Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is certainly not a game without faults, and I can easily see how some of its problems could lead to indifference or even genuine dislike towards the game. But I found its presentation and unique take on platforming from a first person perspective to be an interesting and at times perfectly thrilling experience. I think what I really wanted was a lot of its ideas in a better considered game, but I had a lot of fun playing through it despite the very high number of times I messed up and sent its protagonist Faith to an early death.

Faith is a runner, one of several acrobatic outlaws that illegally hand deliver packages in a dystopian future where all electronic communication is constantly monitored. The plot has some twists and turns as you get embroiled in a conspiracy involving political assassinations and betrayals, although you never really get a sense of why anything is important. There's no true villain the game with clear intentions, and while you can guess why whoever's in charge of this eerily empty city wouldn't want you to be passing messages that they can't get at, you don't know what's so bad about these messages either. It's just a backdrop for the gameplay, and you feel like they're just trying to establish the setting for possible sequels, which have been hinted at but not yet confirmed. Most of the story is conveyed in game, never leaving Faith's perspective, except in the animated scenes between chapters that have been compared jokingly to the Esurance commercials, but I think they're better animated in most places and compliment the game's aesthetic well.

That aesthetic is pretty appealing, looking not much like any other first person games from this generation. The colors are all very stark, whites and yellows and blues that stand out and subtly lead you where you're supposed to be going. Enemies mostly wear all black, and anything red is something that you should be paying attention to, whether it's a ramp you can use to jump to the next building or a cop's weapon you can grab in mid-strike. The clean look both conveys the sterile futility of trying to resist the city's control and helps keep you running towards your objective instead of getting lost trying to figure out what you can jump on. Voice acting's not bad and the music is suitably new agey and pulse pounding where required. The theme song "Still Alive" isn't very new or interesting, but I can't say it isn't pleasant. Now where have I heard that title in connection to a first person game without much combat before?

The main gameplay is the parkour, running along rooftops, slipping past obstacles, making impossible jumps and slickly disposing of people in your way. The controls are nice and simple. You run faster the longer you go without being stopped, and there's a button that moves you upward like jumping or running along a wall and one that moves you downward like sliding under a barrier or dropping from a ledge. This is pretty much all you need to do any number of crazy things, and before too long you'll find yourself leaping from building to building with ease. Sometimes there's problems, as it's common to jump before you should and miss the next ledge or have more issues that you think you should pulling off a complicated maneuver. I have no idea how many times I fell to my death in the seven hours I played.

And the combat... I like the game, but this whole part of it is just bad. A significant component of my difficulties was that my computer could barely keep the frame rate playable when there were enemies in the room, making the finicky disarming mechanic even more problematic. The ability to temporarily slow time helps, but the whole thing just seems unnecessarily obtuse. The game wants you to avoid shooting people, and just take them down with your hands. It's not that Faith is incapable of defending herself, it's just that there's no good gameplay or story reason why she can't carry a gun with her. The fact that you physically can take an opponent's weapon and shoot his partners with it suggests that there's no moral issue preventing her from doing it, and having to procure a firearm every time you run into trouble is needlessly difficult. There's also no physical reason why having a gun should encumber her, because at times she has to carry a bag for the story and it doesn't affect anything. On top of all that, the shooting itself is bad and the game does introduce enemies that can pursue you on your own level instead of just shooting at you, making you wonder why you encounter the basic goons with guns so often. It really doesn't add anything to the experience, and the one real fight you have with someone like you is a lot more fun than any of the game's other combat. Despite repeated deaths, the bad, unnecessary fighting didn't hurt my enjoyment too much, but it just seems like a poorly thought out, poorly implemented component of an otherwise much more interesting game.

So yeah, the game has issues, but some of the hiccups stemmed from my own system's limitations and the game's unique strengths definitely outweighed them to me. It's not great, but if they ever do get to make a sequel and iron out some kinks, there's no reason it couldn't be.

Game Update 15: DLC Round-Up 3

We ain't gonna stop this DLC thing.

Assassin's Creed 2: Battle of Forli


Assassin's Creed 2 was a lot of fun, so I was excited when I heard they were extending its life with a couple of cheap add-ons. They were made up of content that had to be cut from the original release for time, but I was still interested in seeing those gaps get filled in. Unfortunately, both packs had a few issues that made me see why they might not have charged a ton for them. Battle of Forli adds a repeatable mission that lets you play with Da Vinci's flying machine if you want some more of that, and a little more of the story in Forli, a city that you passed through in the regular game but didn't spend much time in. I liked seeing some new details of what happened during that missing period, but ultimately the missions themselves weren't that fun. A couple were fine, but too many eschewed the normal stealthy, acrobatic gameplay for awkward, uninteresting battles between groups of soldiers. It's not that mixing it up is bad, but the game just isn't made to handle it well, and the chapter seemed pretty anticlimactic in general.

Assassin's Creed 2: Bonfire of the Vanities


Vanities cost a bit more and I was hopeful about it, since it unlocks an entire section of Florence that was missing. And it started off fine, giving you a bunch of small assassinations to take care of. Unfortunately, some of them are designed to be arbitrarily difficult with no justification for the ridiculous conditions they set, creating an uneven, sometimes frustrating experience. Most of the problems come from a few missions deciding that you can't be spotted by any guards before intercepting your target, which would be fine if there was any reason for it and if you didn't have to run away from all of the now fully aware guards in the area once you pull it off. It would also help if it was just a bit clearer about what did and what didn't get you seen. There was a more expensive version that also unlocked a few tombs that were exclusive to a special edition of the game, and they were pretty fun, though maybe not worth the five bucks. I don't really regret playing these, although they really didn't add much to the game in the end.

Heavy Rain: The Taxidermist


I don't think this is publicly available yet, but if you preordered the game like me you got a free download code for it. It's pretty much Heavy Rain in a nutshell. You're investigating a possible killer's house, and after a certain amount of time investigating the guy's extremely creepy house he shows up unexpectedly and you have to try to escape. There's a lot of different ways you can go about it, and at least five different ways it can end, some good and some bad. It's completely inessential to the main game's story, but if you had fun with it and want another little piece with the same strong presentation and tense gameplay, it's certainly worth checking out.

LittleBigPlanet: Pirates of the Caribbean Level Kit


I was lucky enough to play this for free thanks to a code from a friend. It's similar to the Metal Gear Solid pack, adding some new gameplay mechanics, pieces to make stuff with, and a set of five levels themed after something famous. I think they only cover the first two movies, which happen to be the ones I've seen, having you escape from some pirates, find a ship, and take on the Kraken. The water system certainly adds more to the game than the paint gun, and the levels are full of the stuff, letting you swim around and solve some new puzzles with some things that float and some things that don't. I'm not sure how I feel about all these premium level packs relying on other properties to sell themselves, but I can't say they aren't fun ways to extend the game's life and inspire players to create more interesting levels. Really, they could keep doing this instead of of releasing a sequel and I'd be fine with it.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Produced by Isao Takahata and directed by Hayao Miyazaki based off a manga he did, Nausicaa has a lot of talent behind it, and while I found it a bit ponderous in places, it's got a lot of great moments and ideas, and is definitely a must see for any fan of the best anime can offer. Although I realize that a few of the Miyazaki films I've missed so far are among his most mundane work in setting, what I think is his greatest strength is creating unique fantasy worlds that never feel unoriginal but are still distinctly his own, and that's definitely on display here. Of course, he had all the time he was making the manga to develop his ideas, but the vision he has is impressive and very interesting.

As can be predicted at this point, the setting and plot have a strong environmental message embedded in their DNA. It's basically a post-apocalyptic vision of Earth, where our own pollution has destroyed the planet and turned parts of it into what is called the Sea of Decay, where humans need gas masks just to survive. Various nations come to be at war, some wanting to awaken a terrible giant that helped lead to the old Earth's destruction in the first place, others wanting to find another way to restore the ecosystem. There's a mix of medieval swordplay with weapons like tanks and various flying machines, with some of the action being as strong as in any Miyazaki movie.

Nausicaa is the standard Miyazaki female protagonist, valuing life extremely highly as she ventures into the Sea of Decay to learn more about it and salvage what she can. She's the princess of the nation she belongs to, and before long she's at the center of the escalating conflict and must do anything she can to save the world. I can't say the plot is entirely unpredictable or creative, but it hits all the right notes and never stumbles too badly either. There's some pretty wild imagery and nice animation, although the 1984-quality soundtrack is a bit lacking in credibility. In the end, it's perhaps not quite a great film, but I definitely enjoyed it.

The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult

I feel like this movie was a little funnier than the second Naked Gun, although it again didn't stand up to the first. That was pretty obviously unlikely from the beginning though, so I mostly just tried to enjoy it for what it was, the most 1994'd 1994 movie to ever 1994 in 1994. I still feel like this style of comedy feels like it belongs in the 80s, but so much of the actual content just screams out 1994. O.J. Simpson's back, right before the whole trial thing blew up. Anna Nicole Smith is the stunt casted famous-for-little-reason hot chick who causes trouble, at the height of her good looks. The final act of the movie takes place during an Oscar telecast, and it's stuffed to the brim with people who were more famous then than they are now, like Weird Al, Vanna White, Florence Henderson, Olympia Dukakis, Elliot Gould, and Raquel Welch. A bit of it's funny in places, although it mostly seems like forced celebrity ball washing after the funnier first hour of the film. It's hard to remember the funnier bits now all of about a week later, but there's some solid jokes revolving around a prison escape and marital troubles that kept me entertained enough to keep watching. There's really a boatload of familiar faces everywhere you look, and while it's far from the pinnacle of edgy comedy, it's hard to dislike too. Not brilliant but certainly watchable if you like Leslie Nielsen.