When Bright Infinite was first announced, it garnered attention for two reasons. The first was its amazing looking visuals and the second was that the game was developed almost entirely by one person. Fast forward somewhat to the release of Bright Memory: Infinite, a sort of sequel to Bright Memory which also boasted the above reasons to check it out: one person design team and amazing visuals. The game was released for Series X machines and PC originally and now it’s hit up the PS5 and, most surprisingly, Nintendo’s Switch.
Sadly the PS4 and Xbox One generations have been left out on the love but Switch owners get access to this high octane, high visual fidelity shooter. Which prompts the question: “What sorcery is this?!”
Set in the year 2036, a black hole suddenly appears in the sky with no explanation, threatening the safety of the world. It’s up to special agent Shelia of the Supernatural Science Research Organization to head out towards the black hole and stop it before the world comes to an end.
Bright Memory: Infinite’s story is the very embodiment of nonsensical. There’s some narrative about an ancient Emperor looking to remake the world while the military is out to grab the weapon for themselves but, honestly, there’s practically no connective thread or explanations of any kind linking anything together. The story is, really, just window dressing for you having an excuse to shoot and slash your way through a good time with whatever connections you come up with entirely of your own assumptions.
Quite frankly, that doesn’t matter, not when there are far more ludicrous and thin plotlines in the entertainment world and certainly not if the gameplay is good. And make no mistake, Bright Memory: Infinite is, mostly, fun in just the right way.
The game combines dynamic FPS combat via the usual assortment of ballistic weaponry with first person swordplay that wouldn’t be out of place in an action game. Shelia has, at her disposal, her trusty sword, assault rifle, handgun, shotgun and sniper rifle. Compared to most FPS’s, that’s a meagre assortment at best, and yet it’s perfectly fine and capable here. Coupled with Shelia’s traversal moves of double jumping, sliding, wall running and grappling, the weapons and tactics you have at your disposal can make each fight either a traditional cover and fire affair or a more ballistic and faster ballet of death as you wall run, jump off towards an enemy, slide under their guard and knock them into the air where, thanks to some nifty powers, they float and are open up for air combos.
The games combat can be fast or slow. It’s really up to how you want to play. A great tactic is to block an enemy attack, slide towards them and launch them into the air with your sword and follow up with a jump where you can hack them to pieces or pepper them with bullets. Just as easily you can weaken them from afar before dashing in to finish them up with your blade. A particular favourite of mine was to use the grappling hook to pull enemies towards me and blast them into chunky kibble with the shotgun while they were held in a sort of slow-mo stasis.
The game expands its limited arsenal with a secondary fire for the weapons and a skill tree to unlock new abilities for Shelia. Your sword can be used to throw spinning projectiles or create fiery groundslams while your melee EMP punch can build up a charge for devastating knockbacks. Your traditional weapons, while effective on their own, can be charged up with their secondary fire modes which includes explosive tracking ammo. The only downside been that the secondary ammo is scarce while you’ll never run out of regular rounds as they’re liberally scattered around the environment. These extra skills don’t come for free and you’ll have to unlock them using special relics scattered across the levels. Finding them all will take you that extra bit of time but is worth it. You can get through the game without powering yourself up, but why miss out on more combat option fun and a chance to make some of those bosses easier?
Levels themselves are entirely linear affairs, with some rooms for wave based encounters. It helps to keep the gameplay flowing forward, mostly, consistently and smoothly. To the developer’s credit, they have tried to break up the flow with some spectacles moments such as the now ubiquitous stealth section and, to drive home the secret agent feel, a car chase sequence. One particular standout fight though took place on the wings of a crashing airliner. It made no sense but was bombastically wonderful.
Visually, the game looks fantastic on Switch. And runs wonderfully too. Of course there can’t be any comparisons between its big brother format versions, but what the developer has managed to achieve on the Switch is incredible. There’s certainly some lower polygon resolution models but overall the texture work is absolutely solid while the environments shine in detail. More than once I stopped just to enjoy the view, whether it was the black hole and the surrounding aurorae or the way the light shone across puddles on the floor amidst the wonderful Chinese architecture.
The game supports Vsync, three levels of motion blur and a FOV slider. With Vsync enabled, the game ran just as smoothly. There are some caveats, of course. The transparency effects don’t always look great and there are a fair amount of rough pixels on geometry. I did find the motion blur, even on its lowest settings, to be pretty aggressive and there does seem to be some dynamic resolution scaling, but of this I’m not entirely certain.
Bright Memory: Infinite is also, incredibly short. You’re looking at between three to four hours of gameplay here, even with you scouring the levels for each relic. Quite frankly, I found it to be just the perfect length. The game maintained its kinetic pace wonderfully, pulled me from A to B easily and, most importantly, didn’t wear its welcome out. Gamers looking to expand their playtime can tackle the game on higher difficulty settings if they so please.
Now you’re probably wondering what the Gold Edition of the game offers and the answer is, not much really. In essence all the Gold Edition comes with are a whole bunch of skins for you to use. From new costumes for Shelia to fight bad guys in to kitting out your shotgun with a rainbow paintjob, that encompasses the Gold Editions extras.
Bright Memory: Infinite isn’t just a great visual port for Nintendo’s hybrid console, it’s also a fun, though fleeting, action shooter with satisfying combat and just enough bombast to be memorable.
Developer: FYQD Studio
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Android, Microsoft Windows, iOS
Publishers: FYQD Studio, Playism
Grab your copy here https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Bright-Memory-Infinite-Gold-Edition-2238298.html
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