Genre: Action adventure Platforms: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 Developer: DICE (EA Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment) Publisher: Electronic Arts Release date: “Late 2008″
Mirror’s Edge comes from the Swedish developers DICE, most famously known for the Battlefield series. It’s nice to see them producing something very different from their recent games and I’m sure it’s a refreshing change for the developers themselves! The game stars Faith, a runner delivering packages in some future dystopia fighting to save her sister.
The gameplay features true first person gaming, in the sense that as you run you can see your arms and legs flailing about- I did feel queasy the first time I saw the trailers - and seems to heavily feature parkour. Speed and momentum appear to be key, with weapons being a secondary, optional element to the game.
Seeing the acrobatic character, weapon-less gameplay and clean visuals I was reminded of an old Bungie game called Oni (yes they have on occasion made other games besides Halo), as well as the character YT - or Yours Truly - a young Kourier in the seminal Cyberpunk novel Snow Crash.
If you haven’t seen the game in action before the first video below features the game’s first trailer which has been floating around for a while now. Following this is the second trailer that was released recently and puts to rest my concern that the entire game world was going to be very white and very bland. Finally the last trailer features footage of the EA conference where the game was demo-ed. In this walkthough they mention that they are following ‘one of the possible routes’ in the game, however I am concerned that this may be a very linear game with limited replay value, but as always I reserve judgement until the game has actually been released. This is one game where you’ll want to watch the trailers below in high definition if you have the bandwidth for it.
And so it that time of year: E3 is upon us, allowing us to gaze into the future at what games we will be playing this year and beyond. The big three have had their press conferences, individual publishers and studios are demoing their wares and the big gaming sites are posting it all up for us to enjoy.
I’ll be posting up my own impressions of games that have caught my attention, as well as links to demo videos and walkthoughs. Penny Arcade - as ever - are on the ball neatly summing up the three main conferences if you don’t have the time to watch them all:
A movie trailer for the often mentioned but rarely seen Max Payne movie has been released. I’m not sure if it was intentionally let out into the wild as the official site in the trailer bounces to a Fox website, and the link there bounces to a domain place-holder! Regardless although the trailer can be found on the obvious video sites on the ‘Net, NokkonWud has hosted a high def copy here: http://www.nokkonwud.com/?p=189.
Movies of games fill many people - including myself - with dread. More often than not they are just simply awful. Street Figther the Movie anyone? Wing Commander? For me Max Payne is a cherished IP. The original game was released back in the ‘Matrix Era’ when slo-mo bullet time was a new concept and sucessfully melded fast-paced action with a strong (if predictable) plot. I hold the sequel in high regard thanks to it’s storyline, pacing and action.
The movie appears to be based on the plot of the first game. From the trailer you can see Wahlberg seems to have immersed himself in the role quite nicely and from the one split second shot, Ludacris doesn’t seem to be out of place. My main concern is that in going for a PG-13 certificate the film may be watered down to hit the rating.
I don’t want to say it, as I don’t want to be disappointed and I know I’ll be called on it in the future, but this movie might actually be… good!
