This is the biggest failure of Bright Memory. When you have enemies that just will not stop attacking you unless they are dead, you hope that all your mechanics match that pace so you can stay in the action. When you fight enemies, they are relentless. Even then, they are introduced outside of combat. The only ones that have an actual tutorial are the air blast, sword, and grappling hook. There are a lot of options and most of those abilities are just thrown at you right after the first 2 minute intro sequence with little to no explanation as to what they can do. Other abilities include the power blast enemies with an air punch, freeze enemies in place by stopping time, a sword that turns the game into a hack-and-slash for about 10 seconds, throwing enemies in the air, grappling to them, electrocution, a bubble for a quick reprieve, and tossing enemies in the air with what’s akin to a ground pound. Doom has mastered the weapon switching to a capital T, and again this feels like it’s trying so hard to be as fast paced as Doom without having those nuances down pat. Thankfully there is a plethora of ammunition you have available, however during certain boss fights, you can run out very quickly and immediately notice the wall that you hit.

Body shots feel like they do nothing and even headshots require at least ten hits to take something down.

This would be ok if body shots meant anything, but honestly, the only way to keep up with the wave after wave of enemies is to land headshots. At one moment, I had shot after shot on an enemy’s head while other times it felt all over the place with missed shot after missed shot. The aim feels OK at best, but it doesn’t feel as fluid as many other games on the market. Other than that, it felt like a pea shooter compared to everything else. The pistol I only used during the intro sequence when I explicitly had to use it. I ended up using the assault rifle the most, and only really using the shotgun when the AR ran out of ammo. There is limited ammo but there is little to no way of knowing that you picked up more as you’re playing except by switching to that gun. Each can be switched at any time but the options are cycled through. To break down the mechanics, your primary source of damage is one of the three guns that you have throughout the game an assault rifle, a shotgun, and a handgun. Most of all, the gameplay really feels like it hopes to be as fast paced as Doom first and foremost. Bright Memory loves to play homage to other very popular games with its mechanics.

Bright memory infinite playtime