A few more classics have made their way onto EA’s list of games they’re shutting down online services for, with Mirror’s Edge the most notable casualty for PC players. The shutdown will come into effect from January 19th, 2023, just overshooting the 13th anniversary of the game’s launch on PC. It’ll presumably affect the dystopian parkour game’s online leaderboards, and downloadable Ghosts of other players.
]]>A bit later than planned, but we're back once again for another edition of The RPS Time Capsule, in which the RPS Treehouse undergoes a collective mind-melting experiment to pick their favourite, bestest best games from a specific year to be preserved and saved until the end of time. This month, we've shifted our game preservation gaze to 2009, so read on below to find out which games made the cut, and which have been cast off into the eternal games bin.
]]>Get your speedrunning shoes on and prepare your glitches: Awesome Games Done Quick has arrived for its yearly speedrunning extravaganza. As with previous years, the charity event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It's been live since yesterday evening and runs until this Sunday, and there are already some fab runs in the likes of Mirror's Edge and Dragon Age: Origins to catch up on.
]]>The biggest names in platforming used to live only on console, but it's on PC now that the genre is thriving. Indies have taken the simple ingredients and spun them off in umpteen directions (but still normally from left to right). Below you'll find a collection of the very best platform games on PC - including puzzle platformers, physics platformers, platformers with roguelike elements, and platformers about absolutely nothing but pixel-perfect jumping.
]]>Cowardice is a virtue. So says the team on this week's RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. That's because our theme is "running away" - games that encourage you to flee from danger, or that give you a choice between fight and flight. Adam will run from the soldiers of Arma or the post-apocalyptic antagonists of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Brendan will scarper from poor odds in For Honor or Overwatch, while Alice only pretends to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, tricking her foes into giving chase before ambushing them like some kind of velociraptor.
]]>I've got two VR headsets in my inappropriately small home, and I spend more time feeling guilty that I'm not using them than I do using them. Conceptually I love the tech, and I sporadically have a fine time with 'experiences' - i.e. virtual tourism to real or made-up places - when it comes to games-games I'm yet to get all that much out of it. But what about non-VR games rendered after-the-fact in VR? Could this be the full-fat virtual reality gaming I'd imagined when these headsets were first announced?
]]>You might have noticed all your friends' avatars and profile pictures turning into comic book drawings or impressionistic paintings over the last few weeks. That's because of Prisma, a photo editing app for iOS and Android that let's you apply a couple of dozen filters to images you feed it. The app goes further than simply messing with the hue like Instagram does, using a process similar to Google Deep Dream to warp and twist photographs - without shoving fucked up dogs in every corner.
I spent last night feeding it game screenshots, to find out what No Man's Sky, Half-Life 2, SimCity and more would look like if their artists abandoned realism.
]]>We already chose 13 of our favourite games in the current Summer Steam sale, but more games have been discounted since. So, based on the entirely correct hypothesis that you all have completed every single one of our first round games and are now thirsting for more, here are 18 more to throw your spare change at. Everyone on the RPS team has picked three stone-cold personal favourites, making for a grand old set of excellent PC games: here's what we chose and why.
]]>I'm not clear to what extent 'optioned' means 'actually making' vs 'we gave the folk who own the thing some cash to stop them from selling the rights to someone else', particularly in an age where every TV firm wants its own Game Of Thrones or Walking Dead and so speculatively hoovers up rights to anything with name-recognition (I'm open to offers for Ian Football, by the by). In any case, EA's Mirror's Edge has been optioned by Endemol, and I can understand why.
]]>Mirror's Edge Catalyst [official site] might not be out for another two weeks, but that's not stopping EA from showcasing some cryptic cutscenes in this suave new launch trailer. It's got the standard dramatic swell of music punctuated by all-too-serious clipped together dialogue, but I actually like the way it blends in with the serene ambiance of the first game. You should probably just watch and see for yourself.
]]>Ready to run? Mirror's Edge Catalyst [official site] may have ditched the guns in favour of momentum-based melee combat but despite shedding that deadweight, it's still not going to reach the finishing line as planned. Last night design director Erik Odeldahl announced that the first-person free-running sequel has been pushed back from its May 24th release date to early June. The 7th for North America and the 9th for Europe (and presumably the rest of the world).
]]>If there is one complaint I have about the original Mirror's Edge, aside from the "combat is terrible" refrain, is that I'd have liked to see the city explored more, almost as a character of its own. The story is set in an authoritarian dystopia, but we don't actually get to see much of it outside of the first cutscene of the game. There is a lot of promising worldbuilding hinted at throughout the levels, but it's not nearly as developed as it could have been.
So this new page that just appeared on Mirror's Edge Catalyst's website, detailing the city's districts and factions, with wonderful pictures, is getting my hopes up. I know I shouldn't, I know it's against my better judgement and I'll be sorely disappointed, so help me out here. Let's keep the hype to a minimum and let's all look at the negatives. Here's a great start: the city is called "Glass."
]]>Mirror's Edge Catalyst [official site] looks prettier every time I see it. The latest trailers to emerge for the ultra-stylish parkour-a-thon series reboot cast their focus on movement and combat, and showcase the many ways in which protagonist Faith Connors will run and jump and leap and bound and punch and... maybe you're best having a look for yourself.
]]>If you had Mirror's Edge: Catalyst [official site] in the Big Game Delay Sweepstakes, step up to the podium and claim your prize. Previously set for release on February 23rd, the same day as Far Cry Primal and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the continuing adventures of Faith have been pushed back to May. DICE are still sticking to a specific release date - May 24th - and say that the delay is down to their desire to make the game "as entertaining, impressive, and memorable as it can be".
]]>I wouldn't count myself as a fan of many things, but the derision and disinterest inspired by the first Mirror's Edge makes me want to champion it. It was a game with terrible boss fights, flawed combat and a tedious story, but also one worth celebrating for the things it got right, such as its first-person movement and its beautiful, brilliant world.
Those same things also make me nervous about the sequel. When I went to see EA's Mirror's Edge Catalyst [official site] presentation at Gamescom, I wasn't sure whether it would amplify the parts I liked or disliked.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Some people install the latest Crysis game whenever they buy a new PC, to push their upgraded hardware to its limit. I install Mirror's Edge. If I want to feel good about my purchase, then Mirror's Edge succeeds by being as unfailingly gorgeous now as it was six years ago. Better still, its mechanics - about movement and speed and grace - leave me just as breathless and uplifted as its pristine cityscapes and colourful interior design.
]]>Mirror's Edge 2 was revealed at last year's E3 with little more than a brief animation and a few bars of the game's lovely soundtrack. As part of EA's conference at E3 2014, they showed off more of the game. It was set amidst some buzzword-y waffle from the game's developers, and is still only concept footage for the game they hope to make, but there are hints of good things in the three minute video embedded below.
]]>As a semi-longtime games journo (and hobbyist coal miner), I've seen my fair share of diamonds in the rough. Some eventually go the distance and gleam like a million smiling suns, while others... well, they don't fare so well. And yet, even after losing countless hopefuls (and also canaries), I'm not ready to give up hope on promising upstarts like Lemma. The rune-encrusted run-leaper has evolved significantly since Adam first highlighted it, combining the path-producing footfall's of something like Bastion with Mirror's Edge's feather-like grace and, er, color scheme. It still looks a little janky, but I'm ready to place two of my crossed fingers before its altar. New trailer below.
]]>But in a good way! Titanfall's wall-running and super-fun leaping is the second best thing about Repawn's multiplayer game. Being able to watch others do it is my favourite thing about it: seeing them curve across gaps, leaping like leapy things, and dancing across levels. I love it. I love that moment at the very beginning of a level, when your small group peels off in different directions to a chorus of jet blasts and then vanish into the twisty death warrens. So the new trailer for Hover: Revolt of Gamer looks very compelling to my eyes, even if it is a little bit neon and flashy: that thrill of leaping around with friends will always draw me in.
]]>Valve might prefer to be extra super special secret quiet about it, but they do, in fact, still make games. And games, well, they tend to be more enjoyable when they're easy on the eyes. Now that I have cracked the eons-old mystery of Why Games Have Graphics, let's get down to business: Valve has scooped up Mirror's Edge and Dear Esther gorgeous vista warlock Robert Briscoe. Good for Valve, because Briscoe is astoundingly talented. But wait, wasn't he in the process of moving Dear Esther's painterly world into Unity's less-costly frame? What's going on there?
]]>Hover: Revolt of Gamer is still pretty obviously early, but goodness do I like where it's headed. The goal? To marry Mirror's Edge's madly precarious first-person parkour to Jet Set Radio Future's groovy techno-tronic cityscapes. Oh, and developer Fusty Games is throwing in an open world for good measure. Also rail-grinding, because who didn't love the '90s? The trailer below doesn't quite stick the landing, but it already looks like it's on the right track.
]]>This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.
Robert Briscoe is obviously not the only great environment artist in games, and it's a bit weird to say he has a singular portfolio after working on just two titles. What makes it a lot easier is if you think in terms of levels: The Shard, Jacknife, Reflex, Velocity (from Mirrors Edge and its DLC); The Lighthouse, The Cave, The Beacon (from Dear Esther). All masterpieces up there with BioShock's Welcome To Rapture, Half-Life 2's Point Insertion and - quick, think of something slightly less distinguished to prove worldliness - that level in Robocod made out of Penguin bars.
]]>This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.
Games move pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. The pretties this week come courtesy not of a particular game, nor indeed me, but of the Dead End Thrills Flickr group, a caravan of some 500+ 'players' who spend more time stopping games and looking around than they do actually playing. The times we live in.
With some 11,000 images in there, I wasn't sure how best to approach this. (Drunk, obviously, but how badly?) I've gone for the easy option: a round-up of games and/or users that stood out over the last few weeks. What you'll often find is that wrangling games into 'screenshot mode' has knock-on benefits for any PC gamer, so let's see if that holds true.
]]>THE WORLD HAS GONE CRAZY. First Activision took some progressive (well, by Activision standards, anyway) steps with Call of Duty, and now EA's teamed up with Humble Bundle to host a bonkers sale whose proceeds go entirely to charity. It consists of eight titans of electronic artistry (or whatever EA's "A" actually represents these days) both past and present, which by the mega-publisher's count comes out to a $215 value. The bundle is, as ever, pay-what-you-want, but this time around highlights include the likes of Mirror's Edge, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Battlefield 3, and, er, Medal of Honor. Well, they can't all be winners. Also, some require Origin. But still: ultra-cheap games for some really great causes! It might be EA, but today I must set aside my torchfork and don my giant rubber applauding hand.
]]>Mirror's Edge wasn't actually that good. Discuss.
]]>It is one of the more ignoble of ways to be seemingly announced, but the often speculated Mirror's Edge 2 now has a support page on EA's site. (Update: since deleted.)
]]>I preemptively think I'm gonna be sick. Don't get me wrong: there are few things in this world I want more than Oculus Rift virtual reality for my mad dash through Mirror's Edge's theme park of parkour, but now that it's probably going to happen, I realize that I should probably bid farewell to any lunches I've had in the past couple months. And who will I have to thank for my sudden bouts of violent nausea? Interestingly, it won't be EA. Instead, a third-party toolset called Vireio Perception is primed to add Rift support to Mirror's Edge and other older titles.
]]>As the decidedly not very good Medal Of Honor: WARFACEFIGHTER received its critical pannings, one refrain was repeated again and again: they're the games EA puts out on the year's DICE don't have a new Battlefield ready. That may well be true, but EA are now at pains to point out (not necessarily in reaction, I should say) that DICE are not "a Battlefield factory". (Imagine a non-gamer reading those words. "Dice are not battlefield factories? And you say FPS games HELP your minds?") There's more to the Swedish team, they insist to OXM today. And in response rumours that Mirror's Edge 2 is in development have once more bubbled to the surface.
]]>Are you sad? Tired? Angry? Upset because you spilled some milk and, contrary to popular opinion, it was in fact the end of the world after all? Well, don't be. Today is a happy day, because criminally underrated first-person runner (with some shooty bits that should've leaped off a building and never looked back) Mirror's Edge is on the comeback trail. For a while, it's mostly been wishful thinking from folks at DICE, but now the people with the money are talking, and they're saying wonderful, joyous things.
]]>I snarked on Twitter a few days back that the people making the new Spider-Man film (a reboot, hilariously) must be more than a little familiar with Mirror's Edge given the astonishingly familiar first-person-perspective ultra-parkour sequence in its trailer, but this cheeky compar-o-video makes for proof positive. ..
]]>Playing Brink this weekend made me worry. But not about the usual things. I was worried that there would never be another way to experience the details of its world - no possibility for further exploration of the Ark and its precarious situation. This isn't something I normally think about when faced with a multiplayer shooter. I certainly had no interest in finding out more about the world of Quake III, or Battlefield 2, because nothing in them really inferred anything outside those isolated battlegrounds. Their conflicts were their world entire. Not so with Brink, and, now that I come to think of it, a few other worlds, too. I begin to wonder whether game fictions might be too readily disposable.
]]>Edit: Superior translation added, courtesy of RPS reader Shadewind.
All aboard the speculation train to Miseryville! VG24/7 reports that Swedish site Press2Play has posted an article (Googletranslate version here) detailing a brief chat with DICE General Manager Patrick Soderlund in which he describes that development of the sequel to the 2008 parkour-inspired adventure game has "stalled". Then again, he also says that "the parties involved in the Dice now works with another" and that "Patrick himself seems to Mirror's Edge near the heart", which makes the whole thing sound more than some botched romance.
Dammit, Google! Don't worry, readers. Read the RPS fan translation after the jump.
]]>My weekend consisted in playing a bunch of games from different points in the past: Quake III, Unreal Tournament 3, Battlefield 2, and Mirror's Edge. It all got me thinking about movement.
]]>I've written about this already, so I'll just leave it as a link for you fine people and let nature take its course. But yes, the saga continues: the notorious Tim 'Edge Games' Langdell is trying to arrange an injunction against and damages from EA's Mirror's Edge.
]]>Beyond Unreal have picked up on the Mirror's Edge community discovering something interesting. More details in the link, but basically involves copying the wxRC and wxRes folders from UT3\Binaries to Mirror's Edge\Binaries and then running the Mirror's Edge executable with an editor modification thingy to the file's properties. Here's a custom map the community have magicked up. You may have to be quick, however. Chatting to our industry contacts, you apparently have to pay an additional fee to ship a game with UnrealEd, making them suspect it'll be patched out sooner or later. Which is a shame: if any game could do with some user-generated maps, it's shining-in-speed-trial-mode Mirror's Edge.
]]>Alec pinpoints Mirror's Edge's failures and successes like a laser-guided missile of critical accuracy in last week's Wot I Think. When playing it recently, I was extremely surprised to find the game making mistakes that were ironed out of the Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia games years ago, as I haplessly tried to guide the suicidal Faith away from her determined attempts to plunge off every rooftop. I couldn't help but feel this pro-active Samaritans simulator might be interesting to play in the third-person, so I could at least see what ledge she would be aiming to plummet from next. My wish has been granted.
]]>Here comes an awkward metaphor: Mirror’s Edge (the delayed PC version of which was finally released last week) is hiding in the closet. Unsurprisingly, this only makes life difficult for it. For every moment it pretends to be an FPS, it feels wrong, and to any onlooker it’s visibly uncomfortable in this assumed role. If only it would cast off this sham and reveal its true colours – well, then we’d have a game proud of itself. Mirror’s Edge is a racing game, but it doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Be proud, ME. Tell the world what you are, cry it from those rooftops you spend so much time gallivanting across: “I AM A RACING GAME!”
]]>I found myself chatting to Rhianna Pratchett yesterday about her just released comics spin-off of Mirror's Edge. Well - the first part of six anyway (First pages here). It's been interesting for her. As she tells to CBR, it's her first work in the medium, and she had to do some serious thinking about its strengths and limitations before doing so. Which got me casually thinking a little more on the topic, but from the other way around - as in, what's the specific strengths and weaknesses of bringing a game to a comic. And while there's been a deluge of games-to-comics work in the last few years, what games would I pursue were I a comics editor interested in putting out entertaining comics. Which is, of course, a different thing from a comic that does the business.
]]>More Mirror's Edge exposition has turned up in the form of another animated trailer. Quite stylish once again, but discussing something that we kind of understood already about the game world: that the point of Faith's job is not to get caught.
]]>I loves me some Mirror's Edge trailers, even if every time I post one I later find it's over 3000 years old, recently dug from an archaeological dig. Anyway, look, if it turns out there was some special meeting to which everyone was invited but me, where they showed these trailers to you and you all had an excellent time, and there was probably cake, and free balloons, and I imagine everyone got to do kissing, then you know what? Screw you. Screw you and your stupid private Mirror's Edge trailer screening parties. I've got other, better, more imaginary friends. Trailers below.
]]>Sorry to get into this again, but as much as I want to ignore it, this one's significant. Ubisoft have stated that they're artificially delaying the launch of EndWar on PC because of, you guessed it, piracy.
Talking to VideoGaming247, Ubisoft Shanghai director and former Total War "Evangelist", Michael de Plater said,
"To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two."
]]>Super-sexy new Mirror's Edge trailer, showing off the time-trial gaming, down below. It really is looking rather tremendous. Curse the PC delay. CURSE THE SKIES!
]]>Overkill, perhaps, but it's a fairly intense piece of in game footage. Watching this one kind of suggests that you're immune from bullets as long as you keep moving. I wonder how that will stand up to prolonged play, and whether the sense of flow/danger will be sustained. I hope so!
]]>EA have released another snippet of animated backstory for highly-anticipated urban gymnastics simulator Mirror's Edge. It illustrates a little more about the dystopian utopia, the surveillance society, and the attractive protagonist's personal battle against the regime. It's brief, but it bodes well.
]]>Edit - attributed this to the wrong source, because I'm a great big idiot. The original story's actually here, and is replete with further details on Mirror's Edge's likely requirements, so well worth a read.
Are game system requirements a valid post? Ooh, it's a toughie. There's nothing more PC than specs - witness the number of Forum-men who display their PCs' fact-innards in their sigs- but they're hardly a mine of wonder to write about. For instance, apparently Mirror's Edge needs a PC something like this:
# CPU: Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz / Athlon 64 2800+ # RAM: 1GB # Gfx card: GeForce 6 Series with 256MB VRAM or higher, or ATI X1650 (or HD2400)
Is that interesting? I honestly don't know. Possibly interesting is that my immediate reaction is "oh, that's a fairly low-end system", which either means that I'm a monstrous hardware fascist (more than likely) or that the concept of what a modern gaming PC is has changed somewhat over the last year or so.
]]>This latest piece of Mirror's Edge footage is probably the most interesting so far, showing as it does the ways the game opens up to allow you to take different routes through the bright urban environments. There's some areas we've seen before, but also some we haven't - and the scenes in which the player is being chased by cops is particularly cool looking. (I love how doors are kicked open on the fly). This game just looks prettier and prettier. I think it's going to be one of those titles that hits a reboot button for action games, just as Max Payne did back in 2001.
]]>Are we over-exposed yet? The Leipzig trailer shows the "dodge the snipers" tunnel section that we've already had a couple of looks at. Still, it's more Mirror's Edge, and tantalising for it.
]]>Via the big K, Mirror's Edge, as recreated in Portal.
]]>Via the unsleeping Videogaming247, I bring you a Spanish language presentation of Mirror's Edge. There's a lot of footage we've seen before, but plenty we haven't. There's an extended gunfight sequence, and some running around inside (sigh) gloomy industrial tunnels.
]]>While I completely failed to pay any more attention to Stargate Worlds than reading the advert on a bus which rolled past the convention, when I was at San Diego, this did catch my eye. Wildstorm produced a short preview comic of the forthcoming Mirror's Edge (Which has been scanned by Silicon Era). Words by the games' writer Rhianna Pratchett and art by Matthew Dow Smith, I'm always interested by the comics/games interface. On one hand you have comics like this, which are pure promotional items mainly of use for swiftly introducing a games' concept (And are harder to write than you may think). On the other, you have the licensed tie-in, which are hard in almost the exact opposite way. The former are pre-game-exposition, so demanding a lot to be crammed into scant pages. The latter, generally speaking, are post-game-exposition, so while people will abstractly care and know the world, you're limited to doodling in the margins of the universe. Because, of course, you're an auxiliary creative exercise and anything genuinely meaningful will be saved for the central games.
]]>Yep, EA again, because this time I’m not talking about their press conference but the excellent time I had in their far-too-crowded demo room checking out their titles – Dead Space, MySims, Mirror’s Edge and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, first hand.
]]>Dear RPS Readers,
Thanks for the interested comments in response to my first post! They have warmed my heart and girded my loins for the rest of the week. Straight after filing my first report I had to dash (well, walk leisurely) across downtown Los Angeles to get to the EA press conference, held at the Orpheum Theatre – a truly gorgeous restored vaudeville theatre where they shot the theatre scenes for Last Action Hero. Which wasn’t as thrilling as accidentally ending up at Union Station (where they filmed the police station scenes for Blade Runner) yesterday, but interesting none the less. In a round about way that sort of sums up EA’s press conference, too. Not hugely thrilling, but unquestionably interesting.
]]>A few quick-fire, wordless posts showing off the finest E3 visual-currency for you. Comment to come later, no doubt. First, Mirror's Edge, with a second one beneath the cut.
]]>It's all very pretty, yes, yes... More in-game footage please! GameTrailers' interview with senior producer Owen O'Brien, intercut with recycled footage, concept art, and a couple of new screenshots, after the jump.
]]>Gametrailers have posted a superb re-working of the Mirror's Edge trailer, with detailed analysis of everything within. Pleasingly, it's all done in a style that suits the trailer. And indeed they too notice that Faith doesn't appear to have a reflection. Video beneath.
]]>We've expressed our excitement before, but the first public footage of DICE's Mirror's Edge has just gone live at some console-show-thing. Rhymes with Tony. That one. To recap - it's a free-running first-person action game, based around the noble art of Le Parkour, which is French for Running About Like A Mad Fucker. Trailer and some more notes beneath the cut...
]]>[Click for full size.] I have to say that while these are said to be concept shots, they don't seem particularly far from how the game actually looked when it was demoed at GDC. More after the, er, jump.
]]>Okay, that's enough teasing. The really impressive thing that DICE showed at GDC was Mirror's Edge. It looks totally fucking awesome.
We've all heard that it's a first-person game that focuses more on movement than combat, but I'm not sure anyone quite believed it. Well, believe it now. I've never seen a game that captures motion, momentum and bodily inertia so brilliantly. Remember how Thief changed the face of gaming with its sneaking and lurking? Well Mirror's Edge is making the same kind of leap, only this time for, er, leaping.
Beyond the jump... more about jumping.
]]>What fortuitous timing. I was going to link to Edge's extensive piece on DICE's (i.e. The BF2 Guys) shooter when Eurogamer lob up some actual screenshots found by fansite. So now we can start with a picture...
Before going to give some choice cuts on why this Le Parkour-influenced FPS is - for me - the most exciting looking first-person game of the next twelve months.
]]>
