Mirrors Edge And New Monitor

Two things happened this week. Firstly I got a new monitor and secondly I played through Mirrors Edge on it.

Firstly this is my old setup:



This is a 16" 4:3 CRT monitor I got more than ten years ago and has served me very well over the years. The reason why I haven't replaced it in so long was because I didn't have any desire to. But the fact that Bluray films didn't look any better or worse on it than DVD or for that matter on my 24" Samsung LCD TV made me want a screen where I could see that extra resolution. Plus the idea of widescreen FPS gameplay was an appealing one. So I bought this:



It is a blue Acer G24, the G24 standing for 24" gaming monitor. 16:10 ratio and very importantly a 2ms gray to gray response time so there is no ghosting on the screen. It has a native resolution of 1920x1800, that's higher than 1080p, well it would be 1800p. This means Bluray films look amazing at their full resolution, but unfortunately DVDs because they don't have as much resolution to them, don't. Games of course look fantastic on and that brings me to Mirrors Edge.

Maybe it was because of my new screen, but I loved this game from start to end. I have read a few opinions and I disagree with almost all of them. And mainly in the area of what kind of game Mirrors Edge is. To me it is clearly an FPS Platformer with shooting elements. Shooting elements that should have been left out, but I can imagine someone seeing seance at EA during development and saying that if there are guns in the game the player should be able to shoot them. Personally I would have left them out all together and replaced them with tasers. Pacing on the game is great, but I would have liked to have played few more basic courier missions to start with to get the player into the flow of the action before the main story kicks off, but then that is me saying that after playing the finished game. It is very difficult as a designer to make such decisions at the start of a project.

The story of Mirrors Edge should have been fleshed out more, although with my interest in writers I was surprised to find that it was written by Rhianna Pratchet, the daughter of Terry Pratchet. I am not familiar with her work, but the story in Mirrors Edge leaves a lot to be desired. The game in general feels very short so my thoughts on this are that if the game was longer, the story would have been better.

Having said all that, Mirrors Edge is by far my most favourite game from last year simply because it offered me a new and original play experience, and maybe my new monitor had something to do with that too.

Mirrors Edge Developer Commentary Disappoints Me

There are a lot of games where I see some kind of preview of the game and from that little snippet I build-up a picture in my head on what the game will be like to play and how the mechanics will work etc. So I can run through my head what it will be like to play just from seeing a very small preview. Sometimes the finished game surprises me and I am delighted and other times the reality of playing the finished product falls short on my expectations. I am sure you too do this.

The concept of Mirrors edge is that of a very clean line art style set in a city where all communication is closely monitored by the state. Because of this runners are paid to carry sensitive information across the city by hand so that the authorities don't get their hands on it.

The game takes the concept and some of the style of Freerunning into itself. This combined with the Currier missions made me think that missions would be given very much like they where in Thief and Assassins Creed. Where you got missions by talking directly to hidden contacts or by finding clues and markers left for you. However for some reason Mirrors edge features a radio, which for me breaks the whole anti-surveillance thing as obviously the state could listen into the radio. They will probably have a plot point that says that the radio transmissions are encrypted, but to me this is nowhere anywhere even close to being as cool as getting a mission from a set of cryptic symbols on a hidden bit of paper, or getting a mission by meeting someone secretly hoping the authorities doesn't find out.

Plus as much as I love story being feed to me during a mission as I am playing through a level, the crackly radio doesn't fit the visual styling of the game.

Mirror's Edge is Looking Awesome

Mirrors Edge puts the player in a Tokyo looking future city where you freerun across skyscrapers. From a ludology perspective I love how the developers have used colour to communicate interactivity to the player. It is suttle, adds to the clean visual styling of the game and negates the need for a HUD or floating icons.