Review of Bright Memory: Infinite

Over two years ago, an impressive tech demo was released by one developer called Bright Memory, which received very positive feedback from players and critics, especially for its visual processing. With this success, the original developer was able to expand their development team with a few more employees, and work could begin on a sequel. The sequel was subtitled Infinite, and the goal of the creators was to make it a full-fledged game with a playing time of about three hours, with a plot rewritten from scratch and significantly improved gameplay. But did a small study manage to live up to big expectations? We will talk about this in today’s review.

• Platform: PC, coming to Xbox Series X/S later
• Publication date: 12. 11. 2021
• Developer: FYQD-studio
• Genre: first person shooter
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Game time: 1.5-3 hours.
• Availability: 18+
• Sales version: digital
• Price: 16.79 € (Steam)

It’s 2036, it’s New Year’s, and handsome Shelia is just waking up from her bed. However, the impressive spectacle of fireworks over the futuristic metropolis does not last long. A strange anomaly has appeared above the Earth and your task is to explore everything. Shortly after that, you move outside the city, and extra action begins.

Compared to the original Bright Memory, there have been significant changes in the setting, and the Chinese environment here really breathes on you from every angle. You will see villages near the coast as well as bamboo forests and big cities. It freezes only that the game levels presented in the metropolis, which were only recently presented in trailers, did not make it to the final game at all, as well as some enemy models. However, this is not the spectacular environment where the game reigns the most, as the best is the gameplay itself. It looks as nimble as ever (with the exception of a very lifeless stealth mission), and once again you can glide through the game’s arenas almost at lightning speed with significant detours. All this is accompanied by frenetic action where you combine special punches and swords (which will certainly not escape even distant enemies) with firearms, which we will find here in total. Pistol, Assault Rifle, Shotgun and Sniper Rifle, all of which also offer the ability to fire special ammo, which not only come with different animations, but are much more powerful. The authors do not need to be shy about the gameplay, especially in the second half of the game, when you already have the entire arsenal available. The only pity is that the campaign itself will end before you even fully familiarize yourself with the gameplay, which brings us to the plot.

The Neverending Story has been reworked from the beginning, but unfortunately, this hasn’t added anything to its qualities. The plot is just disgusting, you won’t remember the characters a few minutes after the game, and in general it’s really well below average. Most of these problems are probably caused by the transience of the campaign, when the first one and a half to two hour first playthrough simply does not give the developers enough space, and Infinite, again, acts only as a short technical demo. The most interesting part of the game, which is not explained in detail, is the weather anomalies, in which the two worlds intersect, due to which you will face not only humanoid enemies, but also enemies whose design is largely based on Chinese mythology.

Breathtaking view and unfortunate technical condition

The original Bright Memory received very positive reviews for its visual processing, and Infinite is no different or even better. From the start of the campaign, I literally felt like I was playing a Crysis alternative built on Unreal Engine 4 by a really small team of developers. Most of the environments look really cool, the characters have also been well cared for, and the small team only reveals sad facial animations, which, however, due to their frequent appearance, do not spoil the overall good impression. Of course, it is worth noting the very successful implementation of RTX and DLSS.

As for the sound, dubbing and music, I would call everything here average.

Unfortunately, unlike visual processing, the technical state of the game can no longer be assessed positively. During the one and a half hour story campaign, the game crashed four times, and once the saved position was damaged and the entire chapter had to be replayed. Another issue was a broken intro cutscene where I spawned higher than intended on the plane so the edge of the map was clearly visible (all captured in the third image below), and I encountered enemies stuck in environments and with texture weaves. It’s just that the game doesn’t look very well tuned, and a slight delay would certainly help the developers in that regard.

It is currently unknown if we will see another sequel or a completely different game from these developers. However, not only thanks to the sales success of the original demo, but also of Infinite, I firmly believe that this is not the last time we hear about the FYQD studio. The potential of this brand, especially due to visual processing and gameplay, is definitely there.

You can buy the game on Steam. It will soon be released on the Xbox Series X/S, the exact release date has not yet been announced.

We test the latest PC games on the powerful LYNX Grunex 2020 computer.