Muzman on 18/3/2010 at 10:59

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Well yes, but who hasn't wanted a slo-mo option when dealing with rugburn?

(you know I even thought that one through a few times first "What was that guy's name? The wrestler guy. Rugburn? Er no, that can't be it. Don't put that whatever you do")

Tomi on 18/9/2011 at 22:39

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Now, should I do some serious thread necromancy here or post in the new "What are you playing?" thread instead? *ponders*

Alright, thanks to Sulphur, I bought Mirror's Edge for €2,50 (!) on Steam yesterday, and I've now been playing it a bit. I had some serious technical issues with the game at first - I experienced some terrible lag whenever the SWAT guys started shooting at me and the game kept constantly crashing. I found out that disabling PhysX in the graphics settings fixed that problem... I wonder why it was enabled in the first place.

I've only played the first three missions (plus the training mission) so far, but my first impressions are quite positive. The game looks pretty damn nice to me, I really like the simple but gorgeous visual style in it. The controls feel good and quite intuitive (I'm playing with mouse+keyboard), although I still get a bit confused with them at times - I suppose it just takes a while to get used to them. The action scenes seem really intense, it's awesome to run away from the enemies while dodging bullets and trying to find out the best possible escape route. So far the escape routes have seemed rather linear (or maybe I just haven't figured out the alternative routes) but I hope that there'll be more options available later on in the game.

The only thing that has disappointed me slightly is that progressing in the game seems to require quite a lot of trial and error... but maybe that won't be such a big problem once I get better (ie. stop dying all the time). But sometimes I just can't figure out where to go, and I keep dying over and over again because the "Blues" catch/shoot me, or I try some desperate jump onto another rooftop and end up falling to my death.

Anyway, I've only just started the game, but I think it's already been worth the €2,50 that I paid for it, so I'm quite pleased with my purchase. I'll keep you posted with some more thoughts later... maybe.

(thanks again Sulphur)

Muzman on 19/9/2011 at 04:23

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That's weird. You have a PhysX card I assume? The game is virtually unplayable without it in my experience (on my old machine anyway) Not to mention a hell of a lot prettier with it.

Sulphur on 19/9/2011 at 10:08

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Hey Tomi, you're welcome, man! To clarify a couple of things:-

PhysX acceleration is an nVidia thing that runs on the GPU if you enable it, or if you have a second nVidia GPU, that can take over the PhysX calculations bit and leave your primary GPU to deal with the graphics alone. ME's PhysX enhancements were specifically built for nVidia GPUs with enough horsepower/dual-card configurations: it's a physics engine, so you have tons of particle effects like shattering glass and fog, realistic cloth/plastic effects, etc. It doesn't work on Radeon cards/CPU alone very well, so you're better off turning it off.

ME is definitely meant to be replayed and re-explored; it was pretty much built for 'speedruns' in a very literal sense. There are multiple paths along environments in many missions, but they're not always obvious at the start until you start looking for them. And yup, the controls do initially take some getting used to, but they flow naturally after you get used to it.

ANTSHODAN on 20/9/2011 at 18:05

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I think after several ragequits with this game, it is time for me to add my opinion...

I fuckin hate it.

£3 quid on steam seemed like something that couldnt possibly go wrong, and the opening few levels confirmed that for me. I was loving running over the rooftops, feeling awfully clever as I quickly spotted routes and did my best to keep moving non-stop. Very very satisfying.

However I'm a few hours into it now. And I don't want to play it anymore.

It's the guns, the fighting, the slow collapse to the floor after someone has shot you twice, the save checkpoints that require you to re-climb those pipes or shimmy along that ledge again and again before you get to the part where you inevitably die, all the while hearing the same lines repeated from merc over and over. Its the unintuitive hand-to-hand combat, the trial and error progression, the bloom effect that on occasion means you can't see shit, the slow-mo that just seems to go too damn slow, the impossibility of disarming without it (how the fuck did some guys earlier in the thread master that?!), the unsatisfying weapons, the parts where things slow to a crawl (almost literally) when you're forced to shimmy to move along - staring at a vent edge (because if you want to look behind you to see if you're there yet, you gotta stop!) - so just holding down a direction key and waiting. Its the parts where an object is placed in your way so you can't attempt your jump here, you have to do it there, silly. It's the runner enemies completely stopping your runny jumpy rooftop shennanigans because you missed that one jump and took a little longer to get onto that ledge.

I can't play this game now without the feeling that I'm missing something. That I'm doing it wrong. I initially tried to play without firing any guns since I heard there's an achievement for it on the xbawks - doesn't apply to steam, but I thought, fuck it. The same kind of logic that makes someone want to ghost Thief, or umm, ghost Deus Ex. It wasn't really working, so I thought meh :sweat: I'll do it your way, developers. Then I find moving with a gun is so slow, running from cover to cover, trying to get better firing positions - not viable. Okay so I'll just hide in this corner and wait for them to run through the door. Okay, that works, not very satisfying.

The fight with Cel was infuriating. I'd try to keep my distance but as soon as I stopped or tried to turn around I'd be punched in the back of the head. I'd try to fight back and would get headbutted in control-losing sequence to which no button would counter. I'd flying kick, i'd slide around, crouch punch, regular punch. No chance. In fact the same goes for most of the fighting. Many times, doing an epically timed flying kick to the back of a policeman's head would just make him turn around indifferently, push me over - control taken away from me so escape from his subsequent barrage of bullets was impossible.

I could carry on with specific examples of utterly infuriating parts. It's so rare for a game to frustrate me, but i've had to stop myself punching my monitor too many times. I've only pushed this far through the game with the hopes that there might be some more awesome free running, but it's not looking likely. I guess I should check out the time trial stuff, but I hate leaving unfinished storylines, no matter how contrived and predictable they are.

I just started a mission where Merc tells me that someone has organised a rifle-drop. I groaned...

So, am I doing it wrong?