Second Impressions & Review: Mirror's Edge (PC)

Whew!  Finally finished that game and it only took me nine hours, which is a bit less than I was expecting, but honestly, I am just glad that I am not being shot at by any more of the police.  As I did with my review (of sorts) of Dead Space, I do not plan on putting my my standard "Full Review," but instead my thoughts about the game and hopefully, I will not be repeating myself from what either myself or Dr. Potts have already said.

First off, Mirror's Edge was a very fun game with the level of fun being conducive to a couple of factors that I have worked into a handy dandy flowchart.

That is pretty much about it.  While I was indoors, I noticed that a lot of the levels were puzzle heavy., needing to figure out where to jump and how to get to where I am supposed to be going held a certain level of interest, but I quickly felt confined and claustrophobic.  I wanted to be outside, in the open smog-less air of The City.  Being indoors also meant that there was a good chance that Merc would call you up on your earpiece radio to let you know that there were some Blues on their way and they did not look like they were in the mood to exchange pleasantries.

One level in particular I had an increasingly difficult time with.  If you would rather watch how the level was supposed to be played, you can watch it here, otherwise you can finish reading about how I could usually manage a few jumps before I had to revert to watching the video to figure out where I was supposed to go next.  Considering how much of the game, by this point, has the player conditioned to look for red as a way of letting you know which way to go or to "jump off of this thing to go over there", the inside building portion of Chapter 8: Kate became the antithesis of fun even though there were no Blues in this portion of the stage.

The fighting in the game I also felt that I was never able to get a good grasp with.  Even just watching Faith in the loading screens made me feel that I was doing something drastically wrong when it came to hand-to-hand combat.  I always felt that I should be that adept at taking out Blues, but I ended up being very clumsy with my punches and attempts to disarm. Oh yes, while being shot at because those bastards were hardly alone.  Often times I would "simply" take down a guard, take his gun then play Mirror's Edge like I would any other FPS action shooter and take out the guards before going back to running.  With hope, the trailer from this year's E3 has hinted to a more streamlined and less annoying (meaning someone who sucks at the hand-to-hand combat) attacks and takedowns for Faith to execute.

As you can tell from the flowchart, any level where I was outside and not being shot at, I felt that the game excelled here and I would have really liked an entire game of just going from Point A to Point B.  I wanted more of that.

Another aspect of the game that I found semi-intriguing and liked was the use of animation for the cutscenes.  At first, the difference between the in-game landscape and the cutscene animation was a little jarring, but ultimately I liked it.

There was cutscene of sorts at the end of the game involving two characters that used the regular in-game graphics and not the stylized animation  and while I feel that that worked for the flow of the stage, I felt like I was missing the look that I had become accustomed to over the course of the game.  But, since the scene happened in the middle of a level, I understood the reasoning behind the decision.

At some point while playing, I did find out that there was a DLC map pack that EA Games released, but it looks like it is only for 360/PS3 owners and (maybe?) for people who bought the game through Origins as opposed to Steam.  This is sad because an obstacle course (without Blues) is something that I would love to play with, but I am not about to spend money on a console to buy a game (I already have) to then buy DLC.  I am not that hard up for a $4.99 DLC but I hope that sometime similar is included in the retail PC release of Mirror's Edge 2.

I think if I chalk Mirror's Edge up to a great "first attempt" then I feel there is a good chance that the sequel, when it is released in April 2016, will be spectacular in the strictest sense of the word.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Looking For Something To Believe In

Tetris Dreams part II

This is an old post I started a few months back when I was playing the first Final Fantasy.  I decided to return to the post, and I think I found something worth fleshing out.  I often use this phrase:  'as I'm riding the American River Bike Trail', which is where I often come up with video game ideas.  I like to imagine dynamic systems of life in terms of video games, and riding that bike trail tends to bring them to mind.  I enjoy doing this.  It's sort of like Tetris Dreams.  

The Iconic Fighter Guy

"Tetris Dreams" is a phrase I have heard a bunch.  Lately I've noticed that I get daydreams about different games.  Especially those with a simple interface.  For example:  I'm playing FF1 right now, and I'm sort of dreaming about it.  Stray thoughts at work, zoning out doing data entry, and I see the battle screen.  And the iconic fighter guy.  The others are there too, but he's the easiest to pick out.  It's sort of floating in the distance.   

Bagging groceries is like Tetris, kind of.  More complex, actually.  Because there is shape, weight and surface tension.  In Tetris, it's just shape.  I mention this because I've been bagging groceries at the local food co-op as means to keep me occupied and earn a discount on groceries. 

I think that some video game day dreams come from staring at the same screen for long enough.  Thats' why Tetris lends itself so easily, because of the simple patterns and repetition.  However, it may be more than that.  The images from Tetris or Final Fantasy may come easily because of their simplicity, but there are other video game daydreams that I have, which are based on mechanics instead of graphics.

Tony Hawk is the prime example.  After dumping countless hours Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, I couldn't ride in a car without imagining myself grinding on every available edge, doing kickflips as I hop from edge to edge.  It's tons of fun, and oftentimes I imagined the car itself doing these tricks.  Come to think of it, when really bored riding in a car, I used to imagine Mario (from the first game) running alongside the car, jumping over the fences, buildings and other obstacles along the side of the road.  It seems that there is something triggering about moving along the road at an even pace, watching the scenery go by.  

In further support of the connection between motion and video game dreams, a lot of my little video game ideas come when I am riding my bicycle, or riding the train.  In fact, when I used to commute by train, I would stare out the window at the Yolo causeway and imagine wandering around exploring.  Watching the seasons change and the effect it had on the plant life made me want to develop a game that had this sort of dynamic scenery.  It was very peaceful.  Around that time I discovered Proteus, which did a very similar thing to what I was imagining. Of course, I wanted to stick the environment into an RPG, because that is probably my favorite video game genre.

When it comes to RPGs, I often day dream about player statistics.  Levels, experience, strength, durability, attack damage and so on and so forth.  I imagine my experiences playing RPGs in my youth have become such a part of me, that the process of balancing equations in order to achieve in-game actions is just a part of me.  I enjoy pondering human systems in terms of RPG status sheets, hunger, thirst, tiredness, allergies, illness.  In the end, it's just tossing dice and applying meaning to the results.  Which is a great deal of fun.

-D

  

The Final Chapter

This will be the final post in the adventure to purchase 6d10 dice from Epic Gaming, a gaming store I located through Yelp because I didn't want to travel 28 miles round trip.  There'll also be an epilogue about ordering pizza, although that's not really game related.  But anyway.

After driving somewhere around 4 miles from Dutch Bros. to Epic Gaming, I sat in my car briefly pondering if I should take in my half finished espresso boosted coffee drink so that I could have something in my hands to keep them busy in the off chance that they didn't have dice or more specifically, individual d10 dice.  Then the etiquette part of my brain said that I shouldn't bring in a drink to a store.

The store itself was pretty empty once I made my way in.  And by "empty," I mean empty in two ways.  The first being that there was a lot of space in the store and not a lot of it was taken up by actual gaming materials.  I later noticed that most/all of the gaming materials were up against the walls while the middle was left open for the activity of gaming itself.  The second "empty" was that there was only myself, one guy behind the counter and four others playing Magic at one of about six large collapsible tables in the middle of the room.

This brings up another thing that will get to me.  For some reason, people playing Magic intimidate me.  Always have.  If there's a group of people sitting at a table (or multiple tables) playing any iteration of Magic, I will avoid that area.  Most of it is because I never got into Magic and have no real idea what is going on.  I "understand" that each player has a deck with a certain number of cards and those cards do things or can undo things.  There's something called "tapping" in regards to cards being in/out of play.  And if you have enough money, you can build yourself a near unstoppable deck.  Is there even such a thing?  I don't know.  I've also heard (as in physically heard in person) shit-talking in regards to people's decks that to me just isn't cool for gaming.

Back to to the store.  I noticed the people playing Magic, and my brain immediately transitioned from "search mode" to "just buy the fucking dice already."  Once at the counter, I stumbled out the question about individual dice because in the display case, all that I could see were prepackaged Chessex dice.  It turned out, like another games store I frequented in Sacramento, the dice were behind the counter in a gumball-type plastic hand-grab container.  I quickly picked out 6d10 of different colors, but still colors that I thought people would actually want to use for Munchkin, made my purchase and then, was able to calm down.  

I then walked over to where it looked like there were some miniatures and as it turned out, some of the expansion decks for Munchkin.  By this point I had already used the $5 I had in cash for the dice (they were  75¢ each) and didn't want to break out my credit card having already made my purchase.  I had also read on Yelp that Epic Gaming also sold video games, which I would have liked to check out, but again, being the odd person that I am, felt that I needed to leave the store having already made my only intended purchase.  Again, I know it's odd behavior/line of reasoning, but that's just how my brain functions.

Then I left the store and drove back home.  That's the whole story.  Yes, I lead a very exciting life.

Epilogue

I don't know how long this has been around, but Pizza Hut allows you to place orders online.  Without having to talk to anyone!  I'm able to pick out what type of pizza(s) I want, toppings, side orders and such.  Then pay with a credit card and have my pizza delivered.  The only talking is upon greeting the delivery person, and that's only to tip the driver and sign the receipt.  I love not having to talk to a person on the phone and explain what I want, turn down hearing about specials or be put on hold for a couple of minutes.  In a similar vain, it's like going into Little Caesar's Pizza, ordering two large pepperoni pizzas and walking out  with them less than two minutes later using only a minimum of the known English language.  Yes, it's all fast food pizza, but it's perfect for what it is, cheap semi-tasty pizza.  Except that Little Caesar's Pizza is actually really good.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Everything Remains As It Never Was