Hang on….

Well sure, Mirror’s Edge basically had no story and yes, that was more down to the quality of the story telling than the quality of the story (even the most ridiculous premise can work if told correctly).

This is the problem in the video game medium – game designers still don’t understand how to integrate narrative in to gaming without destroying things like immersion, gameplay, QA etc. Very few games manage to combine all of the elements to create what, in a few years time when the industry is more mature we should call “interactive entertainment”; the fusion of quality film-making narrative with the interactivity and immersion of gaming.

Some come close of course. Some due to being small paradigm shifts in quality or technique like Half-Life, Deus Ex, the Thief Series, System Shock etc. and others which don’t really advance a genre in any direction that are simply well put together in every aspect; PoP Sands of Time, KoToR, Shadow of the Colossus etc.

For what it’s worth Mirror’s Edge gets a single thumbs up from me because it’s the stagnant, sterile EA trying supporting something a little risky. Perhaps it’s because the stagnant, sterile EA immediately gravitated towards the style of the game… and perhaps that faint praise is more a cry of exasperation at a company that eats all others and churns out sports franchises every 6 months.

I’m sure Mirror’s Edge had enough commercial success to spawn a sequel but the core elements of the game need to be changed. Quite damning since the story was pointless and so poses the question; what do they keep?

- Tighten up the free running mechanic – make it more ubiquitous, easier to perform stunts practically anywhere

- Integrate the combat more into the acrobatics so moves, disarmaments, take downs, multiple attacks and engaging multiple opponents become a factor of player skill and the immediate environment

- Do away with the use of weapons completely

- Have more ‘quiet’ periods. It’s amazing how many devs ignore the concept of ‘calm before the storm’ in building anticipation. Probably because so few believe in the strength of the core mechanic.

- More patient, climbing where the strategy is not evasion but simply planning your route up a building. Elements of this were surprisingly satisfying in PoP:SoT and Assassin’s Creed.

- Engagement on your terms. One of my biggest game design tenants. So few understand the value of preparation for engagement and initiation when YOU decide. I.e. Know that if you do a given action, you will start the chase. Therefore, you take your time scoping out your own escape route first (take 10 minutes if you want), then when you’re confident enough, intiate the engagement in the full knowledge that it will be frantic and non-stop. But it’s on your terms, executing your escape plan, not a blind, trial and error exercise in frustration, the result of a skippable cut scene.

I could go on but DICE and EA don’t read your blog and they don’t listen to me.

You could tell that from all the reviews, the MC score; basically everyone wanted to say “it’s really not very good but we like that you tried something new – please do more of that type of thing even though you failed this time” – and most of those people assume that EA will look at probable disappointing sales, average reviews and can it.

But if you look at it, the only really good thing about the game was the look; bright single-colour theme, bleached whites, sterile shiny over exposure. It’s like what the world would look like if everyone went Mac but it was never really more than moving wall paper – you never really got to explore which is surely the core principle of being a runner? Freedom.

But that’s a DICE game for you; always something good in there but they’ve yet to make a game that isn’t riddled with either design or technical problems.

Best free-running game is still Playman Extreme Running for J2ME.

Here’s an amusing one:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56772

“Doom 4 Story Writer Revealed”

If there is any game developer who in their history have proven time and again their inability to deliver any kind of narrative whatsoever (let alone gameplay) it is ID Software.

Doom was revolutionary for 1993 and no doubt ushered in the advent of the first person perspective.

But look at the games that came after it:

Duke Nukem
Half-Life
Half-Life2
Deus-Ex
The Thief Series
System Shock 2
Halo
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
The Call of Duty series
Alien Versus Predator
Farcry
Counterstrike
Tron 2.0

So there you have it, a list off the top of my head. These are the games that advanced first person perspective gaming landscape, these are the games that are pressed against the idea wall. They are the source of your inspiration, examples of what can be done in the genre.
The subtlety of story telling, the wax and wane of excitement, gamut of gameplay, breadth of emotion conveyed, control schemes, firing mechanics, stealth ability – so much is containted in that list. So much innovation and wonder that so massively extended the original idea that Doom spawned.

And what do ID come up with?

Doom 3.

Then Quake 4.

Resplendant with gameplay that had barely evolved from the early 90s.

ID make great, GREAT engines, just like you say.

They do not however, make games, they make glorious tech demos. They never have and probably never will, understand gameplay.

Quake 1 was a while ago and multiplayer has moved on somewhat.

Deatchmatch, CTF etc. are less about gameplay than they are balancing and map design. The real skill in game making is the marriage of technology, design, narrative and gameplay. From these, ideally emerge immersion, investment and ultimately the lofty ideals of “entertainment” and “art”. Multiplayer (competitive, not coop) only serves two of the fundamentals and mas as much in common with non-specator sports as it does the future of computer gaming.

It didn’t take a genius to come up with a game where you stick 16 humans on a server and let them fight it out.
It didn’t take a genius to take two teams of 8, a couple of flags on a server and let them fight it out.
It took a brainless moron to keep repeating the formula when it had been done countless times already, better.

I’m certainly going to stand by my original statement and add this,

“ID are essentially irrelevant to the progression of gaming as a form of interactive entertainment”

As for you, binding your right mouse button to “forwards”… dear god, man.

I’m very meh about that.

WASD for example, I don’t remember that being the default on Quake. The first time I used it was HL.

Key bindings? If they predominate nowadays it’s because they were always going to do so over time, or of such little consequence that the first choice stuck if it was good enough.

Network optimisation? Again, it was always going to happen and giving ID the Nobel Prize for Network Gaming should be a join award to people dating back to the networked games that predate ID.

Tiny design decision make some impact sure, they are necessary ones and ones that would have been made eventually because they were needed. At best, ID take the small, obvious things and implement them. That still doesn’t add up to game design and certainly doesn’t explain the woefull gameplay of Doom 3 and Quake 4 nor the stagnant – wait, make that “rotting” – multiplayer (i.e. exactly the same as all of their previous efforts ignoring the lessons of countless other, superior efforts).

Whatever they did, it was a while ago and added nothing to the art and very little to the experience of gaming. Enabling others is great but it evokes “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” and ID are at best, teachers.

Doom 3. It’s sole contribution; direct interaction with monitors. I appreciated that, it has been copied and something I had been waiting for in games.

…and how long was Doom 3 in development for? The gameplay sucked mokeyballs. It takes quite a poor game for me not to play it through to the end.

As for RMB. Jesus. Learn WASD, use RMB for meleeing zombies and get your lady to feed you sammiches and cookies while you play. It’s that simple.

That is the very definition of insanity.