| Thursday, February 26, 2009 |
  Things That Suck About the Magnetic Butterfly Publ | 
Posted - 2/26/2009 1:05:51 PM | There are a number of things that suck about the first public prototype for Magnetic Butterfly. Let's talk about those things.
- It's very much a prototype; it's not at all a "game" yet.
- The butterfly is composed of a capsule primitive and two awful wings. These wings do not flap (or flutter).
IfWhen you fall off of the platform and find yourself falling into an abyss there is nothing you can do. You will fall forever. You will fall until you refresh the page. Or close the browser.
- There is no incentive to risk your butterfly's life to grab the point spheres other than the score number going up. Then again, score served as the sole incentive for games for years.
- There are no enemies implemented.
- The tuning on the butterfly and wrecking ball system is not awesome (yet).
- The existence of the score combo system is unknown to everyone but me. That said, this sounds like the basis for a new religion.
That works for now. If you feel like installing the Unity web player then you will find the following controls useful: W/A/S/D for movement and the space bar controls the butterfly's magnetism. While magnetized, the player has about two seconds of charge (at its maximum) and this will keep the butterfly locked in place for the duration of the magnetism. So, uh, have fun with the prototype, I guess? Any feedback is not only recommended but welcomed and appreciated. Click the link below to play:
Magnetic Butterfly Prototype
  
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| Wednesday, February 18, 2009 |
| F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin | 
Posted - 2/18/2009 11:00:13 AM | What is most astonishing about F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is not its poster-child of horror: that Gothic-looking nine-year-old child look is about as familiar to anyone who has seen any of Hollywood's reinterpretations of certain Japanese Horror flicks. Nor is it astonishing that F.E.A.R. 2 fails, like so many sequels recently, to convey any narrative points of significance. Nor is it astonishing that the prominently-advertised mech segments feel as out-of-place as any player of the original F.E.A.R. would have imagined them to feel. No, what is astonishing about F.E.A.R. 2 is how little of what made F.E.A.R. such an engaging and refreshing first-person shooter is present.
One of the commonly-echoed complaints about the original F.E.A.R. was the "bland" or "repetitive" level design that filled the game's superb single-player campaign. As heavy into the supernatural as the game's narrative got, the gameplay always remained grounded in, more or less, a commonly-understood vision of reality. As such, a large chunk of the game took place in abandoned or decrepit buildings, office buildings, warehouses, garages, corporate atriums, and other such staples of modern life in any large city. Other than the decrepit buildings, though, the environments in F.E.A.R. were all highly representative of everyone's commonly-understood idea of an office, a warehouse, a garage, and so on. The prime example of this are the office levels which make up a decent portion of F.E.A.R.'s campaign: there are a number of cubicles and office floors which are in clean, tidy order when a player enters them. Some of the cubicle phones have messages on them for the former occupant of the cube and, through these, a portion of the game's narrative is told.
What made these areas interesting is not that their surface appeal is intriguing, they're offices after all. These environments are intriguing due to how these offices were put to use when enemies came flooding in though doors, windows, and ceilings. Suddenly cubicles became cover. Glass was shattering from every window or glass panel, sparks were flying from broken computers and monitors, and giant holes filled the walls (example). It was an arena of chaos that was once an everyday environment.
  
Developer Monolith's solution to the lack of variety by the midpoint of F.E.A.R. was to make nearly each and every level of F.E.A.R. 2 into the kind of levels that video gamers everywhere have come to expect. As such, Project Origin has a hospital that is conducting secret experiments and, eventually, is shown to only be accessible via a giant underground lair. It also has an elementary school level (which is used, primarily, for horror purposes rather than the combat it would have been ideal for) where the nurse's office is, really, an elevator that goes down into a secret lab. Basically, F.E.A.R. 2 attempts to moonlight as No One Lives Forever 2 and the intense, horror atmosphere that the game seems to want to create is damaged as a result of the player working his/her way through levels that could have come from Evil Genius.
Ultimately, it's the level design of these various environments that causes F.E.A.R. 2 to suffer the most. I won't get too technical as to the actual design of these levels, because Steve Gaynor already has and, what with being a game/level designer himself, his thoughts are incredibly detailed and well thought-out. I want to draw particular attention to one quote that relates to enemy awareness when a player enters a new area:
As the player approaches an encounter space, he should be able to observe its major features and devise an initial plan of attack. This means that the entry point should feature a vantage point, often elevated, that illustrates the layout of navigable space, cover points, and interactive objects. [...] The opposite experience is often encountered in F.E.A.R. 2: as the player steps through a doorway into the fight arena, enemies are already aware of his presence and spraying the entry point with suppressive fire. What options does the player have now? The only valid ones are to retreat and use the edge of the entry door as cover, or to dash blindly forward into a hail of bullets, which is most often suicide.
F.E.A.R. 2 adopted this nasty trait that its predecessor avoided at almost all times: Call of Duty-ism. Instead of allowing the AI to decide its proper course of action (with some "nudging" through triggers and attraction points) once the player makes his first move, F.E.A.R. 2 instead ushers the player forward into battle -- essentially assuming the responsibility of first strike. Instead of allowing a player to wander into an area that is already filled with enemies and observe the entirety of the environment in safety before taking his first move, F.E.A.R. 2 seems to almost always convince (or assume) that the player can deal with all of that using the slow-motion mechanism. What happens as a result of this is that there is no planning phase; it's just the reaction and the attack. And while the slow motion feature does afford a player more time to scout out his surrounding and use cover, the more likely course of action for any player on his first time through the game is that of killing everything around him that means him harm. As a result, the cover system that F.E.A.R. 2 clumsily offers the player goes almost entirely unused.
Monolith also tries to awkwardly intersperse active horror sessions into the F.E.A.R. 2 without evolving their playbook of scares and, in some cases, appearing to put less effort into getting into the heads of the players of the game. The first F.E.A.R. did, to my memory, an admirable job of splicing some cheap scares and some intelligent placement of the token creepy girl. There was one moment, which was partially ruined by the game's demo, where a player was walking down a sewer catwalk and comes to a ladder; the distance between the walkway is too large to just jump down, so most players would simply use the ladder that was present. As soon as the first-person camera adjusts to show the player's hands on the ladder as he would begin to climb down, Alma, the creepy little girl in the red dress, is shown standing at the very spot the player just walked by. She doesn't growl at the camera or attack the player or anything, her presence is enough to accomplish the scare. The moments in F.E.A.R. that are devoted to the supernatural events that occur when Alma is reaching out to the player character are generally quick but, aside from that, also reveal very important elements for the game's narrative.
  
In F.E.A.R. 2, Monolith exploits fairly large chunks of any given level as atmospheric pieces. There are segments of the level where no traditional combat with enemy soldiers occurs. Instead, the game will throw all sorts of postprocessor effects at the player which represent the player-character's psychological battle with Alma. These effects are both frequent and distracting and what seems like a clever use of technology at first quickly becomes a trite abuse of said technology. It's unfortunate that this is also the case with the atmospheric segments as a whole. Their integration into the game as a whole is rarely seamless; essentially, once a player sees Alma then a "horror" segment is underway. Alma will walk in plain view around a corner, the player will do the same since it's his only method of progression, and then either the music will spike and nothing will happen, Alma will appear at the end of this new hallway, or Alma will, for some absurd reason, run at the player and a quick-time event will ensue where the player has to rapidly mash his melee button. The stark contrast that exists between these segments and the combat-heavy meat of the game renders the atmospheric or horror mood of these segments, both feelings that the game generally fails to deliver on, works to completely defeat the purpose of their existence. As soon as the postprocessor effects go into overtime, the UI or the flashlight flickers, or Alma flashes into view, F.E.A.R. 2 is telling its players "Okay, it's time to be scared!"
There are also segments in these atmospheric level segments where the player required to shoot ghosts. The shooting of these ghosts is, as one could imagine, a thoroughly awkward affair where a player is forced to put a bullet into a barely-visible ghost that viciously attacks the player if he fails to, uh, re-kill the ghost. The primary issue with having these ghosts as enemies is that there are certain areas in some of the game's levels, typically near some sort of major atrocity (like a nuke or a plane crash), where there are "good ghosts" that represent the souls of the recently-departed. These ghosts never attack the player and do not need to be shot. These sorts of ghosts are actually used to greater, and less absurd, effect than the ghosts that litter the atmospheric level segments, but their coexistence with their angry brethren is an awful design choice that serves to simply confuse their usage.
Monolith made extensive changes to the core combat mechanics for F.E.A.R. 2 that, most likely, is a result of fears that the original game's combat didn't fare well when it was ported to consoles. I didn't personally play the console ports of the original game, but I've heard nothing but bad things which sort of stands against the positive reviews that I'm reading now. The combat in the original game was, however, very PC-focused. The game was almost centered around the tactical and tactile benefits of a properly-placed head shot. Every weapon in F.E.A.R. was of such a high caliber of power that the load out a player chose to employ through his trek through the single-player was based purely on preference and available ammunition. As I played through F.E.A.R. I kept the dual-pistols on my person at all times simply due to the tremendously gratifying head shots they delivered and the well-done feel of the weapons.
F.E.A.R. 2 went a different route with its combat that made its arsenal into a more joystick-friendly affair. Every weapon has a fairly large kill box (area of bullet spread) that makes allows for more forgiving firing. It's an understandable design change that makes absolute sense for the primary platforms that F.E.A.R. 2 was designed for. I played it on PC but it was always Monolith's intentions to craft the game for a console playing experience. What Monolith also did is to make head shots less valuable, make every weapon generally less powerful in general, and to seemingly reduce the weapon variety. There are two types of automatic rifles, two shotguns, and then the stereotypical FPS arsenal: single-shot flamethrower, a nailgun (far weaker than the original game's equivalent), a plasma cannon (BFG9000), missile launcher (given when big guys are near), sniper rifle (scope, bang, etc.), and a laser (charge up and slowly burn at enemies until they die). With the exception of the sniper rifle, none of these weapons actually offer a rewarding play experience and they're almost all only offered when there is a specific scenario coming up that requires them.
  
Trying to be a stereotypical first-person shooter is actually what F.E.A.R. 2 does best. It has vehicle segments where there is a convenient mech lying around without a pilot that the player gets in and stumbles clumsily around a landscape wrecking havoc. It has a segment where a teammate is pinned down by snipers and the player needs to get a sniper rifle and take out those pesky snipers indicated by laser sights. It has turret segments, one of which plays hard rock music with commentary from a nearby teammate. What?
Monolith's original F.E.A.R. is a game which is widely recognized as one of the finest action-focused first-person shooters made in recent years. Yet, F.E.A.R. 2 is a game that almost seems to be ashamed of its predecessor and make penance for the wrongs that it committed by distancing itself as much as possible from it. It wants to be Ringu, Call of Duty, and the archetypal video game all at once. But it does all these things without realizing all of what made its namesake such a popular name amongst gamers in the first place and the cohesion that was necessary to create such a game in the first place. At its best, F.E.A.R. 2 is a disappointment to fans of the original game, but at its worst it's nothing more than an poorly-assembled, though fantastically well-produced, amalgamation of bullet points from any major first-person shooter in the last few years.
And when the time comes, we'll talk about the pure absurdity and gall of the game's ending.
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| Monday, February 16, 2009 |
| Flower | 
Posted - 2/16/2009 12:31:02 PM | Flower is a rare video game. For one thing, it has flowers. For another, no one dies. It's a game where the player controls the wind that guides a lonesome flower petal (and its eventual flock of follower petals) through a game world in need of nothing more than some attention, love, and nourishment.
Flower is also a game that is difficult to explain.
  
In the most simplistic sense, Flower is about guiding a stream of petals from one checkpoint to another where each "checkpoint" is a flower in the landscape. Once the player's petal stream touches a flower, the checkpoint is considered "met" and a petal from that flower flies into the air and joins your petal posse. When all, or enough, of the flowers in a given area have been touched, a scripted sequence is set off and urges the player the progress onward. A new player's actions may feel fairly simplistic or minute, but this is a feeling that will dissipate quickly. As the player fills more and more of these area-by-area conditions, the landscape begins to come alive: dead grass is reborn, new plants spring forth from the ground, trees regain their color and lush leaves, and so on. As a player progresses through the world of Flower and the areas that its made up of, the game is also attaching a sense of gravitas and emotion to its most fundamental game mechanic: touching a flower.
Flower's other main game mechanic comes for the sense of flow that the game encourages a player to maintain. With only a handful of exceptions, it's always possible to stop going from new flower to new flower to unlock new areas and, instead, just fly around the landscape as it exists at any given moment. The ability to just guide a stream of flower petals through the air with no sense of purpose is a near-constant possibility in the game and that lends a great deal of validation to the atmosphere of the game. That said, Flower is at its best when a player can maintain a mildly fast and uninterrupted pace throughout an entire area and the chime that each flower emits when its touched is properly strung-together with the other flowers that make up a given "path" and the player is consistently experiencing rewards for completing the objectives in a given area. This emphasis on flow is especially true of the final three areas, where there is an actual feeling of urgency that motivates players.
The marvel of Flower, though, is its ability to convey emotion to players. Like no video game that I can think of before it, Flower revels in happiness and serenity. As players progress through the six areas in the game, the only possible result for any player that can allow themselves to submit into the game's atmosphere is a feeling of profound, rewarding warmth. The music, the art direction, and the controls all lend themselves to a playing experience where a player is able to minimize the gap between the player, the controller, and the game and buy into the concept that a player's direct actions are the reason these streams of flower petals are flying and sweeping through the gorgeous in-game landscapes.
  
Flower's developer, thatgamecompany, is doing some very unique work within the realm of video games and it will be interesting to see where they go from Flower. The company's last game, flOw (and the Flash release), is a game that also creates a very unique, strong atmosphere while allowing a player to define his/her own play style. While it bears very little gameplay similarities to Flower, flOw's minimalism and clarity of design are even more pronounced and well-defined in Flower.
When I finished all six of Flower's primary areas (and the exceptionally clever Credits segment), I went to Metacritic to see how the mainstream game reviewing sites handled their treatment of Flower. It was surprising to see how traditional the reviews for the game were; especially Eurogamer's piece which, of all things, criticized the ten dollar price tag of the game. Aside from my issues with the game's imprecise and flow-breaking sixaxis-based control scheme, I find it difficult to find much to gripe about with Flower; least of all its paltry entry fee for a game that lasted me about two-three hours and a game that I will no doubt look to play-through again when the memories of the game have faded a bit or I want to be reminded that games don't have to be about guns, death, and sex.
Flower is the rare kind of video game from which discussions of games as art, entertainment versus experience, and dollars per hour will blossom. Don't listen to that nonsense.
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| Thursday, February 12, 2009 |
| Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 (Multiplayer) | |
Posted - 2/12/2009 10:42:26 AM | Over the last few years, Relic has been crafting and evolving their very unique take on the real-time strategy genre with every new title they have released. Their shift in focus from a game like Homeworld to their, now, action/RTS genre blend was most apparent in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004). Dawn of War introduced the concept of cover as an actual game mechanic that players had to think about and plan a strategy around. The game also provided players with a lower unit count than most other strategy games released at the time while also treating infantry units as somewhat customizable squads rather than individual units. Dawn of War also was the first of Relic's games that really attempted to differentiate itself from the conventions of the real-time strategy genre at the time by reducing the gameplay emphasis on resource management.
  
Unlike games like Warcraft, Starcraft, and Age of Empires, Dawn of War treated one of its two resources as a capturable commodity. The map designers placed several important requisition points at key locations around a game map and these capturable points were the only means of harvesting requisition. Once a resource point is captured the flow of a given resource was dependent on nothing else but time (and maybe an upgraded listening post on the capture point). There were no workers to manage and not supply flow to contend with, simply a group of "hot points" that littered a game map. There were, however, constructable power nodes that players had to build in order to acquire power -- a design mechanic that felt out of place in the scheme of the game. Relic's next game, Company of Heroes, took this design methodology one step further and made the source of all resources a capturable point on the game map that had to be claimed and then, in some cases, enhanced through the construction of a building atop the point.
Dawn of War 2 makes resource "gathering" such an integral portion of the game that, moreso than Company of Heroes, multiplayer matches are a constant struggle for each team to keep both its resources points and the capture points which govern the fate of each teams' "ticket" -- whoever has the least number of these capture points will see a slow reduction in their team's ticket count and the first team to reach zero loses. It's a geographical tug-of-war where players shift from one thoughtfully-placed point of interest to another. This is, no doubt, a game mode that any player of multiplayer first-person shooter games over recent years is familiar with; in particular, the primary game mode of the entire Battlefield series. What Relic has essentially done for the multiplayer portions of Dawn of War 2 -- even more so than they did with Company of Heroes -- is to bring the intensity of a good match of Battlefield to the real-time strategy genre; a game I experienced last night actually had my two allies and I come back to win a match after being beaten from 400-some points down to four points.
Resource management aside, Company of Heroes' general gameplay progression still owed a lot to the typical real-time strategy formula. The base-building was minimal, but the construction of defense structures and some key base structures was still a strong aspect of the game. The multiplayer gameplay in Dawn of War 2 (the multiplayer is completely different from the single-player) gives the player a starting base which consists of a headquarters and a single defense turret. Throughout the a match a player can take his headquarters from level one to level two, then level two to level three. That's the extent of the base-building.
  
I was skeptical about the radical shift in game design from Dawn of War to Dawn of War 2 but, after a handful of games, it was absolutely the right choice for the franchise.
Everything about Dawn of War 2 revolves around a player's ability to choose a handful (or so) of unit types/squads and closely manage them to fit a player's specific strategy and the best strategy given the layout of the map terrain at any given time. In the beginning of a match, properly-chosen infantry will dominate all battles. The map's structures and defenses will be in-place for various squads to find cover behind, there are points all over the map which are unoccupied and begging to be captured, and there are no enormous vehicles or mega-units that infantry will eventually cower in fear at the sight of. The beginning of a game of Dawn of War 2 is a very unique, short-lived section of the game where infantry rule the terrain. Which players can properly set-up their emplaced units (heavy bolters, plasma squads, etc.) to watch over the light ranged units (scouts, light infantry) as both ranged squads work to suppress enemies so melee units can move in for the kill will find great success here.
Once each player's hero unit starts gaining some levels and purchasing upgrades and the vehicles and mega-units start popping up as a part of each player's employed units the composition of a Dawn of War 2 match changes. The vehicles and mega-units can topple over even the best of the cover that infantry were previously using to great effect. Now the game becomes a war of attrition as each team works to build the perfect combination of infantry, vehicles, and mega-units as each side works to either defend their currently-held resources and capture points or go on the offensive to take new points from their enemies.
It's the effectiveness of the back-and-forth of point capturing and defending that works so well in Dawn of War 2. In Company of Heroes this gameplay was great for its time but the maps required players to treat the map geography territorially; this design focus forces players into a "hunker down and defend" playing ideology which didn't seem terribly convenient for the kind of gameplay the point-based Company of Heroes modes encouraged. Dawn of War 2 gives players maps which place important the primary three capture points in very difficult-to-defend areas. This simple change in design of multiplayer maps ends up creating an entirely new game flow. Players simply cannot go entirely on the defensive in Dawn of War 2, the maps either don't allow it or the structures which segregate various components of the map can end up being broken by a number of mid-to-late game units.
One of my favorite features of Dawn of War 2 crops up often during the mid-game portions of a multiplayer match: the ability for players to take certain infantry squads and set them up to be makeshift defensive emplacements. In a recent game I expended a great deal of time and resoruces to take back a crucial capture point that my team needed to recapture in order to come back from almost certain defeat. Once I managed to get this point back I built a squad of heavy infantry who wielded a gigantic plasma weapon that, essentially, ruined squads of infantry and did significant damage to vehicles and hero units. I sent this unit to guard the capture point I just took back from the opposing team while the majority of my army went off to help my teammates; I set the plasma squad up behind the only remaining segment of full cover in the area and for the next five minutes of the match this squad annihilated any unit that approached the area. Once the opposing team was wise to my plasma gunner they sent in a large army to take back the area, at which point my army returned and side-swiped them.
  
The dichotomy that exists between melee and ranged combat in Dawn of War 2 feels like the most problematic area of the game. At times it feels like the effectiveness of melee units is "random" -- it's almost assuredly governed by a very complex set of armor/weapon mechanics but these don't seem to be made obvious or easy-to-understand for players. Sometimes a melee unit or commander can walk right up to a ranged enemies and thrash them in less than a second. Sometimes a melee unit will get suppresses by melee fire and end up being slaughtered by enemies as the melee unit attempts to make its way to its ranged assailants or retreat from battle entirely. I imagine that these mechanics will make themselves more known to me as I play through more and more multiplayer matches but, as of now, it seems poorly explained.
The interactions between some of the vehicles and mega-units seems to be even more perplexing. Some infantry units fare very well against the enormous walker units and some squads of infantry get ripped up by the same walker units in quickly and violently. I had similar problems with the original Dawn of War, though, so these should be things that players can just pick up through time and experimentation with the different races.
Dawn of War 2 isn't a typical real-time strategy game; in fact, I am even hesitant to call it a real-time strategy game in the classical sense. There's no base-building and no resource gathering in the way that Warcraft and Age of Empires have conditioned RTS gamers to expect. Dawn of War 2 is, by far, the best incarnation of the Action/RTS hybrid genre that I've played to-date and all I have been playing are three maps from the freely-available beta. My cautious anticipation for the full game has become a pervasive level of excitement.
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| Tuesday, February 3, 2009 |
| Mirror's Edge | |
Posted - 2/3/2009 2:12:34 PM | Mirror's Edge is a game that was heralded by a marketing campaign that wanted gamers to think of Mirror's Edge as a game that was innovative and, more than that, different. It had a heroine that was markedly different from another well-known leading lady. The scenery is comprised of a bright, pronounced color palette that was primarily composed of white and bright shades red, blue, green, and orange. And, more than those factors, the game was purportedly centered around the escapades of a leading lady whose primary talent was her ability to run fast and execute her Parkour-based maneuvers to navigate through an urban landscape. This marketing campaign, essentially, made Mirror's Edge the closest thing to an "art game" that mega-publisher/developer Electronic Arts is capable of releasing in this turbulent and confusing times within the economy and the games industry.
It's when Mirror's Edge is encouraging a player to run as fast and as smoothly as possible that the game delivers on the hopes that the game's marketing created. When things "work" in Mirror's Edge, they work. The mixture of intensity, fear, and adrenaline that the game manages to create in a player when, in one of the beginning stages, the player must flee from a small band of "blues" (policemen in blue uniforms!) by performing the classical leap of faith from a building to a nearby helicopter is one of my favorite gaming moments of 2008. There were nearby enemies that forced a sense of panic in the player but the designers at DICE managed to contain the danger that the policemen presented to the player perfectly; these enemies made the escape intense, forced the player to focus on running with the flow of the level, and the scene ended just as the game designers anticipated.
At no point in the aforementioned scenario did I, as a player of the game, feel that I was pushed into a corner by the policemen and had to fight my way out. The policemen served their intended purpose of coercing a player to progress at a somewhat specific pace (fast or faster) through the rest of the level and nothing more. DICE's inability to use these "enemies" as a means of pace enforcement throughout much of Mirror's Edge is, in fact, the game's biggest failing. Instead of making a player's trek through a level feel fun and intense the way a Hollywood chase scene would, these enemies constantly limit the options a player has. Sometimes they force a player to run through a certain portion of a level without having any time to properly explore or enjoy the obstacles and scenery. Other times these enemies make a player's run-through end abruptly at an unexpected and undesirable time. More often than not, though, the enemies in Mirror's Edge make a player feel like he/she has to fight his or her way through an encounter. And there is nothing more defeating to the integrity of Mirror's Edge's core design then a player feeling that he was pushed into a corner by the enemy AI and had no choice but to unrealistically annihilate a squad of heavily armed policemen.
Mirror's Edge's own instability is its eventual downfall. Sometimes it wants to make players engage in awkward gunplay. Sometimes it wants to make the level geometry into an uncomfortable Parkour puzzle. But, sometimes, Mirror's Edge gets into a groove when it's this absolutely superb mix of a platformer, racer, and first-person exploration game. DICE was able to implement the controls, the movement, and the general "feel" of being a particularly talented and nimble gymnast who was running, jumping, and sliding her way through a series of "real life" obstacles: the roofs of industrial buildings, construction scaffolding, city plazas, and so on. The real thrill that Mirror's Edge provides is when it exposes players to these sorts of urban obstacle courses and tasks him/her with making it through one of these courses quick, smooth, and in one piece. The amount of trial and error can be frustrating in these cases, but the reward for a smooth execution is unmatched by any other moment in the game. It's like trying to get one lap of a track in a racing game perfect over and over and, finally, getting through an entire lap without a single screw-up. And it's this feeling that Mirror's Edge's combat encounters and puzzle-Parkour don't manage to capitalize on.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how excruciatingly poor every aspect of the Mirror's Edge narrative is. Take note players: when you stumble into a story event in an office where you see your sister just keep in mind that you're going to wish the in-game cut scenes persisted. As it is, that's the one of only two in-game cinematics that players will ever see. Mirror's Edge chooses to convey the entirety of the story through communication units (which aren't bad; just poorly written and voice-acted) but what's worse are the 2D animations that tell the game's narrative in between levels. These cinematics are of a shockingly low quality not only in their scripts but in the absolutely awful animation style that created them. The characters lack any sense of depth, proportion, or even the human-like quality they possess when players see their in-game counterparts. The idea that the script which makes up Mirror's Edge made it into a AAA game production is altogether unsurprising but the fact that these 2D animations made it in is amazing.
Mirror's Edge is a sad game. There are a handful nuggets of superb gameplay that litter what is an altogether mediocre single-player gaming experience. I'm not even a fan of platformer games -- save for the occasional excellent title like Super Mario Galaxy -- but Mirror's Edge's early gameplay segments were an utter joy to engage in. If DICE can manage to recapture what made those early levels of the game so captivating then an eventual sequel should have a lot to offer. As it stands now Mirror's Edge is a game to get to see a very unique take on pacing and platforming, just try not to stray too far from the time trial mode.
Then again, the time trial mode requires playing the full game in order to unlock all of the courses. That's just cruel.
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The entries in this journal have all been posted, along with many more, at mittens' personal site at www.polycat.net.
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