The crybaby's take on Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge accomplishes what I wanted it to.

I wanted the sensation of actually controlling a human being, something I never felt in any other title from a first person perspective. Half Life 2 scores highly for interactions with other human being like characters, but he still felt like little more than a camera with a gun taped on. When you run as the Freeman, your gun moves faster, but in Mirror's Edge, your character's hands and arms appear on screen in such a way that doesn't look goofy. Any developer no matter their pedigree could really have gone overboard with, but DICE really pulled this off. It's going to sound odd, but when you look down at your feet, not only do you see them, but the amount of torso that you see doesn't look ridiculous either. I mean, take a look at  Trespasser: Jurassic Park, a title with enough ambition to choke a horse. It too allowed you to look down, but only as a means of gimmickry (your health was displayed as a tattoo on your characters breast).

If nothing else, you respect DICE for not taking the gratuitous route when it came to its female protagonist. And that seriously looks like someone's pants are slipping down.

Can I gush about looking down some more? Hopefully I can.

There was one time where I thought, "You know what? I bet when I look down as I sidle along this building, my body is going to look messed up." Now, I haven't crept along an outside ledge, so I can't say that I speak from first hand. However, if I were to commit such a dangerous deed (perhaps for a ladies further affection), then yes, this is probably how it looks.

Now, despite my favour for Mirror's Edge, there's one thing that's been driving me up the wall. I'm not one to talk too much about a game's visuals, if I did, I probably would have this blog stripped away from me by the powers that be. It's a petty practice to break down a game's visuals, but just this once I'm making an exception. But this time around, be assured it has nothing to do with them being either "whiz bang awesome", or "poo brown bad." Nope, I'm just a little peeved at the screen tearing.

I've always been cool with things like slowdown, bad collission detection, and other such horrors. At least when it was understandable or tolerable.

But like a bratty cousin attempting to appear cool in my eyes, the screen tearing in Mirror's Edge is a constant bother. Were this to be a game where I'm always running straight ahead, I'd be in the clear. But as it stands, I'm turning and jumping plenty, and that's when this snot nosed family member jumps at me with another magic trick.

You can click on that to embiggen it, but if you look to the mid-right of the screen, you can see a line that doesn't sync with the rest of the scenery. If you take that one line, and times it by five, you have what I'm experiencing in Mirror's Edge.

It seems the problem lies with standard definition televisions. I'm playing all my consoles in 480p, which is a teenie tiny step above standard definition. As much as I'd like to own an HDTV, I can't justify spending that amount of money right now. If this is the reason behind Mirror's Edge screen tearing, it's just adding on to the pile of problems developers are creating with their games. It's hard to find any concrete numbers, but I'm in doubt that the majority of people own HDTV's. I'm not necessarily complaining, considering my PS3 and 360 are built with high definition output in mind (although Sony can only afford to provide a composite set of AV cables, and Microsoft just barely goes above that with component). But I do consider it odd to have these problems. I can live with the small text found in titles like Dead Rising and Banjo Kazooie, but annoyance brought along with screen tearing is almost too much to handle.

I still heartily recommend Mirror's Edge, but be warned that while you may experience your first in-game, first person hug, you'll be on the receiving end of some crazy visual impairments.

Comments

[Tyler Ohlew]

I have this strange feeling that the Genesis Jurassic Park games were pretty decent, a lot more visceral than the lame SNES one I had.

[Jason Chamberlain]

Trespasser! Man I remember reading about that game when they were making it and being so stoked (as a big fan of the movies, books and dinos in general). It sounded so amazing. It also sucked cause my then crappy computer couldn't handle it. That said, I've heard all sorts of things about its crappiness, so I guess most of the awesomeness they described never made it into the game.

Jurassic Park has to be one of the most underused video game concepts... how can you go wrong?

[Tyler Ohlew]

I did think it was weird that DICE stressed that the little reticle in the middle of the screen reduced the feeling of nausea and vertigo.

So, it's either screen tearing on an SDTV, or barfing on an HDTV. Hmmm...

[Wes]

While I haven't had screen tearing in Mirror's Edge, I've had the ol' case of vertigo. I haven't had that sensation since Quake 3 Arena, or my last visit to the IMAX.

While it's awesome to get such a visceral reaction to the game, I'd prefer if I didn't feel as if I had to vomit every two minutes.

I wonder what Brian thinks of this game. It may be his autobiography, actually.