FINALLY: A first person aerialist/acrobatics game is coming around. And the icing on the cake? It's got kung fu too. All in first person action mode. All first-person games other than Thief: The Dark Project (the First Person Sneaker) have emphasized either shooting or swordplay. But Mirror's Edge puts a parkourian emphasis on speed, agility, and physical/environmental resourcefulness, instead of on blasting villains with a gun.
I never thought I would live to see the day. Never before has an FPS game illustrated that most cardinal rule of human society and civilization: do not throw a haymaker at somebody versed in judo.
Play the demo and see what I mean.
We Don't Need Your Stinkin Handgun
When I originally read that Mirror's Edge would steer mostly clear of gunplay but would still leave shooting in the game as a possibility for the player, I saw it as cowardice. I thought the developers were blowing their chance to go all the way-- the whole enchilada, the whole 9 yards-- with their new take on the First Person idiom. I was mad.
But then I played the demo and smacked myself for ever thinking such stupid thoughts. The fact of the matter is this: the reason why disarming an opponent and discarding his weapon is at all exciting or meaningful is because game lets you fire the gun at people if you so choose. If you so choose. The game does not prohibit you from using the gun. It does not force you into the shoes of a peacenik. No, you will have to slip on those shoes, and tie them yourself.
Which means that when you grab that enemy's gun, drop out the magazine, pop out the chambered bullet, then throw the device away like the doorstop that it is, it MEANS SOMETHING. This small act has MEANING for the player. You are throwing away firepower, you are throwing away *power*, and you are throwing away the liability (like the encumbrance of its weight and mass) that comes with it. You could have done otherwise. Maybe you, unlike me, *do* otherwise.
Movies were way ahead of games with the badass-who-discards-the-gun-separately-from-the-ammuniation-and-then-goes-hand-to-hand. But even when games lag decades behind the cinema, it's nice when they catch up.
I APPLAUD YOU MIRROR'S EDGE developers, for finally allowing me to be both Batman and Jason Bourne all in the same game.
11.09.2008
False Alarm
Last post I was overjoyed that somebody was kicking the VIEW-BOB elephant out of the room. Or at least giving him a total make-over. It was a false alarm.
I've played the Mirror's Edge demo, and I love the game so far. But when you throw a right punch, your "vision" tilts to the left. When you perform a simple standing jump, your view moves up then down (which is perfectly normal) but also "shakes" a little at the beginning and end of the jump. When you run, your vision shakes around as your speed increases. All of this stuff makes my head hurt.
The behavior of the camera clashes completely with the producer's statements that Mirror's Edge would try to represent eye movement whereas previous first-person games had misguidedly represented head movement (which is absolutely true).
I don't know how much more I could beat this horse: human vision does not experience jarring during physical activities like punching, running, wakling, or jumping. We have an extremely stable perception of the world, even while our head might be moving all over the place. Only a knock to the head disrupts it.
The visuals of the game do represent "vision" in interesting ways unrelated to body movement, for example the use of focussing/blurring effects on the periphery of the player's visual field in certain situations. But the tired use of head-bob is the same as all of the head-bobbing games that have come before it.
Boo.
Now for the record, my hatred for head-bob in First Person perspective games does not come from an obsession with psychological accuracy. It comes from the fact that many uses of head-bob give me a headache. OK, plus plus plus the fact that head-bob is a ridiculous and inaccurate fabrication that has somehow been taken as design gospel. THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE: like some older first-person games, give the player an optional setting to adjust the degree of head-bob or disable it completely.
I've played the Mirror's Edge demo, and I love the game so far. But when you throw a right punch, your "vision" tilts to the left. When you perform a simple standing jump, your view moves up then down (which is perfectly normal) but also "shakes" a little at the beginning and end of the jump. When you run, your vision shakes around as your speed increases. All of this stuff makes my head hurt.
The behavior of the camera clashes completely with the producer's statements that Mirror's Edge would try to represent eye movement whereas previous first-person games had misguidedly represented head movement (which is absolutely true).
I don't know how much more I could beat this horse: human vision does not experience jarring during physical activities like punching, running, wakling, or jumping. We have an extremely stable perception of the world, even while our head might be moving all over the place. Only a knock to the head disrupts it.
The visuals of the game do represent "vision" in interesting ways unrelated to body movement, for example the use of focussing/blurring effects on the periphery of the player's visual field in certain situations. But the tired use of head-bob is the same as all of the head-bobbing games that have come before it.
Boo.
Now for the record, my hatred for head-bob in First Person perspective games does not come from an obsession with psychological accuracy. It comes from the fact that many uses of head-bob give me a headache. OK, plus plus plus the fact that head-bob is a ridiculous and inaccurate fabrication that has somehow been taken as design gospel. THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE: like some older first-person games, give the player an optional setting to adjust the degree of head-bob or disable it completely.
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