The physX stuff was fantastic so I hope so too. I own it for 360 as well so not a big loss for me if it doesn't, but damn those dynamic cloths were great.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
So according to one of the DICE guys' twitter, Mirror's Edge did so bad on PC.
Dang, that sucks. Part of my love for the game was the visual fidelity on the PC. So crisp.
I'd also say that the extra precision in controls afforded by the PC made the platforming so much more tolerable than I'd imagine on a twin-stick setup. But they just didn't promote the PC version (over here) at all, it got extremely mixed reviews (asking people to shell out £30-35 for a 4-hour game with poor plotting and plenty of initially frustrating sections), and was a months-late port of a new IP released immediately after the Christmas rush (whereas the console version had been released at the peak of the Christmas season) in the 'dead zone'.
It's a brilliant, brilliant game for £5, which is probably how most of the people here ended up playing it on PC. But I really wish publishers would stop releasing heavily-delayed console ports at a premium price point with no promotion whatsoever, and just expect them to sell. Word of mouth only goes so far, particularly if the game itself is so short that you can finish it in an evening and then simply lend it to someone else.
And as for the story - its development was even worse than the stupid practices listed above. Rhianna was brought in at the absolute last minute, given a set of disparate levels designed without a story framework in mind, and told to write something that strung them all together and left an obvious opening for a sequel. I don't deny that she could have done a better job even within those constraints, but this is absolutely emblematic of what's wrong with much of games writing today.
Oh, and Rhianna was a pretty good games reviewer for several years before doing actual games writing, for what it's worth - I certainly think a decent writer needs to have an understanding of how games actually work, rather than simply drafting in a novelist.
So according to one of the DICE guys' twitter, Mirror's Edge did so bad on PC.
I hope 2 still gets a port anyways
Mirror's Edge was like lingerie for my PC
Could I get a link? The incredible Steam Sales during Christmas didn't make up for anything?
I don't know how steam sales affected things (if they did), but here's the unofficial word. The DICE guy is Johan Anderson, one of the tech guys and repi on twitter. Quotes are the links to the respective original pages.
Releasing months after the console release, after all the hype had gone and all the reviews were saying it was mediocre isn't the best idea. It's not exactly surprising that when the only people who know about the games are the ones who read the not-too-great reviews, you're going to do poorly.
People had already bought all the major hitters they wanted to in the previous months (and the 2008 / 2009 transition had a LOT of good titles). That's pretty much why I picked it up in the Steam sale, I mean I sure as heck wasn't about to pay full price for it, especially when there was other stuff to buy.
Couldn't really say if the Steam sales would've made much. Publisher tallies only ever seem to talk about store-based sales (if at all), which is a shrinking sector when dealing with PC games.
Mirror's edge was my favourite game of 2k9 and one of my favourite game experiences of all time, even with all its flaws. If the sequel goes console only I may just pick it up when it drops just to be sure I've got a copy even though I only ever get consoles after they're a gen old. Did that with Ico, last, and thank god because that game is a bitch to find.
Releasing months after the console release, after all the hype had gone and all the reviews were saying it was mediocre isn't the best idea. It's not exactly surprising that when the only people who know about the games are the ones who read the not-too-great reviews, you're going to do poorly.
People had already bought all the major hitters they wanted to in the previous months (and the 2008 / 2009 transition had a LOT of good titles). That's pretty much why I picked it up in the Steam sale, I mean I sure as heck wasn't about to pay full price for it, especially when there was other stuff to buy.
Couldn't really say if the Steam sales would've made much. Publisher tallies only ever seem to talk about store-based sales (if at all), which is a shrinking sector when dealing with PC games.
I think the long delay may also actively sabotage things for people that have consoles the game is available on.
I wanted Mirror's Edge. I have a 360. I wanted Mirror's Edge. I didn't want to wait an extra four months. When it finally came out on the PC, I didn't even really care anymore and ended up getting it on Steam when it finally dropped to $20 almost a year after the PC port came out.
I definitely enjoy the PC version more than the 360 version and would have gotten it right away, but that wasn't an option. It didn't stop me from pirating anything. It didn't accomplish anything except shifting my sale away from my preferred platform and making its sales numbers slightly worse.
Mirror's Edge is actually the one game I really, really wish they'd given us a PC demo of. For some reason I thought the controls might not work out in the PC version and put off buying it for a long time. Glad I did buy it in the end, though - I really enjoyed the game.
I really liked Mirror's Edge until about halfway though. round about the boat level it started to get much less fun for me.
The points that bother me depend on the difficulty level, I find. For instance, on Easy nothing even really comes to mind, but on normal those ninjas, any time there are two shotgun cops together and those arena-room battles like with the servers are a pain, and then finally on hard pretty much every altercation is just horrible and the opposite of fun.
I loved Mirror's Edge. I'm keenly interested in seeing how developers learn from it. Hopefully, we'll see some actual shooters in the future where characters are as highly-mobile as Faith. I'd absolutely love to gunsling while wall-running or kick-flipping up the side of a building, or to dodge incoming fire by leaping over obstacles and sliding behind cover. Mirror's Edge was great, but I can't wait to see what comes next.
I loved Mirror's Edge. I'm keenly interested in seeing how developers learn from it. Hopefully, we'll see some actual shooters in the future where characters are as highly-mobile as Faith. I'd absolutely love to gunsling while wall-running or kick-flipping up the side of a building, or to dodge incoming fire by leaping over obstacles and sliding behind cover. Mirror's Edge was great, but I can't wait to see what comes next.
You know, I actually know basically nothing about Wet. I was interested when I first saw the trailers, but somewhere along the line, I stopped paying attetion. Thanks for pointing me back towards it - if it's anything like what I was talking about before, I'll probably love it.
You know, I actually know basically nothing about Wet. I was interested when I first saw the trailers, but somewhere along the line, I stopped paying attetion. Thanks for pointing me back towards it - if it's anything like what I was talking about before, I'll probably love it.
I'm surprised no-one's said anything about brink... or maybe they have and I just didn't feel like sifting through walls of text.
that's what i was about to say. brink seems to be trying to add that mobility to the first person shooter perspective.
It's cause no one really knows about Splash Damage, even big blogs like kotaku attribute it to Bethesda just because they're publishing it . I was meaning to make a thread about it when the videos came out, but it's a bit late now
I played this last week on the 360 and enjoyed it immensely. My one word description for it would be "thrilling."
I thought the problems with the story lay more with the premise than the narrative itself.
If they make a sequel, I would like to see more options available during the combat sequences. Say, a running option that allows you to avoid combat, then a full on combat path, and maybe a stealth takedown option. I would also like to see the environment be a little more destructible.
I'm surprised no-one's said anything about brink... or maybe they have and I just didn't feel like sifting through walls of text.
that's what i was about to say. brink seems to be trying to add that mobility to the first person shooter perspective.
It's cause no one really knows about Splash Damage, even big blogs like kotaku attribute it to Bethesda just because they're publishing it . I was meaning to make a thread about it when the videos came out, but it's a bit late now
Splash Damage was precisely why I didn't care about Brink. Stuff from Quake guys? Who cares?
But then I saw the "fluid motion" videos that are out for it on Xbox Live and I was just in shock. It looks really good...can't wait to get my hands on it
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. It shows her supposedly doing her job as a runner.
And as we all know by now, that just wasn't very important as far as the game was concerned.
Seriously though, that looks pretty good.
It's funny because of all the concept art we've seen for the game, the piece that this painting is based on is like, one of only three that have the bags in there at all. Mirror's Edge did a lot of stuff right, but "make any fucking sense" was not one of them. I could replace the runners with a remote controlled toy helicopter and make HUEG BUX in the city. They went the unfortunate route of thinking about the story enough to come up with a reason for the runners to exist but not enough to make the reason make any sense or anything. It's like if the very first episode of Star Trek started on the Enterprise, then they immediately beamed down to a planet and lost all their fancy technology. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would still be awesome dudes, but the whole time you would be going "what the hell was that part about the space ship and phasers at the beginning?" And then occasionally they would reference the Enterprise and you would have no idea what was up.
In this metaphor the Enterprise was the bags and stuff.
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. It shows her supposedly doing her job as a runner.
And as we all know by now, that just wasn't very important as far as the game was concerned.
Seriously though, that looks pretty good.
It's funny because of all the concept art we've seen for the game, the piece that this painting is based on is like, one of only three that have the bags in there at all. Mirror's Edge did a lot of stuff right, but "make any fucking sense" was not one of them. I could replace the runners with a remote controlled toy helicopter and make HUEG BUX in the city. They went the unfortunate route of thinking about the story enough to come up with a reason for the runners to exist but not enough to make the reason make any sense or anything. It's like if the very first episode of Star Trek started on the Enterprise, then they immediately beamed down to a planet and lost all their fancy technology. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would still be awesome dudes, but the whole time you would be going "what the hell was that part about the space ship and phasers at the beginning?" And then occasionally they would reference the Enterprise and you would have no idea what was up.
In this metaphor the Enterprise was the bags and stuff.
It's not so much that they didn't think of the story, the story's there, you can occasionally catch snippets of it coming through. The problem is more with the approach to game writing in the development process. I remember reading an interview with one of the lead writers on Gears of War. However, she had also been one of the lead writers on Bioshock. So naturally one of the first questions asked was "why the huge difference between the two when it comes to quality of the storytelling?"
What often happens is that you get people contracted in to write up the story largely in isolation from the rest of the dev team. They create this huge world, backstory, and plot, and it all fits together and makes sense. This happens sometime early in development.
Then over the course of development, the game changes, the level design changes, everything changes, and the story has to be cut and shredded in order to stuff it into the completely reworked game. And it doesn't work.
In order to create a coherent story that fits with the game and doesn't self destruct on meeting the product, the writers have to be a core part of the dev team, involved the whole way through, just like any other member of the team.
That's something I remember reading Chet Faliszek mention once in an interview, that he couldn't really see working in isolation like some other companies have it. If you aren't involved with the rest of the design process then you're not going to be able to create something coherent.
There's also a really good interview with Richard Morgan where he talks about his work on Crysis 2, and he basically talks about the same things. Because he actually flew out there, and to all intents and purposes he's working alongside the devs every step of the way to make something cohesive.
It's a good interview, well worth watching. And yes, it is that Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon).
I didn't really have any interest in the story of Crysis 2 before that. Crysis' story was largely mediocre, but he genuinely seems seems intent on making something good to support the game, and more importantly understand what game writing entails and how it's different from writing for a novel. In the sense that writing for a game isn't about writing the story in isolation, it's a process taken in collaboration with the level and game designers to make something fitting and coherent.
Getting back to Mirror's Edge, I just felt it was a real shame. Because the story could have been there, and it would have really made a good game something far more special.
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. It shows her supposedly doing her job as a runner.
And as we all know by now, that just wasn't very important as far as the game was concerned.
Seriously though, that looks pretty good.
It's funny because of all the concept art we've seen for the game, the piece that this painting is based on is like, one of only three that have the bags in there at all. Mirror's Edge did a lot of stuff right, but "make any fucking sense" was not one of them. I could replace the runners with a remote controlled toy helicopter and make HUEG BUX in the city. They went the unfortunate route of thinking about the story enough to come up with a reason for the runners to exist but not enough to make the reason make any sense or anything. It's like if the very first episode of Star Trek started on the Enterprise, then they immediately beamed down to a planet and lost all their fancy technology. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would still be awesome dudes, but the whole time you would be going "what the hell was that part about the space ship and phasers at the beginning?" And then occasionally they would reference the Enterprise and you would have no idea what was up.
In this metaphor the Enterprise was the bags and stuff.
That kind of Star Trek show would be like if J.J. Abrams decided to make a remake of the TV show and combine it with Lost.
Either way, the game was fun for sure. But the story was just a bunch of random cliches thrown at the player in an effort to keep Faith running forward. The game still would've been fun if it had just been about delivering packages 'the man' didn't want delivered.
Come to think of it, I'd have been more happy with the time trials if they were actually deliveries rather than just running around on shit as fast as possible. It just seems so pointless otherwise.
Posts
I hope 2 still gets a port anyways
Mirror's Edge was like lingerie for my PC
Could I get a link? The incredible Steam Sales during Christmas didn't make up for anything?
I'd also say that the extra precision in controls afforded by the PC made the platforming so much more tolerable than I'd imagine on a twin-stick setup. But they just didn't promote the PC version (over here) at all, it got extremely mixed reviews (asking people to shell out £30-35 for a 4-hour game with poor plotting and plenty of initially frustrating sections), and was a months-late port of a new IP released immediately after the Christmas rush (whereas the console version had been released at the peak of the Christmas season) in the 'dead zone'.
It's a brilliant, brilliant game for £5, which is probably how most of the people here ended up playing it on PC. But I really wish publishers would stop releasing heavily-delayed console ports at a premium price point with no promotion whatsoever, and just expect them to sell. Word of mouth only goes so far, particularly if the game itself is so short that you can finish it in an evening and then simply lend it to someone else.
And as for the story - its development was even worse than the stupid practices listed above. Rhianna was brought in at the absolute last minute, given a set of disparate levels designed without a story framework in mind, and told to write something that strung them all together and left an obvious opening for a sequel. I don't deny that she could have done a better job even within those constraints, but this is absolutely emblematic of what's wrong with much of games writing today.
Oh, and Rhianna was a pretty good games reviewer for several years before doing actual games writing, for what it's worth - I certainly think a decent writer needs to have an understanding of how games actually work, rather than simply drafting in a novelist.
I don't know how steam sales affected things (if they did), but here's the unofficial word. The DICE guy is Johan Anderson, one of the tech guys and repi on twitter. Quotes are the links to the respective original pages.
People had already bought all the major hitters they wanted to in the previous months (and the 2008 / 2009 transition had a LOT of good titles). That's pretty much why I picked it up in the Steam sale, I mean I sure as heck wasn't about to pay full price for it, especially when there was other stuff to buy.
Couldn't really say if the Steam sales would've made much. Publisher tallies only ever seem to talk about store-based sales (if at all), which is a shrinking sector when dealing with PC games.
Yeah, totally. I recently paid cash for the game so maybe some late profits are better than none. :?
I think the long delay may also actively sabotage things for people that have consoles the game is available on.
I wanted Mirror's Edge. I have a 360. I wanted Mirror's Edge. I didn't want to wait an extra four months. When it finally came out on the PC, I didn't even really care anymore and ended up getting it on Steam when it finally dropped to $20 almost a year after the PC port came out.
I definitely enjoy the PC version more than the 360 version and would have gotten it right away, but that wasn't an option. It didn't stop me from pirating anything. It didn't accomplish anything except shifting my sale away from my preferred platform and making its sales numbers slightly worse.
The points that bother me depend on the difficulty level, I find. For instance, on Easy nothing even really comes to mind, but on normal those ninjas, any time there are two shotgun cops together and those arena-room battles like with the servers are a pain, and then finally on hard pretty much every altercation is just horrible and the opposite of fun.
really not happy to hear it did so poorly
but it didn't sell too well on consoles either so really i blame EA's advertising or lack thereof
that said DICE is PC at heart so i'm sure ME2 will see a PC release sometime.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Yeah I bought it twice for PC as well. But they did do the first Battlefield Bad Company as a console only release, so it's not without precedent.
Ahem!
Why aren't you playing it right now?
Too bad playing it you find out that it's actually awful
Nowhere close to Mirror's Edge. Its just a third person ...bleh. But that's my opinion, I suppose.
that's what i was about to say. brink seems to be trying to add that mobility to the first person shooter perspective.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
It's cause no one really knows about Splash Damage, even big blogs like kotaku attribute it to Bethesda just because they're publishing it
I thought the problems with the story lay more with the premise than the narrative itself.
If they make a sequel, I would like to see more options available during the combat sequences. Say, a running option that allows you to avoid combat, then a full on combat path, and maybe a stealth takedown option. I would also like to see the environment be a little more destructible.
Splash Damage was precisely why I didn't care about Brink. Stuff from Quake guys? Who cares?
But then I saw the "fluid motion" videos that are out for it on Xbox Live and I was just in shock. It looks really good...can't wait to get my hands on it
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. It shows her supposedly doing her job as a runner.
And as we all know by now, that just wasn't very important as far as the game was concerned.
I like the uneven angles. It gives an extra oomph to the idea of a cleaned up city that used to have bits of chaos.
Runner - n. One who runs or is running.
:P
In this metaphor the Enterprise was the bags and stuff.
Also, that is an awesome analogy. :^:
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It's not so much that they didn't think of the story, the story's there, you can occasionally catch snippets of it coming through. The problem is more with the approach to game writing in the development process. I remember reading an interview with one of the lead writers on Gears of War. However, she had also been one of the lead writers on Bioshock. So naturally one of the first questions asked was "why the huge difference between the two when it comes to quality of the storytelling?"
What often happens is that you get people contracted in to write up the story largely in isolation from the rest of the dev team. They create this huge world, backstory, and plot, and it all fits together and makes sense. This happens sometime early in development.
Then over the course of development, the game changes, the level design changes, everything changes, and the story has to be cut and shredded in order to stuff it into the completely reworked game. And it doesn't work.
In order to create a coherent story that fits with the game and doesn't self destruct on meeting the product, the writers have to be a core part of the dev team, involved the whole way through, just like any other member of the team.
That's something I remember reading Chet Faliszek mention once in an interview, that he couldn't really see working in isolation like some other companies have it. If you aren't involved with the rest of the design process then you're not going to be able to create something coherent.
There's also a really good interview with Richard Morgan where he talks about his work on Crysis 2, and he basically talks about the same things. Because he actually flew out there, and to all intents and purposes he's working alongside the devs every step of the way to make something cohesive.
It's a good interview, well worth watching. And yes, it is that Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon).
http://g4tv.com/videos/45272/Crysis-2-Lead-Writer-Interview-/?quality=hd
I didn't really have any interest in the story of Crysis 2 before that. Crysis' story was largely mediocre, but he genuinely seems seems intent on making something good to support the game, and more importantly understand what game writing entails and how it's different from writing for a novel. In the sense that writing for a game isn't about writing the story in isolation, it's a process taken in collaboration with the level and game designers to make something fitting and coherent.
Getting back to Mirror's Edge, I just felt it was a real shame. Because the story could have been there, and it would have really made a good game something far more special.
That kind of Star Trek show would be like if J.J. Abrams decided to make a remake of the TV show and combine it with Lost.
Either way, the game was fun for sure. But the story was just a bunch of random cliches thrown at the player in an effort to keep Faith running forward. The game still would've been fun if it had just been about delivering packages 'the man' didn't want delivered.
Come to think of it, I'd have been more happy with the time trials if they were actually deliveries rather than just running around on shit as fast as possible. It just seems so pointless otherwise.