Bright Memory

Bright Memory has the potential to be great once Infinite arrives, but for now, it gets a very light recommendation with some provisos. It’s not technically impressive even as a Series X launch title, but Bright Memory is worth pursuing either way if you grew up on classic action romps.

Bright Memory has so much potential and I am eagerly awaiting Infinite’s release in 2021. Gameplay looks and feels familiar as far as first-person shooters but when it comes to graphics, the Xbox Series S makes it look so good. If you’re looking to kick back after a long day and just want to shoot things up in style, Bright Memory is definitely that game. Granted this is only a taste of what’s to come, its replayability just might hold you over, especially if you’re an achievement hunter looking to boost your Xbox Gamerscore.

The Xbox Series X/S has recently launched, and with great success too! However, it’s not all smiles for fans of the first-person shooter genre. The most anticipated FPS game, Halo Infinite, is not set to arrive until sometime in 2021 (we hope!). Besides replaying some older first person shooters via Xbox Series X/S backward compatibility, there really isn’t a lot for FPS fans to play at launch. There’s Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, which is… okay, and then there’s a little gem called Bright Memory. Bright Memory was created by a one-man development studio and works as a sort of prequel/dem...

Plagued with a plethora of issues, but still occasionally fun, Bright Memory is one of the most confusing games I've played in some time.

Bright Memory is a rare good-bad game that's enjoyable partly because of its oddities and flaws, but there's signs that its sequel Bright Memory Infinite could actually just be good.

Overall, there was so much inherently wrong with my experience with Bright Memory that could have been easily fixed or improved with more time in the oven. From unsatisfying, shallow combat to limiting and dull level design, there are a million little things wrong with the game that end up weighing it down, resulting in something I can't recommend in good conscience unless someone's looking to revisit a bygone era of first-person shooters. That said, there is undoubtedly some potential in this franchise buried somewhere deep beneath all the annoying minutia that made the game unenjoyable at wo...