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Free fall freefall

Going by the demo, which may be a dangerous thing to go by, Mirror’s Edge is pretty good. Not perfect; the tutorial segment leads you by the nose, without telling you how to do what it wants you to do, or what you did wrong when you don’t, then screams at you and forces you to start all over. As if the game weren’t hard enough.

Beyond that, I can see the difficulty they had in winnowing down the controls and clarifying what the player is able to do. The business with marking everything important in red is hackneyed, but clever in a desperate sort of way. It is intuitive, especially in how the color mirrors Faith’s gloves, and I suppose that’s all that matters in the short term. You can feel the band aids bulging, though. And it does make it just a touch more gamey. Still, I know how hard it is to illustrate these things, and how late the solutions tend to come.

I’m also impressed how they manage to continue the recent trend of strong woman protagonists without radiating that creepy Josh Lesnick aura or feeling like they’re pandering. Faith is a pretty good, no-nonsense lead, not unlike Alyx in Half-Life 2 or a Chell with a smidge of personality. Actually, now that I’m on the subject — I seem to say this about any comptently-designed Western game, and I’m not sure how I feel about that — it feels pretty Valveish. So does Bad Company, the other DICE game I’ve been playing, so maybe it’s just them. Those Swedes do tend to know what they’re doing.

…

And, yeah. Okay. I’m sold on this. The slight Gibson storyline is okay. Not sure they need the enemies; more videogame nonsense, and I don’t see what they have to do with the game’s themes. I wonder if those were at EA’s suggestion. Combined with the stunts, they give it a bit of a Jet Set Radio vibe. Except with free vertigo.

I had been noticing how, in other first-person games — like Bad Company, for instance — whenever I fall off a high ledge, my stomach quickly rises to my throat, the way it does when you watch a projection of a roller coaster. Except in this case, I feel like I’m legitimately about to die. So… I’ve been having an experience here.

EDIT:

Amandeep: the thing with the enemies in mirror’s edge -
i think up until pretty recently the game wasn’t going to have a gun or anything.
now i think there…is one, right?
and you do have to shoot shit.
i’m pretty much dead convinced that that came as some kind of order from on high at ea.
eric-jon: Yeah, you have to shoot things.
It doesn’t fit at all.
Being able to punch guys and run away from them… okay, that… sort of makes sense, I guess.
Though it’s stll a bit awkward.
I mean, I don’t see the point of enemies. Your enemy (and friend) is the environment.
Amandeep: yeah, as recently as a couple months ago they were saying: no enemies, it’s going to be basically like portal.
eric-jon: But if you’re going to have random bad guys after you, then a passive solution feels most natural.
Yes!
It feels like Portal.
Well. Jet Set Portal.
The Legend of Jet Set Portal.
Amandeep: the red stuff is fairly new too, i think.
before they were going on about how there’d be no hud elements whatsoever except a tiny little reticule pointing up in the center of the screen to keep you from getting dizzy.
eric-jon: Oh. Well.
I guess I’m pretty observant, then.
These are the only things about it that I don’t like.
The red stuff… okay. It feels a bit Ubisoft, you know?
It’s not offensive. It’s just… a bit… duh.

(November 3rd, 2008 @ 9:10am)



5 responses

Common Law

Note to self.

Videogames essentially root their dialog in a system of civil law. To contrast, how would a common law game dialog play out?

Another thought: is some of the disparity in communication based on different assumptions of law, between the game and the player? Without thinking about this too deeply, it seems the natural — if not completely rational — approach is to expect a common law framework. Thus the discomfort so many people have with talking to machines. They would rather the system adapt to the situation rather than to learn to adjust their way of thinking.

Presumably this is what a procedural dialog is meant to simulate — though at least to the extent it’s typically implemented, I’m not sure it’s much more convincing than talking with one of those AI chat bots. In most cases, it’s still fundamentally a rigid causal framework; there’s just a lot of exception or leeway built into the context in which the rules are implemented.

I think what Spore promised was something more akin to a true procedural dialog. That’s ain’t what happened, of course. I’m wondering, though — even if the available rule set were truly reflective of the player’s past decisions, would that really fit the description? Potential would still generally be limited to the broad liberty alloted the player to generate his own rules. There’s no throwing the notebook away or drawing on the back. You still have to keep on the page, somewhere…

I’m thinking motion controls might fit into this somewhere, in terms of the potential to generate original and unplanned action — though I’m not really sure where to go with this.

Is a common law framework even compatible with the premise of a videogame? Isn’t the whole point to propose a new set of laws, and get people thinking within them to their logical conclusion? Am I just railing on the liberty-freedom divide again?

(November 2nd, 2008 @ 10:16am)



7 responses

The Humanism of Verfremdungseffect

Objectively, most Doctor Who is pretty crap. So it seems silly to get particular about what’s more crap than what, when you can just be watching and enjoying it for what it is, and reading in what you want to read in.

It’s the spirit and the ideas behind any given serial that grab me. The execution is never even close to adequate in the best cases, so who cares if it’s a shade shabbier or shinier. You just have to be affectionate. It’s the only sane way to go.

Personally, I find the McCoy era warmer than any era since Troughton and more rich with ideas than just about any period since Hartnell. So it’s a winner in that regard.

Thing is, in the end objectivity is an absurd thing to take into account.

Rarely is Doctor Who directed well. Rarely is it acted particularly well. Rarely are the costumes or sets or effects close to convincing. When they are, the lighting gets in the way or the staging makes a mockery of any sense of verisimilitude. Only occasionally is it written with more than passable skill and the faintest inspiration to color outside the lines. Rarely does any story actually take advantage of the format.

Yet the show has heart, and sometimes it’s got some real ambition. Usually it’s in those moments that the practical elements all conspire to ensure failure. But so what?

You just have to watch the show as if you’re watching your local theater troupe. You know these people. You believe in them. You know the odds they’re up against, in portraying what they want to portray. So what if the lighting was a smidge more professional last week; it’ll never be Kubrick, and you’re only making an ass of yourself by expecting it. What you should be paying attention to is the humanity behind it all. And that’s where this show excels.

That’s also why I tend to find any flaws more hilarious than distracting. I’m not working under the bizarre notion that this show needs to meet any kind of objective standard to be worthwhile. All it has to do is engage my humanity — and there’s nothing more human than failure, or more funny than failure at something as unimportant as showmanship. Hell, Kurt Weill would be thrilled. Not all the praise for B-movies is ironic. See the affection in Burton’s Ed Wood.

The show’s abject failure at convincing showmanship is almost universal. It’s a bit more prominent in the late ’80s, but draw your own silly metaphor about degrees of gray. Again, I also find the same period warmer and more inspired than most. However poorly executed it is, it’s patently obvious that the show is being made with sincerity. And that’s the most important thing ever. That, there, is what life is all about.

(November 2nd, 2008 @ 4:29am)



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