Goozex (on the sidebar) has been a valued service of late. Enabling gamers to trade games with one another in an organized feedback driven manner has been mostly pleasant, save for a couple of occasions where traders have tried to work the system on my dime. Recent fruits of this labor include last year’s Mirror’s Edge on PC, my preferred platform of choice for anything FPS.
Having played the demo on XB 360 last year I finally installed and fired up what had been described as one of the most original IPs from last year. The install was painless, through the initial options are sparse to say the least. The expected ability to tweak the games settings for the best FPS given one’s hardware is absent, requiring alteration of the .ini file. Even without custom settings, it ran fairly flawlessly at 1680*1050 with 4X AA and looked spectacular. The unique design choices and use of color make the game instantly identifiable and also serve the gameplay well.
An FPS exploration of parkour, Mirror’s Edge follows Faith, a runner in the not distant dystopian future where technology has replaced personal freedom. Electronic communication can no longer be trusted so runner carries packages to and from client’s in the underworld. Faith’s sister, a cop, is framed in a prominent murder, leaving Faith to work outside the system to help her. The story and character archetypes are hoary and cliché, but purposeful momentum of the game play is immersive and meaningful.
By using the first-person point of view and a select set of colors to identify the world, the game quickly becomes an immersive excerise in the joys of movement. Linking acrobatic combos with the the linear drive of finding the fastest uninterrupted route to a goal is immensely rewarding, quickly becoming the entire focus of play. The open cityscape is a white-hued glory, and while missions drive some of the action underground into grimy bump-mapped and light-refracted sewers, the majority thus far have been above, under the blazing sun.
The story plays out both through in-game voice via radio and anime style cutscenes between sections though what story there is exists only as a vehicle to drive the player from one set-piece to another. As weak as the story and character moments are, weaker still are the choices made to force the player into more tradtional shooter territory, diluting a truly original experience.
I look forward to plowing through to the end.
Showing posts with label Mirror's Edge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mirror's Edge. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Game a Day-Ish:Demo-itis
Played a few demos in the last couple days, Left 4 Dead, Tomb Raider:Underworld, & Mirror's Edge. Demos for me are an important part of the gaming experience, because hopefully the demo is truly representative of the gaming experience. Like a trailer for a film, it should attract the consumer into parting with their money to have that experience, and like film, a good ad does not always denote a good game. However I have found that the percentage of "psych" in game demos are a lot smaller than in film trailers.
Some demos (though increasingly rare these days) are their own self contained experience that afford the gameplay, graphics and sense of story without actually being drawn directly from a level in the game. The legendary Half-Life demo remains one of the single best examples of this as it revealed the relationship the player would have with the NPC Barney, as well as the environments, enemies and gameplay in a rich intense but brief experience.
Left 4 Dead is from the same publisher as Half-Life, Valve (they bought the original developer and brought the game in-house). A stripped down multiplayer (either online or off,using bot's) the game is a series of encounters between four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and the aforementioned zombies. The sheer amount of bodies flung at the player is astounding as is the speed and intensity of the encounters. Graphically the game runs on the Source engine and while I was playing on the Xbox 360 I have to admit disappoint at the look of that version of the game. Like many PC 1st games (Fear, Half-Lief 2) the console ports just don't have the scalability or graphical fidelity of the the PC counterpart on a decently spec'd system. I am looking forward to trying the game on PC.
Tomb Raider:Underworld is a gorgeous looking game that shares the same developer Crystal Dynamics, as TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary, two games I like a lot. The gameplay and controls are tight and the level designs look to be as fiendishly platformy are the previous games. I am looking forward to playing the whole game.
The Mirror's Edge is an original IP from the maker's of the Battlefield series, DICE. Set in a dystopian future where information is controlled by corporations, "runners" like the player character "Faith" move documents and packages back and forth through the city by free-running across rooftops. Using a first-person view, the game provides vertiginous experiences as the player flings themselves on and around the tops of skyscrapers, precariously balanced on pipes and ledges. A fiercely original vision for a game, the gameplay is exhilarating, but if one is prone to motion sickness this game will kill you.
Some demos (though increasingly rare these days) are their own self contained experience that afford the gameplay, graphics and sense of story without actually being drawn directly from a level in the game. The legendary Half-Life demo remains one of the single best examples of this as it revealed the relationship the player would have with the NPC Barney, as well as the environments, enemies and gameplay in a rich intense but brief experience.
Left 4 Dead is from the same publisher as Half-Life, Valve (they bought the original developer and brought the game in-house). A stripped down multiplayer (either online or off,using bot's) the game is a series of encounters between four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and the aforementioned zombies. The sheer amount of bodies flung at the player is astounding as is the speed and intensity of the encounters. Graphically the game runs on the Source engine and while I was playing on the Xbox 360 I have to admit disappoint at the look of that version of the game. Like many PC 1st games (Fear, Half-Lief 2) the console ports just don't have the scalability or graphical fidelity of the the PC counterpart on a decently spec'd system. I am looking forward to trying the game on PC.
Tomb Raider:Underworld is a gorgeous looking game that shares the same developer Crystal Dynamics, as TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary, two games I like a lot. The gameplay and controls are tight and the level designs look to be as fiendishly platformy are the previous games. I am looking forward to playing the whole game.
The Mirror's Edge is an original IP from the maker's of the Battlefield series, DICE. Set in a dystopian future where information is controlled by corporations, "runners" like the player character "Faith" move documents and packages back and forth through the city by free-running across rooftops. Using a first-person view, the game provides vertiginous experiences as the player flings themselves on and around the tops of skyscrapers, precariously balanced on pipes and ledges. A fiercely original vision for a game, the gameplay is exhilarating, but if one is prone to motion sickness this game will kill you.
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