Slashdot Mirror
Early Reviews Reflect Well On Mirror's Edge
The much-anticipated first person non-shooter Mirror's Edge is being released today for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Reviews for the game, while not without complaints, are generally positive. 1Up praises the controls, saying, "It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. ... Once you're familiar with Faith's abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it's easy to see potential routes through the world." Ars Technica is more critical, noting that the main story's gameplay only clocks in at about six hours, and that the artistic style doesn't vary much between levels. Nick Channon, a producer for Mirror's Edge, sat down with Gamasutra and discussed the reasoning for some of their design choices. The PC version of Mirror's Edge and some additional downloadable content will be available in January.
A first person non-shooter, huh? You know, at first I didn't think something like this would work, but the more I think about it, the more I like this idea. I think it could really work well, and be a refreshing change from the all those tiresome shooters.
So what kind of melee weapons do you get to use? Baseball bats, butcher knives, broken bottles, axes, chainsaws, weed-whackers, two-by-fours with lots of nails pounded into them? The old standby, the trusty rock? Or do you just like, gouge your opponents eyes out with your bare hands and bite their ears off?
Probably not - some people are just more sensitive to it than others. It's not something you can really adapt to. Everyone has differing motion sickness threshold (I don't think anybody is truly immune, there will be some level that will make a person sick). Some people can't watch or play any FPS (this is pretty rare); a not insignificant number of people get motion sick from Unreal Engine games but not others. Mirror's Edge tends to push it to the extreme, combining a moving, swaying camera and blurring. My wife has played Fallout 3, Unreal 2, Battlefield 2, and others, and watches me play Fallout 3, but she got sick to her stomache in a few minutes.
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I just finished playing through the downloadable demo and I'm happy to see that they've finally implemented what actually happens with your point of view when you run. There's no more "the entire screen bobs" to simulate a walking/running effect. When you run, you're looking at a point in the distance and that never diverges from your center of view. If the camera's orientation is represented by an arbitrarily long pool cue, the tip of the cue is resting on what you're looking at and the end of the cue (the camera) moves up and down and side to side. So objects far away barely move at all while objects right beside your head move as much as your head does.
On another note, it's nice to see EA come out with something original though check back in a few years and see if there's a Mirror's Edge 2010, 2011, and so on.
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What I want to see is someone modding this game so that you can play it as a multiplayer capture the flag. It'd be like the games of capture the flag that you'd play as kids, but at an excessively larger scale.
I'll probably get the game irregardless, but that would definitely increase replayability.
WAHHHHHH! I was whistling the musical theme that's on every trailer and part of the demo as I browsed over to games.slashdot only to see it at the top of the front page!
The music doesn't seem particularly memorable, until you can't get it out of your head.
You can turn on a white dot for the centre of the screen which actually helps with the motion sickness by giving you something to focus on while you play.
On a side note, I'm surprised EA are taking chances with new IP and even gameplay mechanics now. Sure, they have their yearly sports franchises and they have announced that this and Dead Space are going to be trilogies, but it's surprising how EA have brought out some fairly original games instead of generic-army-FPS-2009, forcing Acti-Blizzard to step up to the plate to become the new evil, un-inspired publisher for gamers. As long as you stick to consoles, that is. No DRM here..... This generation.....
I'll take a new game with issues over a very polished rehash any time. The ars technica reviewer wanted more, but I don't think it's a bad idea for the first game with a new mechanic to keep it simple and try to get it right. They can add depth and breadth in the sequels, when they have the basics down and we are used to how it works.
Interesting that despite the repetitiveness they still found it too short, repetitive+short+fun=replayable.
For the most part, judging from the demo at least, the solution is to avoid getting into a combat situation at all. They have guns, you don't. Rushing them and taking their legs out with a sliding kick before they get a shot off, then run away before they can react, was the most fun way.
Mirror's Edge is great precisely because you're not playing a violent person for a change.
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I don't see why not. I give it 5/5 for graphics/gameplay/story, but -4 stars for DRM. Its part of what you get when you pay for it, and it can and should take a negative toll on the game.
Not that all games with drm should get -4 stars, it should depend on what the person buying it thinks and not what everyone else thinks it should be. (ie I hate limited installs, but could care less, even for single player about online verification of the game)