Mirror's edge, looks promising. - by Fragony
Ostriig on 16/1/2009 at 16:49
Hrmm... I've got a bit of an allergy to nVidia beta drivers. Got a pack especially for Bioshock back in the day, and they turned out to be the source of some dreadful instability I experienced with NWN2. Thanks for the linkage, though.
Edit:
Fuck me... I started playing the game, only took the time to get through the training and the first mission (featured in a lot of the early gameplay trailers), but I have to say it's pretty damn cool! When things work out smoothly, it's absolutely brilliant, when they don't - well, we all knew what we were signing up for. I've already had that one moment, when you're supposed to take a long jump and grab onto a vertical beam, so I can tell that by the end of the game, my relationship with sweet, fresh, Faith won't be a lot better than what I ended up sharing with Rynn and Lara (actually, I have to confess, me and Lara were nothing short of a disaster).
On the plot side, nothing to share, I've only just started, though I can say I got a pleasant first impression from the voice acting (as assets to storytelling). That's more than I can say for the main character herself, though, as even from the opening sequence I got that odd vibe that might've been the reason for Yahtzee's comments on the whole "evil city" subject.
Now on to PC-side tech & visuals. It looks simply beautiful! All the more for me, I guess, since for the last couple of "days", I was up until the early hours of the morning getting my character addicted to Jet in Fallout 3. So, yeah, this game's colour scheme came as a delight, and I think this might just be the first occurrence where I don't mind the overwhelming shitloads (kinda like 10) of bloom/HDR/whatever. I think I recall some issues being mentioned with UE3's character shadows before - as far as I can tell, nothing of the sort here, character-cast ground shadows are looking quite crisp, though I might be tempted to look into the .ini for tweaking self-shadowing.
Another thing on the graphics side that gets noticed right off the bat is the apparently forced widescreen format. Running on 1280x1024, and the game appears in widescreen, with black bands on the upper and lower sides of my LCD. Can't say I found it bothersome, though it is kind of a reminder that I wanted to maybe buy a widescreen to replace my current 17''. Saw a bit PhysX in action, too. Very nice, very nice.
So, let's give some feedback on performance - haven't ran an actual fps test, but I have had no issues with stuttering whatsoever (though I did get a pretty show-stopping freeze bug that forced me to reboot). All settings are on max at the previously mentioned resolutions, PhysX set to On, on the following rig: Vista 32bit SP1, E6420 2.13Ghz, 2GB RAM 667Mhz, GeForce 9800GT 1GB (driver 178.13). So, yeah, a healthy rig, but by no means anything cutting-edge.
denisv on 17/1/2009 at 16:30
Very very good game. Way better than Portal. The sequences with cops are pure fun, and the paths aren't too obvious so you can't run through it on autopilot. Graphics are awesome as long as you don't look too closely. Can't really find anything wrong with it, other than that Faith's animation could be better synchronised with her movement.
Overall, it's GOTY 2008-- Perhaps even GOTY 2009 (for PC), if OFP2/ARMA2 turn out to be disappointments.
Ostriig on 17/1/2009 at 16:40
Bug note - for those experiencing random total freezes while having PhysX enabled, make sure you have the game patched and update your PhysX drivers. It apparently solves the problem for some machines, though other users have continued to report the same problem even after patching. There's also the option of turning off PhysX, though some people have complained that doing so sent their CPU usage through the roof for some reason. Dunno. Mine was working fine again last night, after the patching, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it wasn't a fluke and it will stay that way.
As for the game, still having fun, got through my third chapter yesterday. I'll take it back on the voice acting, though - I still like it for Faith and Merc, but some of the other characters, like Jackknife (:erg:) and the old cop are absolutely horrible.
catbarf on 17/1/2009 at 18:03
Well, having just finished it, I'll share my thoughts.
The implementation of momentum is great- it really changes how you move around the maps compared to other FPSes. That said, far too much of the game doesn't rely on keeping momentum. You can essentially treat many sequences as individual actions, and as long as you barely complete one you can proceed to the next. I rarely had the feeling of having completed a half-dozen actions within a few seconds- and when I did, they were places where I could have just as easily mantled every object and taken somewhat longer. Contrast this with some bits in, say, Portal, where you need to have good timing in multiple actions just to proceed- remember the room with the four sinking platforms? Running from the ninjas did require exactly this sort of speed, which is what I really enjoyed about those scenes, but it only happens three times if I recall correctly.
As said before, some of the voice acting is pretty bad, which really sucks for the final scene.
As for the combat- Meh. Even on the harder difficulty, I found that most of the fancy tricks were unnecessary. I'd just run up to an isolated enemy, hit the bullet time key, take his gun, and slaughter all the others with it. I could have done some flying wall-kick, but there's really no point when other tactics work just as well. This was what I liked about the fight on the ship against Celeste- it was hand-to-hand, requiring more than just CS:S tactics to win.
And the ending especially didn't give me much closure. You've saved your sister and killed Jackknife, but the mercs are still basically in charge and not much has been explained regarding Icarus.
That said, still a pretty good game overall. I hope that a toolkit is released to allow modding- the game seems perfectly suited to Matrix-style gun-fu.
Aja on 17/1/2009 at 20:34
I torrented the PC version to see how it'd run. First impressions are that it plays almost exactly as the 360 version. The graphics look about the same as well, though in a few instances I noticed the lighting wasn't as realistic. Using space to jump and shift to crouch actually seemed a bit easier than on the Xbox controller, mainly because I'm used to jumping with space, while LB as jump on the Xbox is unconventional. Using shift and space seems to make some of the trickier back-and-forth movements a bit easier.
I was complaining earlier about the lack of analogue walk -- and DICE comes up with a clever solution: did anyone notice that pressing left control not only slows down your walking speed, but your look speed as well? It's like a general "survey-your-surroundings" mode, and when you release it Faith is back to her faster movements. Very cool.
Fafhrd on 17/1/2009 at 20:58
Finished it last night, and then tooled around from 11 to 3am in Time Trials and Speed Runs. (Fuck those guys at the top of the Time Trial rankings. I just CANNOT figure what they're ghosts are doing. 34 seconds on Edge? HOW THE FUCK?)
I need to do another play through, on account of I did shoot and kill around six guys, and I feel bad about it. (Not so much the counter runners because I honestly couldn't figure out how to get onto that last roof with them tasering me, and fighting two of them hand to hand is impossible. I'm proud of myself that I managed to get through the server room only laying a hand on the heavy machine gunner to disarm him, however.
DICE needs to release an editor with the quickness, I could easily see a fan mission community forming around this game that rivals that for Thief.
EZ-52 on 17/1/2009 at 22:40
Quote Posted by catbarf
As said before, some of the voice acting is pretty bad,
which really sucks for the final scene.I thought that the voice acting on the whole was good (especially Faith's and Merc's). The only voice I hated was Ropeburn.
He doesn't last long though, but after he is shot and falls to his death that "aaaahhhh" he shouts as he falled killed me.Quote:
(Fuck those guys at the top of the Time Trial rankings. I just CANNOT figure what they're ghosts are doing. 34 seconds on Edge? HOW THE FUCK?)
Exploits, I know I've had a couple of good runs. For example, sometimes it's quicker to just fall and kill yourself rather than work your way through a puzzle, There are two areas in Kate that you can do this and save like 20-30 seconds of time. There is also physics engine exploits that allow Faith to roll to block a heavly landing but still continue with full momentum.
Jason Moyer on 17/1/2009 at 23:02
I have no idea how this game got pissed on so badly by console reviewers. I'm only a few hours in, but man this is awesome. I feel like I'm playing "life of the party" and the game glitched out so that every guard was alerted when the level loaded.
Angel Dust on 17/1/2009 at 23:05
Quote Posted by EZ-52
There is also physics engine exploits that allow Faith to roll to block a heavly landing but still continue with full momentum.
I thought the roll to block a heavy landing was an intended manouver as it was in the training or are you meaning something else?
Quote Posted by catbarf
I rarely had the feeling of having completed a half-dozen actions within a few seconds- and when I did, they were places where I could have just as easily mantled every object and taken somewhat longer.
What? Isn't that a good thing? Sure there usually is a slow mantle heavy way to proceed but when you master the controls, and get used to looking at the levels as a runner, you can find fasterpaths. It really comes through on subsequent playthroughs, you'll be breezing through sections in record time chaining together manoveurs and barely stopping.
Quote:
As for the combat- Meh. Even on the harder difficulty, I found that most of the fancy tricks were unnecessary. I'd just run up to an isolated enemy, hit the bullet time key, take his gun, and slaughter all the others with it. I could have done some flying wall-kick, but there's really no point when other tactics work just as well.
I agree to a certain extent but if you've got the momentum going a flying kick to the head will knock most guys out in one hit. I decided to play it, after restarting about 1/3 the way through, without shooting a single bullet, with that one exception of couse, so I had to use the hand to hand combat and it can be effective but certainly needs some work for the sequel.
