Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Beyond Unreal have picked up on the Mirror’s Edge community discovering something interesting. More details in the link, but basically involves copying the wxRC and wxRes folders from UT3\Binaries to Mirror’s Edge\Binaries and then running the Mirror’s Edge executable with an editor modification thingy to the file’s properties. Here’s a custom map the community have magicked up. You may have to be quick, however. Chatting to our industry contacts, you apparently have to pay an additional fee to ship a game with UnrealEd, making them suspect it’ll be patched out sooner or later. Which is a shame: if any game could do with some user-generated maps, it’s shining-in-speed-trial-mode Mirror’s Edge.

Alec pinpoints Mirror’s Edge’s failures and successes like a laser-guided missile of critical accuracy in last week’s Wot I Think. When playing it recently, I was extremely surprised to find the game making mistakes that were ironed out of the Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia games years ago, as I haplessly tried to guide the suicidal Faith away from her determined attempts to plunge off every rooftop. I couldn’t help but feel this pro-active Samaritans simulator might be interesting to play in the third-person, so I could at least see what ledge she would be aiming to plummet from next. My wish has been granted.

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Here comes an awkward metaphor: Mirror’s Edge (the delayed PC version of which was finally released last week) is hiding in the closet. Unsurprisingly, this only makes life difficult for it. For every moment it pretends to be an FPS, it feels wrong, and to any onlooker it’s visibly uncomfortable in this assumed role. If only it would cast off this sham and reveal its true colours – well, then we’d have a game proud of itself. Mirror’s Edge is a racing game, but it doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Be proud, ME. Tell the world what you are, cry it from those rooftops you spend so much time gallivanting across: “I AM A RACING GAME!”
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I found myself chatting to Rhianna Pratchett yesterday about her just released comics spin-off of Mirror’s Edge. Well – the first part of six anyway (First pages here). It’s been interesting for her. As she tells to CBR, it’s her first work in the medium, and she had to do some serious thinking about its strengths and limitations before doing so. Which got me casually thinking a little more on the topic, but from the other way around – as in, what’s the specific strengths and weaknesses of bringing a game to a comic. And while there’s been a deluge of games-to-comics work in the last few years, what games would I pursue were I a comics editor interested in putting out entertaining comics. Which is, of course, a different thing from a comic that does the business.
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More Mirror’s Edge exposition has turned up in the form of another animated trailer. Quite stylish once again, but discussing something that we kind of understood already about the game world: that the point of Faith’s job is not to get caught.
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I loves me some Mirror’s Edge trailers, even if every time I post one I later find it’s over 3000 years old, recently dug from an archaeological dig. Anyway, look, if it turns out there was some special meeting to which everyone was invited but me, where they showed these trailers to you and you all had an excellent time, and there was probably cake, and free balloons, and I imagine everyone got to do kissing, then you know what? Screw you. Screw you and your stupid private Mirror’s Edge trailer screening parties. I’ve got other, better, more imaginary friends. Trailers below.

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Sorry to get into this again, but as much as I want to ignore it, this one’s significant. Ubisoft have stated that they’re artificially delaying the launch of EndWar on PC because of, you guessed it, piracy.

Talking to VideoGaming247, Ubisoft Shanghai director and former Total War “Evangelist”, Michael de Plater said,

“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.”

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Super-sexy new Mirror’s Edge trailer, showing off the time-trial gaming, down below. It really is looking rather tremendous. Curse the PC delay. CURSE THE SKIES!

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Overkill, perhaps, but it’s a fairly intense piece of in game footage. Watching this one kind of suggests that you’re immune from bullets as long as you keep moving. I wonder how that will stand up to prolonged play, and whether the sense of flow/danger will be sustained. I hope so!

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EA have released another snippet of animated backstory for highly-anticipated urban gymnastics simulator Mirror’s Edge. It illustrates a little more about the dystopian utopia, the surveillance society, and the attractive protagonist’s personal battle against the regime. It’s brief, but it bodes well.
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