Bright Memory: Infinite is a good FPS, but I wish there were more to it.
It's really short. Like it took me exactly 1 hour and 33 minutes to finish it short. And out of all that "playtime", I have to say that I enjoyed only around 1 hour of it with the rest being a boring and pointless stealth section and a subpar vehicle section.
Now, even though I didn't enjoy playing through all of it, I absolutely loved how amazing it looked from start to finish. This game embodies the meaning of "eye candy".
As you shoot, slice and dice away at everyone and everything that comes near you or as you grapple and parkour around these beautifully rendered environments set somewhere around China, the game looks absolutely stunning. I played the Series X version and not only does it run at a smooth 60fps with ray-tracing enabled, but it also has a 120fps mode which also looks pretty good.
You see there's a story here, but I didn't really care much for it and I believe no one will or even should care for it too. In fact, it's so unimportant that I didn't even bother to memorize the name of the character you play, let alone why you are doing what you are doing in the game. It truly doesn't matter. All you need to know is that you are a badass girl with a couple of weapons, a kickass sword, and some cool powers and you need to save the day for some reason.
Gunplay is really good. As you progress through the game and remember it's only a 1 hour and a half long game, you will get to find and use 4 weapons. An automatic rifle, a shotgun, an automatic pistol and finally a sniper rifle. I know, I know, so basically the most run-of-the-mill weapons ever you might say and you are correct. However, each of the weapons has a unique alternate firing mode like the AR can fire tracing rounds or the pistol can shoot small grenades and I found this aspect a lot of fun. Of course, in Normal difficulty it made everything way too easy, boss fights included, but I still loved wreaking havoc in all the encounters. Oh and there's also an upgrade mechanic too, where if you find and collect relics or something, you can upgrade your abilities, weapons etc.
Apart from the weapons, you also have a sword and a power glove. Now the power glove can be used to well, punch the enemies and they'll be staggered for a couple of seconds or you can use it as a grappling hook to pull enemies close to you. As for the sword well, I guess you can imagine what you can use that for. Yes, you can slice and dice enemies up close or parry their attacks, bullets included. You are also very agile as you can wall run, double jump and dash, and all that combined make up for some pretty good combat encounters. As I mentioned before, there are also a couple of boss fights. Nothing too crazy on Normal difficulty as the only thing you need to do is just stay away and shoot at them. Maybe it's a little more challenging in higher difficulties, but I honestly did not care much to replay the whole thing again.
Now to try and answer the most important question, is this 1 hour and 30 minutes game worth 20$? I honestly don't know. While the gunplay and abilities are fun and it looks absolutely stunning no matter what's happening on screen, I wish there was more to it. Maybe double the playtime, maybe more sections with parkour, maybe some different environments, maybe some other challenges. At this moment, I would just recommend waiting for a sale and then giving it a try. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a Series X using a code provided by the publisher. Bright Memory: Infinite is out now for PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
