Mirror's edge, looks promising.

Thirith on 20/9/2011 at 18:48

@Jason Moyer: Apparently that fix doesn't work any more with the latest Nvidia drivers. Haven't tried it myself, mind you.

@ANTSHODAN: Watch some speedruns on YouTube. Get the time trials DLC. The game is flawed, but a lot of it is about playing it the way it wants to be played. I'm not a particularly skilled player, but you can avoid a lot of the fights - and the game is better for it. I only remember one part that is hatefully horrible without guns; other than that, focus on *running away* (as opposed to standing your ground and fighting) and chances are you'll enjoy the game better. If you watch some of the speedruns, you might get a better feel for this.

demagogue on 20/9/2011 at 20:38

Yeah I think it started going better for me when I decided to not even bother with fighting and look for the quickest way to avoid & get around guys... Like the area above the giant "hole", where you get ambushed... It's just not worth trying to kill all 4 or 5 guys, or even a few of them so you can walk around looking for a way out, when you should just focus on getting out of Dodge ASAP. That was a moment where it struck me that I remember.

Jason Moyer on 20/9/2011 at 21:02

Honestly, I'm surprised at how mixed the opinions of ME are here. I like ME for a lot of the same reasons I like Thief or System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, it's a first person game where you spend most of your time not shooting things. I was playing an hour or so the other day just to try the physx fix, and having not played in awhile I don't remember the optimal way through levels anymore. I love the total feeling of actual FEAR in a first person game; I can count the number of games that make me fear being caught by the enemy on one hand (Thief, Deus Ex or System Shock 2 as a non-soldier, Operation Flashpoint).

Anyway, in regards to the "boss" fight, i.e. the only one you actually have to engage in, whenever they're about to hit you all you do is sidestep and then punch back. Eventually their gun will flash red and you hit disarm and it's over. Piece of cake. The very Deus Ex feeling approach to that fight is way harder than the actual combat is once you get to melee range.

ANTSHODAN on 20/9/2011 at 21:12

Thirith, good advice. I watched a speedrun of the level I was on. I think more than anything it showed me that it could be done (absurd as that sounds!). I just finished the game and I'm rather glad to put it behind me. I might give the time trials a go later, but most certainly not the later level time trials - way too frustrating.
I was trying to avoid fighting folks since the start - I actually changed my mind towards the end and started using guns more. It seemed too often that the route out certain locations were actually designed to force you to eliminate all the bad guys. Whether it's climbing a pipe, turning a wheel - even bashing an elevator button often put me on a quick path to de-saturated- screen-slump-to-the-right-fade-to-black. All made worse when I realised I was tilting my head with the 'camera' on every death.:laff:

Some sections worked well where you could just keep moving and you'd be fine like the sniper section towards the end. Others seemed based on a whole lot of luck, the escape sequence after sniping the prison transport truck spring to mind - sometimes I'd be dead after a few metres in the open, sometimes I'd get further. I dunno, I don't mean to be hating on the game. For all its frustrations, the freerunning is incredible and the ending is kinda cool. I'm glad my monitor, mouse and keyboard didn't end up succuming to rage based smashing, and my sanity is just intact enough to recover. Fingers crossed for Mirror's Edge 2 being awesome.

Jason Moyer on 20/9/2011 at 21:20

I think the elevator is the only time in the campaign where you have to come up with a really creative way to avoid the enemies. There I used a chair to launch myself up to the top railing, then launched on top of the guy in front of the elevator (disarming him), hit the button, and kept using the springboards to launch around the level until it opened.

One thing that might make avoidance seem harder than it really is is the runner vision. While it's helpful at giving you a general route through the map, it rarely if ever shows you the fastest way through a level or the way that avoids the guards.

demagogue on 20/9/2011 at 21:24

It's worth mentioning that there are Mirror's Edge (http://on-mirrors-edge.com/forums/viewforum.php?id=24) fan maps, and a greater proportion of them are the pure freerunning courses. So: you should check 'em out, if that's the kind of map you like.

Muzman on 20/9/2011 at 22:24

Have they managed to get the game's spiffy lighting working for fan maps? Everything looks much better with that.
They really should give it mod support of some kind. This is a game whose design I think would be really hard. Getting that balance right between split second decision making, momentum and still having the possibility of failure is clearly quite tough to design. They really need to throw that out into the 'wild'

Quote Posted by ANTSHODAN

I watched a speedrun of the level I was on. I think more than anything it showed me that it could be done (absurd as that sounds!). I just finished the game and I'm rather glad to put it behind me. I might give the time trials a go later, but most certainly not the later level time trials - way too frustrating.

Time trials are just races around the maps with nothing else around. And they are really good for practicing with the mechanics. The narrative levels have a bit of a brick wall learning curve because people don't know what's possible and haven't really got to grips with the controls and so on. It's not as A->B as people might think the first time they try something. If you make that corner slightly quicker, you'll hit that wall slightly faster and you'll get up it slightly higher, time the jump better and you'll clear a bit completely where you were sure the path was obviously different the first time through. Don't play it on Hard the first time whatever you do.
I think they fatally underestimated that when they designed it. There should have been long stretches of just fooling around on the rooftops with the other runners. The scenario is perfect for that too (what the hell do these people do all day?), but I guess they got cold feet or something.

Fafhrd on 21/9/2011 at 06:19

On the subject of Speed Runs and Time Trials: Has anyone been able to get onto EA Online through Mirror's Edge recently?

For some reason my at home retail disc install hasn't been able to connect at all (I don't even get a log-in prompt), but I bought a Steam copy over the weekend to play at work, and it appears to have logged in without any problems. At the very least when I went to Time Trials it gave me the log-in prompt and pulled my stats and ghosts down, which booting the game for the first time ever on Windows 7 failed to do, and the XP install that's been continuous pretty much from Day One hasn't done in months. And I'm damned if I can find anything in the registry or install folders that's caching my log-in data that I can try to wipe (deleting the save game folder didn't do anything).

Jason Moyer on 21/9/2011 at 08:44

Weird. It looks like they took the time trial servers down, so I'm not sure how the Steam version is connecting. I don't even get a login screen on the retail, it just immediately says it can't connect to EA Online.

Thirith on 21/9/2011 at 11:02

Can you still play the time trials, though, or do you need to connect to the EA servers for that?