Mirrors Edge review-me-do.

The trailers were so promising! Full of blue-skies, incredible stunts, gymnastic feats, and WEEEEECOOLSPEEDY bits. Sure, the protagonist is a tad ugly, but who the hell cares about that in a game where pretty much the only thing you never see is your own face?

With good reason, people have been excited about this one. In a world full of REHASHAN and SHOOTAN, something new is something to celebrate. And Mirror's Edge is definitely a contender for "Coolest idea of the year" in gameplay terms. When people call it a 'free running' game they are mistaken, although it certainly seems that way at first. It is not Parkour, though, because you are not really trying to do anything with style. You are mostly getting from A to B as fast as possible, which maturally involves jumping and sliding, so it is obvious why people made the connection.

And, it has to be said, there are parts of Mirror's Edge that genuinely capture a feeling of unbridled motion along the rooftops. Sometimes you see where you need to be, and immediately see several ways to get there. On these instances you simply can't help yourself ; You COULD just climb that wall, but why do that when you could jump up there, slide over there, and then launch from that and roll nicely upon landing? A lack of momentum is rarely punished, and yet you feel a need to maintain it. It is purely because it is so much fun, the game appears to not actively punish you for slowing down.

Which is why it is so frustrating when the game FORCES you to slow down! Honestly, up on those rooftops is Nirvana. You feel at times like you never want to go back indoors again. So, the decision to set half the game indoors is a baffling one. Crawling through air ducts has NEVER been enjoyable, and yet in the first three chapters I have had to do it on at least three occasions. So, let me get this straight ... I am able to run along walls before leaping to catch the slightest overhang, and so naturally I take advantage of this by crawling in confined spaces. Or, waiting in lifts for a minute at a time!

It's crazy. It's almost like in the Sonic games, where the designers seem to want to restrict you too often. The best part is the running. By limiting the running, they are also limiting the fun. Because, GENERIC SHOOTAN GAME #34 does the in-building combat bits so much better than Mirror's Edge does.

I get that it wouldn't be realistic for Faith to be some kind of tank. She is an athlete, not a warrior, and so it makes total sense that she can't just stand there and absorb gunshots. But, it does seem like she is somewhat of a wuss. Pretty much two shots mean curtains. Now, I like this, but then it becomes a problem when there are more than two enemies around. Which is more or less every time there are any enemies around. Throw in the occasional helicopter gunship, and another SERIOUS flaw, and it would be very easy to hate this game.

SERIOUS flaw. Almost a game-breaker. I'm not even kidding, it is more than frustrating, it is absolutely infuriating.

Apparently, there is a thing called 'Runner Vision' wherein things you are meant to jump off/climb up/interact with are red. This is nice, but often there is nothing red on your screen at all. And so you can press B to show you where to go. Yes, the game felt the need to include a "Where the fuck do I go?" button. Something I have frequently wished more games would do, as it happens. It is a great move, except for a quite glaringly obvious contradiction.

A game about MOVEMENT and FLOW should not really ever leave me wondering "Where the fuck do I go?", should it? Am I alone in finding this to be a somewhat major gripe? Plus, it doesn't even work properly. Early in chapter 3 you come to a roof with no obvious way up to it. You can see precisely where you need to be, and a quick press of "Where the fuck do I go?" confirms this, and yet it seems to be completely beyond your reach.

I tried multiple combinations of jumps, wallruns, rolls, turns, and could not reach the next rooftop. It made no sense. I don't even know why I found the button that moved the window cleaning platform so that I could reach the roof, but it would have been nice if "Where the fuck do I go?" pointed me there instead of my ultimate destination! Fifteen whole minutes on that roof, trying every kind of athletic feat I could think of, when the solution was something far more mundane.

Playing Mirror's Edge, then, is akin to visiting a friends house as a child. He has some wonderful toys, so much better than yours, but you are only able to play with them for a couple of minutes before they are taken away. To make things worse, if you ever do get the chance to play with them on your own, you find that they are hidden from you and you have to go and find them first.

I have completed the first three chapters so far, and I have been somewhat disappointed in what I have played. Sure, there are moments where it has been everything that I had hoped for, but they have been too few and far between. Any game that has me shouting "WHERE THE FUCK DO I GO?" at the screen even when it includes a button to answer that question is getting something very basic very wrong. I'm not asking to have my hand-held. I am just asking for clear direction. By all means make getting to my destination as hard as you like, but never hide it from me.

I file this under 'Missed opportunity', then. I am sure that time trials and speedruns will change things for the better, but having to plod through a story first to get to the good bits is less fun than the designers seem to think. A game that is about getting from A to Z should also show you the way to the other 24 letters, and Mirror's Edge doesn't do that well enough.

Games got good again!

There are simply too many games coming out all at the same time. It's the same every year, with a mad rush to steal our Xmas money. Don't publishers ever think that if they wait a couple of months they can get the entire market to themselves? Imagine if you were a developer, and you were told that your game was scheduled to be fighting for shelf space with FIFA, PES, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider Underworld, Left 4 Dead, the WoW Lich King expansion, Resistance 2, and Little Big Planet? Wouldn't you be just a little concerned? Wouldn't you rather be the only good game released in March? I know for certain that I would.

But, that's not actually what I am wanting to talk about. It is a rant I am all too happy to go into this time every year, but this year is different.

Because this year there are two games released that may well steal the entirety of my play time.

I got into games at the age of 7 by playing Space Invaders on my way to school. Back then, arcade games were a whole new concept. They were also EVERYWHERE! Corner shops, takeaways, the local swimming pool, pubs ; all had their own arcade machine. Some were good, some were not so. But they were all pure excitement to a nipper like me. Of course, I wasn't very good at them, but sometimes I did well enough to make it into the top 10 scores. And I have never forgotten the feeling of typing my name in to the scoreboard, even if I knew it would probably be gone the next day. (I didn't even realise at the time that the top 10 was almost certainly wiped every night when the owner unplugged the cabinet.)

As I faced my teenage years, though, arcade cabinets were not so prevalent anymore. But that wasn't a problem as games had moved well and truly into the home. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum that I got for Xmas as a 12 year old became the single most used thing I posessed. Games got more complex, and more varied. Graphical adventures made you think, but overall I still felt more comfortable with games that just kept on pushing me harder against ever increasing odds.

Cycling on several more years, and the high score concept had all but left games for good. Story had taken over. Shooters had more or less died. The focus seemed to be on 3D worlds, and ensuring the player got a 40 hour campaign/story. Final Fantasy VII deservedly sold millions, but it also made games into virtual masturbation. the social and competitive aspect was becoming a memory.

XBox Live changed all that. By having leaderboards for pretty much everything, and by allowing remote players to connect their consoles, competitive and co-operative multiplayer console gaming became the norm once more! (I know the DreamCaast did it first, but the XBox did it right. That is what matters to the world at large.)

And now, the XBox 360 has two games that are pretty much the realisation of my videogaming wet dream.

The first is Gears of War 2. Here we have the age-old story of Man vs Aliens. LOTS of aliens! Sure, there is a campaign mode, but it isn't a life-sucking epic. It is 5 acts, and unless you jump right in to the hardest difficulty solo on your first attempt (as I have done) you won't be seeing much beyond 10 hours gameplay, no matter how poor you are.

It also has multiplayer over Live. And, one of these games is the new 'Horde' mode. In Horde, up to 5 players co-operate against the Locust. Wave 1 has 10 or so enemies. Wave 2 has more. Wave 3 has even more. Oh, and there are more types of them, too. They are bigger and meaner. Every single wave adds more enemies. Then, at Wave 10, they get double health!

This continues for 50 waves. And, you get a score. So, we have a co-operative game where you are all facing against ever-increasing amounts of tougher enemies, which then allows you to compare your skills to others. My friend Jon and I managed to get to Wave 18 so far, and it is getting quite insane already. Plus, this is on NORMAL difficulty. There are two additional difficulties beyond this! I am already taking an hour to cool down, what exactly is this going to do to me on Insane?

Naturally, there will come a day when I will attempt to do all 50 waves on my own. Because THAT is what I game for! Being the guy at the top of my friends leaderboard? Trust me, it doesn't get any better than that for me.

I once started a Source mod of my own. It was going to be some kid of Secret Agent training simulator, where you just fought ever-increasing numbers of AI bots in an attempt to get a higher score. But, the Secret Agent bit was just a quickly invented plot on which to hang my perfect game. I spoke to several people about it, and they all said more or less the same thing. Most weren't into it, needing more of a plot.

But somehow it seems that Epic read my mind, and gave me a marginally altered version of my ideal game. (Only because my game didn't end at Wave 50, it just kept on going until it beat you by sheer brute force and weight of numbers.)

I can honestly say that I have no need to ever play anything else, but then I remember that Left 4 Dead is released very soon. And, having played the demo of that one, I am even more excited than I have been for a very long time.

It's not just that it is zombies. It's that there are just so many of them!

It's not like Horde. Things don't keep on heating up. Left 4 Dead is basically 'Escape the city' for the four of you. In fact, it is more like Dead Rising, pitting you against so many enemies that at times you literally can not see anything else on screen. What makes Left 4 Dead is the co-op aspect. Even on your own, you are teamed up with 3 AI bots. The option is, of course, to have humans for each of the four charcaters. I swear, with 3 friends it won't matter if we win or not. I know for certain that 99% of the time I am going to be too busy laughing to shoot straight.

There are 4 campaigns, each with 5 maps. 20 maps of zombie MAYHEM! Again, there are multiple difficulties, with the last one being labelled 'Impossible.' How can I resist something like that? And as it is Live, there will be leaderboards.

Zombies. Co-op. IMPOSSIBLE. Did Valve reach into my brain and make a game for ME?

Co-op is the future. Every game should have a way to play with others, regardless of how little sense it makes. Halo 3 was good solo, and great with friends. If you haven't played the campaign co-op, you haven't played it properly. With friends, the story doesn't matter. With friends, the difficulty is basically what you want it to be. With friends, even if you mess up you can still laugh. With friends, you can all work together, or you can kill steal and team-kill for lulz. I often stick plasma grenades to team-mates right at the end of the level, just because I can.

Things are looking up. Gaming is slowly remembering just what it was that made it popular in the first place. It was never about epic tales, it was just about epic gameplay.

Limited edition .... demos?

A new and somewhat bizarre trend is evolving.

For some time now game demos on the XBox Live marketplace have been available only to Gold subscribers for the first week, before finally becoming available to all. This is not really nice, but it is completely understandable why Microsoft would do it. After all, the XBox business model is based on getting as many subscribers as possible.

But, there is a new twist. When the Mirrors Edge demo went up last week it turned out that the 'Race' section of the demo requires a pre-order code to play it. Basically, half of the demo is closed to anybody who downloaded the demo in order to try it.

Left 4 Dead has a demo released today. Well, for some people. It is currently limited to people who have pre-ordered it. The rest of us have to wait a week to see the demo.

Am I alone in missing the point of this?

The way I see it is that demos have always been a tool for a potential customer to decide wether they wish to buy the game or not. A convincer, if you will. I didn't need a demo for Mario Galaxy because I already knew just how good it was going to be. I did need a demo for Crackdown, though, and I am so glad that one existed because I may have missed out on a truly awesome game otherwise.

But now, it seems that demos are a reward for people who already want the game. I mean, how exactly is locking half the demo away going to sway me to pre-order if I haven't already done so?

Left 4 Dead is slightly more understandable, but even more annoying. Knowing that the thing is out there, and that I just can't play it yet .... it sucks.

The thing is, it's a risky strategy. What if Left 4 Dead isn't as good as expected? Too Human had a demo that completely put me off the game, it is not stretching belief too far to sgguest that the same thing could happen again. Suddenly, hundreds of pre-orders cancel and demand refunds. (Not that I expect Valve to let us down, but it could happen.)

The solution is obviously just to pre-order. But, there is no way on this or any other Earth that I am ever going to do that. What possible reason can I have to give my money to someone several weeks in advance of receiving my product? Especially since even a paid pre-order does not guarantee getting the game. I have a friend who paid for her launch day DS in advance only for Gamestation to sell it to someone else, and so she had to wait to get hold of it.

Pre-ordering is a system that milks us gamers for all we are worth. It does nothing for us as consumers at all.

They sell you on the idea that this game will be in short supply, that you might not be able to get hold of it otherwise. Well, in answer to that, I shall just ask you when is the last time you saw that happen? (Wii Fit, actually, but that is the ONLY one for the last .... who knows how many years.) I guarantee for anybody who didn't pre-order Gears of War 2 that you will be able to walk into any shop and buy it tomorrow.

By handing over your cash before the game is released, you are effectively locking yourself into a cycle. Once they have you, they try to shift you onto the next release. 'A fool and his money are soon parted.'

You should not be falling for it. You should not be such a slavering follower of consumerism. You should instead answer all the requests to pre-order with "I don't pre-order. I generally buy it wherever I can find it cheapest." Last week saw the release of Fallout 3. The week before it was Fable 2. Both of these games are £39.99 in both GAME and Gamestation. Whereas, in Sainsbury's, they are £29 and £29.97 respectively.

If I had pre-ordered both games I would be £21.01 down today. And there are countless times when I have found games for cheaper than the big 2 offer. Anyone who pre-orders every big release is basically giving £5-10 away every single time. That's potentially £50 this month alone! What kind of insanity is that?

The ONLY time I bothered to pre-order was for GTA IV, and that was because they didn't ask for money up-front. It was just to make sure they got enough copies in. I went to the midnight opening, but unfortunately forgot my phone with the text message on it that was apparently needed before they would let me in the store.

"Can you not just use my GAME card to determine who I am?" was my obvious question, to which they responded with
"We don't have the facility to do that. You can call our customer service department in the morning."
I was aghast.
"It is midnight. Do you honestly think I would be here now if it was possible for me to be here in the morning?"
"I'm sorry, but .."
"It's 2008. This is quite ridiculous."

I walked off, and went to Tesco instead. Got it for about 50p cheaper, and no queue. Wish I had been there at midnight instead.

Sure, it was my own fault for forgetting my phone. But suppose the text message didn't arrive? What then? Or, maybe my phone got stolen? Or I dropped it somewhere? Or, I forwarded the text message on to a friend who didn't pre-order? What STUPID system is it that relies on a text message as confirmation?

So, I think it behooves us all as gamers to let go of this idea. We already overpay, as witnessed by the way they throw so many '2 for £30' offers at us with games that don't sell millions right away. If Sainsbury's and ASDA can offer games cheaper than dedicated game retailers, what exactly does that tell us? I seriously doubt that any supermarket gets more copies than the specialists do.

If anybody in the world has read this, and decided not to pre-order ever again, then please make sure to tell other people you know to stop it, too. We gamers should all be in this together, and should co-op against the bosses who are working as hard as possible to empty our pockets.