Comments on: Art And Motion In Mirror’s Edge

By: Mirror’s Edge Third Person Hack | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Mirror’s Edge Third Person Hack | Rock, Paper, Shotgun — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:34:19 +0000

[...] However, it’s pretty pointless. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, as Dice had no intention of the game being played this way. This is first revealed in the hilarious running animations the Faith model uses, with her arms flailing wildly. But, as the evil genie planned, it doesn’t aid with seeing what’s coming up at all. In fact, now Faith’s just in the way. However, it’s still interesting enough to play with, and other camera angles let you get some much better screenshots if you’re into that sort of thing. [...]

By: Smurfy

Smurfy — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:27:33 +0000

Instrumental version of the ME song!

http://www.vulomedia... ...mental.mp3

Wee!

By: Archagon

Archagon — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:33:02 +0000

Ah! Yes, that one was tough, but I was just using kung fu. If you steal the gun from the first guy, surely it's a lot easier?

By: Sentry Gun

Sentry Gun — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:18:22 +0000

Archagon: I'm talking about the fight sequence in the server room, before you get up to the roof.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:52:31 +0000

Wallrunning's one: because they don't make you press the direction or hold any keys, I don't feel like I'm driving the motion. And climbing up onto high surfaces: one tap of space makes the Prince jump up, dig into the wall with his claw, adjust his position, then jump up again, grip the ledge and pull himself up. That feels like a whole separate motion that I didn't trigger, so again I've lost the feeling of control. I feel more like I'm instructing him, and since the level furniture so explicitly instructs me, I'm little more than a middleman between the two.

By: Crane

Crane — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:56:57 +0000

@Pentadact:
"I just press space, then he goes off and does a whole long series of moves by himself."

Could you perhaps give an example of this? On the PS3 version at least, it may not have been as interactive as it should have been, but I never got the feeling that pressing a button was doing more than one thing...

Okay, wallrunning should have required you to actually move the analogue stick, and grabbing swing-ring-things needed a less generous time-window, but from what you're saying it almost sounds as if they streamlined things even more for the PC version.

By: Archagon

Archagon — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:01:29 +0000

Also, what's with the combat hate? I mean, I was a *bit* frustrated with it, but that's only because I tried to disarm everyone. Didn't fire a single shot. Wasn't nearly as hard as some of the other games I've played.

By: Archagon

Archagon — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:52:56 +0000

Sentry: you mean you didn't just jump on the chopper right away?

I disagree with the checkpoint comment. Rewinding time would be horrible for a game like ME, and I think the checkpoint system was pulled off pretty well. It certainly makes difficult combos a lot more satisfying.

ME reminded me a lot of NES/SNES era platformers. They're not bad, but they're certainly a lot less forgiving than modern games. I'd say it's in a different genre from most other FPSs, where you're encouraged to recover from your mistakes instead of formulating a new plan and trying again.

By: Sentry Gun

Sentry Gun — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:10:23 +0000

I enjoyed Mirror's Edge (despite being horribly short) quite a bit.

Unfortunately, the part that now sticks in my head the most about the game is the fight sequence right before the final scene, or more specifically how I had to replay the same fucking fight scene about 50 times before I could actually get on with the damn thing, just to find out all I get for that grueling battle is an amazingly thin ending.

I'm not one for replaying a single player game, as it greatly reduces all of what the game has to offer. If I was allowed to keep that machine pistol the riot cops had with unlimited ammo, I might reconsider though. I loved that thing, and how it didn't impair my movement.

By: Roadrunner

Roadrunner — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:33:09 +0000

Also, the favourites bar works, because that photography site is great :D

By: Sibilantjoe

Sibilantjoe — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:21:43 +0000

Glad you realized the same thing about ME that I did, Pentadact-

Great parkour, amazing setting, fucking terrible combat.

Also, very short. And the time trials, unfortunately, don't add much. What I envisioned for multiplay was something like a game of tag: Run around like crazy, "tag" someone by punching/kicking them (which staggers them to prevent instant-tagbacks but does no damage), and then run away. Now THAT would add replayability.

By: Roadrunner

Roadrunner — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:20:37 +0000

If you want my classically disconcerting opinion, there are too many toolbars on the side.
Tags, about, maybe the RSS, and recent links seem sort of unneccessary :\

By: Jazmeister

Jazmeister — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:42:16 +0000

Crane:

I think I'd probably agree with you. First person works well with a mouse, but definitely lacks with the analogue. Sometimes you just wonder, how the hell were we ever good at the old Rare classics? Third person, with the 8 compass points... that's good. That's acceptable, anyway. I think there's something to be said for 3p=console, 1p=PC. Maybe they should just release a mouse and keyboard for the consoles. The Wii uses a USB keyboard, right?

By: Jason L

Jason L — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:41:20 +0000

'Hold the freerunning button to view the scripted freerunning sequence, VALUED CONSUMER'.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:07:45 +0000

Wow, whatever you're typing it's absolutely not allowed. Crane, it's true Mirror's Edge's checkpoint system isn't good. It's not terrible, but Prince of Persia previously had the best possible failure system: rewinding. The new PoP's magic-hand is okay by me, I never much cared about difficulty, but it's weird that they would invent a new and inferior one when they had a near-monopoly on the holy grail of frustration avoidance. My problem with PoP, apart from wanting to stab the Prince in the fucking neck with a biro the second he opened his mouth, was that I didn't feel like it was me doing any of the acrobatics. I just press space, then he goes off and does a whole long series of moves by himself. I don't mind it being easy, but I have to feel like it's me doing the easy stuff, not watching someone else.

By: ZomBuster

ZomBuster — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:06:49 +0000

ok that's just weird. My whole sentence just dissapeared because it was between

By: ZomBuster

ZomBuster — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:05:12 +0000

I played it a bit yesterday, and besides making me feel nauseous it didn't feel like a full game to me. I would enjoyed it more with a better combat system which was used more.

Also,talking about letterboxes

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By: Crane

Crane — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:01:20 +0000

Popping up a controversial opinion here, based on playing the (shock, horror) PS3 versions of both games...

I prefer "Prince of Persia" over "Mirror's Edge". Vastly.

It could simply be a control issue, that ME with its first-person perspective works better on a PC, and POP is clunkier and more awkward with a mouse and keyboard.

Personally though, I found that ME had too many instances of sloppy collision detection and clumsy controls, coupled with tiresome scenes where you were being attacked by enemies, and could only really proceed by trying to map the area you were in by running around it for the three seconds before you were ventilated. Then you had to sit through the damned loading screen again, plus make your way back from the checkpoint.

POP on the other hand... Whilst I can agree it could have stood to be harder, I found that I preferred being able to fly around the levels at top speed with little challenge, rather than the die-reload-retry-die-reload-retry of Mirror's Edge.

Okay; it's possible I just suck, but even so, I think that for freerunning games like ME and POP, it's far far better that they be too easy than too hard.

By: peterd102

peterd102 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:51:57 +0000

I second RoadRunners Commment, I like being able to read all the comments when i visit a post.

But no matter, do most of the Games writers agree on if a game is good or bad? Though of cource im taking your 84% review because you are award winning. Good luck with the changes, though of cource people will critize them no matter what.

Rightly so though, you do the same to games, lol only joking, can we have bullets flying across the screen in the same manner as the snowflakes for christmas.

Ive just realized that this is a mirrors edge post: The screenshots youve given do make the areas feel like a city, but are still somewhat surreal.

By: J-Man

J-Man — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:48:49 +0000

Hmmm... sounds good then. Once that's done, I'd say James 2.7 is a pretty damn good blog.