Watch Game Maker's Toolkit On Mirror's Edge: Catalyst
Other people make good things
The RPS gang sits around in our secret treehouse every day, chatting about the things we'd like to post more of to the site. One of those things is, "Nice things what we read/watched/heard elsewhere on the internet." Sure, we already have the Sunday Papers, but wouldn't this be a more interesting, enlightening, day-brightening corner of the internet if we occasionally pointed and yelled, "Look over there!"
So here, look at YouTube series Game Maker's Toolkit. Particularly, look at this video of Mark Brown explaining what Mirror's Edge Catalyst should have learned from Burnout Paradise.
I like this video not only because it agrees with me, I swear:
It's also because it agrees with John.
To summarise: Mirror's Edge Catalyst trades the linear levels of the first free-running-'em-up in favour of an open world, but that open world is poorly used. Story missions mostly take place in external locations that can't be reached at any other time; delivery missions are awkwardly communicated via stand-about NPC zombies; collectibles require you to abandon all your momentum; and the open world funnels you down a few corridors again and again, presumably to hide loading times. Burnout Paradise meanwhile was an open world racing game that found ways to introduce collectibles and side missions and story missions all without taking you out of its world or breaking the flow of the fun you were already having.
Mr. Brown does a fine job of articulating and illustrating these differences over the course of the ten minute video above, which is part of his ongoing Game Maker's Toolkit series. In each episode he breaks apart an element of game design in order to explain how and why it works. The videos are consistently good - and you can support them on Patreon, should you wish to see more.
If you miss our own Cogwatch or Fail Forward, these might scratch a similar itch.