Mirror's edge, looks promising. - by Fragony
Thirith on 12/2/2010 at 08:06
I'd say that for the gameplay regenerating health makes perfect sense. The game is all about flow, and that's when it's at its best. A different health system wouldn't be more realistic and I'm pretty sure it would make the game less enjoyable.
Chade on 12/2/2010 at 14:27
Quote Posted by Muzman
The story/characters: Yeah, I thought the whole thing seemed incongruously hard boiled. I'm not sure why; some combo of the setting, the occupation and parkour being a sort of non violent ethos I guess. But was expecting Faith to be generally non violent, maybe getting forced into it as things progressed. She's as ruthless as anything though.
I haven't seen Faith being ruthless yet: presumably I'll get to that as the story progresses. But yeah, the whole "tough guy" attitude feels tacked on. I think it's a combination of a few things:
1) The areas you navigate don't feel threatening, so beating them doesn't make you feel tough. The setting is elegant. And classy. But tough? No way. Tough just feels wrong.
2) The "good guys" (as of two hours into the game) are really comfortable around each other. They invade each others personal space without so much as batting an eyelid, casually touch each other, and are obviously close friends. They talk to each other sincerely, and don't act with a whole lot of bravado between themselves. So when the voice actors start doling out menace by the bucketful, there's no believable context.
3) Initially, the runners state that they don't get bothered by police. They are confused when they get shot at all of a sudden. When faith meets her sister for the first time, her friend seems genuinely concerned for her safety. And yet faith and her friends also make jokes about being shot at in their stride, as if it's a regular daily occurrence. Again, it doesn't feel as if the characters were originally meant to be "tough".
So far it feels like the whole "tough guy" attitude was shoe-horned onto the script in an effort to make the game more marketable ... but that may say more about my biases then it does about the game.
Quote Posted by Thirith
I'd say that for the gameplay regenerating health makes perfect sense. The game is all about flow, and that's when it's at its best. A different health system wouldn't be more realistic and I'm pretty sure it would make the game less enjoyable.
Oh absolutely. Regenerating health is definitely good for this game. I like how health works under the covers.
Chade on 13/3/2010 at 12:13
Ok, just finished the game. Final impressions ahead:
The only thing I don't understand is why this game got such a bad rap for being hard. :confused:
Honestly, the amount of bitching I've heard about the game seems completely unjustified to me at the moment. There were maybe 4-5 moments across the entire game which I had to reply 7-8 times before I got it right, which seemed appropriate for a game like this. I thought the difficulty curve was one of the best I've experienced in recent memory. I was almost constantly engaged, but never stuck.
And particularly the combat: my god how people went on about it! But once you've mastered disarming the combat isn't tricky at all. I don't understand what people were having problems with.
As far as everything else goes, my impressions are pretty much the same as last time. Beautiful art direction, but a forgettable story (the ending seemed particularly rushed). And some of the most memorable game play I've had in the last couple of years.
inselaffe on 13/3/2010 at 13:24
Surely the ambiguity between a lack of a health bar and not knowing precisely how close you are to death is the whole point? In real life you don't know how many shots or blows to the head it will take to kill you - it all depends how they occur. In games this is usually very simply modelled, (even with location specific damage), just decrementing a health value and therefore wholly unrealistic. What the ambiguity does is hides the simplicity and internals of the system so that the player can possibly start to believe that it's more natural and realistic than it actually is, helping the immersion.
Also, dethtoll your über alles approach to everyone really doesn't come off well when you start throwing penny arcade around.
Thirith on 13/3/2010 at 13:34
Quote Posted by Chade
And particularly the combat: my
god how people went on about it! But once you've mastered disarming the combat isn't tricky at all. I don't understand what people were having problems with.
It's not that it's tricky - it's that it breaks the flow, which is what many people enjoyed most about the game.
Aja on 14/3/2010 at 00:37
And that's the complaint I never really understood. If the game was nothing but constant smooth running, you'd finish it in twenty minutes and feel like you accomplished nothing. You can "flow" through the combat, once you learn where it is and how to deal with it (or avoid it). Super Mario would flow pretty easily with no enemies, either, but it wouldn't be as fun.
Scots Taffer on 14/3/2010 at 02:04
Yeah, connecting the combat with the freerunning fluidly was one of the great "achievement" factors of the game.
Muzman on 14/3/2010 at 06:47
I don't think I ever disarmed anyone I didn't have to. It was too tricky to even bother with compared to just punching christ out of them most of the time.
That's not really the thing though. It's weird, whenever it comes along I always feel like "Oh just piss off! Out. Of. My. Way." even when it's not multiple enemies and quite difficult. I think if it had some more momentum based attacks like Zeno Clash I'd have liked it better. As it is you're stuck with the slide kick and not much else. Momentum is the thing you spend most of your time concentrating on in this game, or I did anyway. Just a running elbow would have been nicer in a lot of situations.
The game is at its best, in the exciting sections at least, when you manage to barely avoid getting shot and make some narrow escape through very fast judgement and observation on the fly. It's funny for me of all people to be making flow theory-esque difficulty arguments, but the combat just didn't click for some reason. Still feels like a chore when you have no alternative but to use it and if you don't know the route in advance that trial and error-y aspect gets annoying. There's a marriage of level design and combat that seems to be missing a lot of the time for me (I spent so long trying to find a cool way down that staircase at the end of Convoy. But none of them really work once you get to the bottom. You really want to shoot the heavy gunners and you might as well progressively take out everyone on the way down if you're going to do that. I wanted an option to do Gambit esque derring do).
There's an element of playing the game you think you've got rather than the one in front of you in all this and I know I'm describing something of a holy grail of level design where everything clicks that really well worn gameplay genres can rarely achieve, never mind something as novel as this. But that's life I guess. I've kind of warmed to the puzzling/trick bits even though I thought they were irritating to start with. They could even spread out the action more next time and have more large adventuring sections, figuring out how to get from A to B (ie more of how most of the level groups start). The combat stuff; eh not sure what I'd tell them that's not totally subjective, but gimmee a shoulder/elbow bump or flying knee. Let me shove enemies into one another to put them off. I'm pretty sure I'd at least have a lot more fun with it that way.
Eldron on 14/3/2010 at 08:20
Quote Posted by Muzman
I don't think I ever disarmed anyone I didn't have to. It was too tricky to even bother with compared to just punching christ out of them most of the time.
That's not really the thing though. It's weird, whenever it comes along I always feel like "Oh just piss off! Out. Of. My. Way." even when it's not multiple enemies and quite difficult. I think if it had some more momentum based attacks like Zeno Clash I'd have liked it better. As it is you're stuck with the slide kick and not much else. Momentum is the thing you spend most of your time concentrating on in this game, or I did anyway. Just a running elbow would have been nicer in a lot of situations.
The game is at its best, in the exciting sections at least, when you manage to barely avoid getting shot and make some narrow escape through very fast judgement and observation on the fly. It's funny for me of all people to be making flow theory-esque difficulty arguments, but the combat just didn't click for some reason. Still feels like a chore when you have no alternative but to use it and if you don't know the route in advance that trial and error-y aspect gets annoying. There's a marriage of level design and combat that seems to be missing a lot of the time for me (I spent so long trying to find a cool way down that staircase at the end of Convoy. But none of them really work once you get to the bottom. You really want to shoot the heavy gunners and you might as well progressively take out everyone on the way down if you're going to do that. I wanted an option to do Gambit esque derring do).
There's an element of playing the game you think you've got rather than the one in front of you in all this and I know I'm describing something of a holy grail of level design where everything clicks that really well worn gameplay genres can rarely achieve, never mind something as novel as this. But that's life I guess. I've kind of warmed to the puzzling/trick bits even though I thought they were irritating to start with. They could even spread out the action more next time and have more large adventuring sections, figuring out how to get from A to B (ie more of how most of the level groups start). The combat stuff; eh not sure what I'd tell them that's not totally subjective, but gimmee a shoulder/elbow bump or flying knee. Let me shove enemies into one another to put them off. I'm pretty sure I'd at least have a lot more fun with it that way.
I'm pretty sure there were some extra moves in there, I managed to drop down from above on some enemy and knock him out that way, all with a custom animation and all, and there's some impossible to create move where you grab one enemy and kick some other.
for me it was all in the disarms though.
gunplay felt very attached on though, like it wasn't part of the game at first.
june gloom on 14/3/2010 at 09:03
You know, almost 2 years later, can Fragony finally fix the goddamn title? Especially since the article he linked in the original post has the proper naming, so it's not like he can blame it on a journalist getting it wrong? It's been driving me nuts for ages.
