💥 Bright Memory: Infinite Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 “The Little Console That Could” 💥 @FYQD_Studio #GameDev #IndieGames

The Switch will always have a place in my heart as “the little console that could”. 

Many unlikely games have made their way to Nintendo’s smash dual-function console, with the ports of DOOM, DOOM: Eternity and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus all delivering intense first-person action in the palm of your hand (albeit with many technical cutbacks).

Enter Bright Memory: Infinite. Primarily created by one-man developer Zeng "FYQD" Xiancheng in his spare time, this is a brief n’ breezy first-person shooter that shows off what can be done with Unreal Engine 4, a premade asset library, and some big ambitions.

On PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X it’s a whizzy ray-traced/120fps jaw-dropper crammed full of particle effects, real-time reflections, and earth-crumbling set-pieces. So, how many sparkles have been trimmed away to get this running on a Switch?

First up, what’s here is very much playable. Bright Memory: Infinite looks better than most indie Switch games, runs at around 30fps and, though many effects from the PS5/XBX version are drastically scaled back or absent, the game retains its identity. The overall effect is like running a new PC game on an older system that’s a hair below minimum specifications (maybe with a few .ini tweaks).

One big caveat is that Bright Memory: Infinite should absolutely be played in handheld mode. The size of the screen does a lot to hide the graphical downgrade and at least for me,  there’s still a perverse thrill in playing a high-octane action FPS on public transport. By contrast docked mode does the game no favours whatsoever, with a modern 4K screen amplifying every blurry texture and jaggy edge.

Avoid.

And as a game? Well, bearing in mind it’s developed by a single guy, it works. There’s a bare-bones story that drops you right into the action with admirably little exposition (you’re a lady badass, fight these helmeted goons!), a fun but shallow combat system in which you begin as an all-but-invincible murder machine and upgrade yourself to godhood, and environments that recycle a limited number of assets but don’t feel overly repetitive.

The lack of repetition isn’t simply because of smart-level design, it’s also a product of this being a very short experience. I clocked Bright Memory: Infinite on normal difficulty in just over two hours, but even within that, there’s a conscious effort to mix things up beyond straightforward gun and swordplay.

Setpieces see you driving a snazzy armoured sportscar, zipping between crashing jumbo-jets, and taking down relatively complex Devil May Cry-style supernatural bosses. Sadly there’s also an extremely mid-2000s-style forced stealth section where all your fancy weapons are taken away and you’re forced to crouch-walk around meat-cleaving soldiers in the back. That’s a blemish on an otherwise fat-free experience, but fortunately is a) easy, and b) over pretty quickly.

Sadly there are a couple of flies in the ointment. Loading times on Switch are fairly long and most of the interactive setpieces feature instant death moments that force a lengthy reload, and bosses can cream an unaware player very quickly. The checkpoint system means you’ll be thrown back into the start of a boss fight without a prompt, so it’s entirely possible to die to a boss, enter a lengthy loading sequence, get bored and check your phone, and then find yourself killed once more as you hadn’t realized the fight had started up. I also encountered a couple of system errors when things got particularly frenetic, though fortunately generous checkpointing meant I never lost any progress.

Once the credits have rolled you unlock hard mode and a wide selection of depressing stripper-ware outfits for your heroine. I don’t know who these are appealing to, as the game is first-person (aside from very brief cutscenes) putting your character in a skimpy bikini just means you’ll get to see her forearms. You can also change the colour of your guns in subsequent playthroughs, so uh, if you want to see what the game is like with a red gun, go nuts.

The ultimate question is whether a two-hour game is worth £16 on Switch when there are far better ports of it on other systems.