they feel ineffectual against undead and mythical beasts, which is where the sword comes into play. The guns – a pistol, assault rifle, and shotgun in this episode – are satisfying to use, dropping human enemies in a few well-placed hits and triggering a brief slowdown when an enemy falls, allowing you to savour the splash of gore and particle effects. When it comes to gameplay, Bright Memory is fast, fluid, and encourages the player to use both weapons and sword combos to manage hordes of enemies and whittle down the health bar of larger foes. The developer has also indicated the game will be reworked as Bright Memory Infinite, so it remains to be seen what plot elements in this pilot episode will be retained. It’s probably best you don’t think too hard about what’s going on as Bright Memory treats its plot like its gameplay loop, smashing together several ideas and seeing what sticks. Everything goes wrong, they’re dragged into a portal, and deposited on a mythical floating island over the Arctic, inhabited by the undead and air serpents (i.e. The pilot episode of Bright Memory wastes little time on setting the scene as the protagonist – codename Shelia – breaks into a futuristic teleport facility, only to discovers her old nemesis – codename Carter – is also raiding the place.
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It’s one of Microsoft's rare “console exclusives” for the Xbox Series X|S at launch and, given its cheap pricing, I thought I’d give it a go.Ĭombat is designed around setting up foes for combos by stunning them or launching them into the air.

One such developer is FYQD-Studio, effectively a one-man outfit that garnered attention with his flashy trailers and the pilot episode for Bright Memory – a Chinese-mythology inspired first-person shooter that feels like a hybrid of Shadow Warrior 2 (the shooting and swordplay), Crysis (suit powers and upgrades), Devil May Cry (the combo system that ties into experience gain), and Tomb Raider (the setting, platforming, and puzzling). It’s easy to get fixated on highly-polished, mechanically-predictable, genre-creeping “AAA” titles, you might forget how many developers are out there vying for attention.


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Mid-tier games have made a resurgence, while indie games - which started the transition from PC to consoles during the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 generation - release daily. If there’s one thing I’ve enjoyed about the Xbox One/PlayStation 4 generation, it’s the sheer variety of gaming experiences available for console gamers.
