pubs
That tutorial in Mirror’s Edge… good grief. After a month with the game, I figured out something that is absolutely basic, yet I never clicked on before.
It’s the leg-tuck maneuver, which I knew was there, but I was led to think its use was limited to getting over really close call leaps, for instance if you’re jumping over barbed wire. It turns out it’s useful for everything. It lets you jump onto platforms more easily: lift up your legs to get more clearance. Places where I kept getting randomly snagged when clamboring around, now I can get past without slowing down.
The tutorial, again, made no effort to explain why this move is important or how it works. It just went, PRESS THIS NOW. NO! DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) NO, DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) It was like playing Call of Duty 4.
Ideally you’d be following that girl without any real break in the flow, and you’d have Valve-like “Press LT to tuck your legs” prompts passively pop up in the corner. Then you’d get subtly graded. If you did it wrong, it would say “You’re doing it wrong,” and the girl would explain the theory. “Lift your legs, girl! You gonna get tripped up!” Then she’d keep going. If you felt you needed more practice, you could just replay the tutorial. They could give the option at the end.
If you executed it very well, you’d get some kind of affirmation. Maybe just a “hell yeah!” from the girl. If you did all right, it would be something less exuberent. Or just nothing.
And heck, maybe they could string safety nets between the buildings, for the tutorial? Again, just to keep the flow?
Yes, I thought that tutorial was rather unsophisticated, too
You were correct!
They could leave the crampily-mapped, redundant, and fidgety controls if the game just took the time to explain them. After a month with the game, I can play it pretty well — yet I feel like, had I a proper introduction, I might have reached this proficiency within my first couple of hours with the game.
After playing the tutorial, David Hellman still had no idea how to play the game. After I took a moment to explain the reasoning behind the controls, he almost immediately figured out the timing and application for each of the moves.
Yeah, there are too many buttons, which is amazing when you consider how consciously streamlined everything is! You still have to hand it to them, though- it’s a very bold effort.
This is a four-button game, yet somehow they barfed out eight separate buttons, mapped them in a lopsided way that’s both hard to get used to and wearing on the left hand, and didn’t allow them to be remapped in any meaningful way.
You’ve got an Up button, a Down button, a Reverse button, and a Lash Out button. Yet somehow they’ve also added an Action button (used exclusively for pressing elevator buttons and turning valves), a Grab button (used exclusively for disarming attackers if you hit it at precisely the right moment), a Bullet Time button (which… is both useless and pointless), and a “Where the Hell am I Going?” button, which you’d think the runner vision would take care of if the level design didn’t get there first. (Yet the moments when you actually need the button, indoors, are the moments when it flakes out completely.)
Just. What? Take a hint from Resident Evil 4, guys. Lump the pick-up and use functions onto the punch button. To disarm, just hit the punch button at the right time instead of fumbling for another button that you’ve never pressed before. To punch the elevator button… well. You punch the elevator button. The game is smart enough to find a new contextual animation.
Get rid of the stupid bullet time; it’s got nothing to do with anything. And Jesus, just talk to Valve about how to design a level so you can get rid of the “Wha?” button. Might as well leave the runner vision because it’s pretty and integrated rather well.
I thought this also
And yet none of that is the problem as much as the game’s failure to explain the reasoning behind simple moves. It wasn’t until the last level that I realized I had been wall-running the wrong way — which would explain why it seemed so difficult. Yet I had been repeating exactly what I learned in the tutorial.
I remember playing a show-floor PS3 build earlier this year and being impressed with the controls. On the other hand, I don’t think I even noticed the extra four buttons. And I’m led to believe that the mapping has changed since then: as I remember, Up, Down, Quick Turn and Attack were set to L2, R2, L1 and R1 respectively, which felt nicely balanced.
You can still attack to open doors, right?
That’s still how they open, right. Which is both nice and vibrant in itself and weird because you’ve got that “use” function sitting there.
That mapping is better, yes. Lumping all the major controls onto one hand is just awkward. The only thing you do most of the time with your right hand is look around.
Though frankly I want to map the Up and Down functions to the A and B buttons. Or if not them, then attack and turn. This is maybe not as elite a mapping, as you’d have to swap between the face buttons and the right stick. Yet it’s cozier to spread the mapping out a bit. When things are all bunched together, it takes more concentration to hit the right button.