Mirror's Edge

I've been trying to figure out why I liked Mirror's Edge so much and I think it's the same reason I enjoyed Oni. Oni was not exactly the most high acclaimed game, however it was and still is unique. It had its fair share of issues but it's one of those games that stays with you despite popular opinion. Perhaps due to my little phobia of popular things it was actually a incentive to enjoy it more? Either way I enjoyed what they executed.

In my previous post I had stated that Mirror's Edge was the sort of direction i want games to be headed in and i think i should probably clarify why. Simply put, the first person perspective is my favorite kind of way to experience video games, but, at the moment there is not a lot of effort being put into making you feel like you're an actual entity in the world. One of the only things that bothers me about my beloved Half-Life series is exactly the lack of an actual body. Am i suppose to imagine that Gordon Freeman is turning the wheel of his hovercraft despite the fact that i see no appendages on the wheel?

In reality you actually have to exercise quite a bit of imagination in video games. For example, I'm suppose to imagine that my character is looking through crates in Fallout 3 when in reality I'm simply looking at a list of items inside the crate. I look forward to the day when my character is animated to pick up the crate, open it, look at the items inside, reach his hand out to pick up his item of choice, open his backpack, and place the item inside a pocket that would represent a slot in first person. To some this may seem excessive, to me this is exactly what i want.

I imagine that sort of environment interaction is probably not that far off. My point is that adding physicality to the first person genre added a lot to the game for me.

There are other aspects of the game other than the physicality that spoke to me, for example the music was fantastic, but the sound design has a whole spoke to me. The ambiance was blindingly loud (if sound could be blinding) to, at least to me, simulate the sense of blinding reality. The games setting of a super clean city allowed for some very highly detailed textures, i think they are the highest I've ever seen, and it really let that "blinding reality" impression hit home for me when you mixed the games character physicality, sound design, highly detailed textures, and PhysX object interaction together.

If the developers had went for a more Half-Life-like continuously uninterrupted experience without "levels" and forgot about using the animated cartoon to tell the story i think i would have been more enthralled and the game would have stuck more closely to what i think the game was attempting to go for, which I interpreted to be reality.

On a final note, it looks like Mirror's Edge will get its sequel. Fuck yes.