Lee Newton

I’ve had a thing for l’art du déplacement ever since first seeing it demonstrated a number of years ago in obscure youboob vids. It’s become more and more popular between then and now thanks to bumps in popular culture from Jackie Chan, movies like District B13 and most recently as a center piece to the opening chase segment in 007’s Casino Royale. Now the form of alternative physical expression I’ll never be young and fit enough to explore personally has come to my Xbox 360.. Yay!

Enter “The Mirror’s Edge”. EA’s first promising game in recent memory? Certainly for me it is. I can’t remember the last time I was truly excited about an EA product. Too many failed promises and half delivered products. All that aside, I played the demo for Mirror’s Edge last night. I’m certainly glad to see I’m not one of the many suffering some level of nausea from it’s very visceral rendering of the game world.

You’ve got to check the demo for this game, it’s a large download for a very small amount of game time (wtf is up with that trend?), but that small taste is enough to know I want much more! Anyway if you haven’t seen anything regarding the game up till now, check out some in game footage below, then go download the demo and tell me what you think. I’ll let you know if the full product lives up to the demo.

Why the hell did I buy this game? I confess I’m surprised to find myself enjoying it, and if you’re prepared for a bit of a ramble… I’ll explain. I first encountered Bethesda when I played Morrowind, the 3rd release in the Elder Scrolls franchise. I played the game fairly extensively, entranced at the time by the pretty pixel shaded water, but I don’t remember ever ‘finishing’ it. I never did feel the game really resonated with me. I went on to play Oblivion for an even shorter period of time. For whatever reason the two games just failed to really grab and maintain my attention. Too much freedom in a game world not realized sufficiently to merit said freedom? Perhaps that was it… maybe my ability to truly invest myself in an RPG has atrophied over time, replaced by the instant gratification of racing simulators and other pursuits less demanding of my time.

So why am I finding myself drawn to playing Fallout 3?  I was (stupidly) a little surprised to load the game up for the first time and discover it is essentially Oblivion with a fresh coat of paint and some tweaked game systems. Doh! I guess I was expecting a bit more of a ground up development for the resurrection of a beloved franchise. I cringed at this realization yet soldiered on with the creation of my character. A process which has been plucked directly from Bethesda’s previous titles.

While I was creating my character two things dawned on me.

1. I’m horribly jaded.
2. Gamers desperately need a new genre of video game.

I’ll save a discussion regarding the festering rotting state of genres in the game industry for another time and focus on my woeful state as a disallusioned gamer. So yes I’ve played the same RPG game with a different name more times than I care to count. Same goes for FPS, RTS, TBS, etc, etc.

This guaranteed sense of familiarity with any new game I play is a wasting illness I’ve been suffering for too long. It’s never really occurred to me before, but novelty has been such a driving force in my ability to immerse myself in a game. Robbed of any real novelty in game mechanics, I’m forced to rely on the presentation and the story to transport me to immersion land (video game stories don’t wow me very often). Fallout 3 is the first RPG title I’ve come across in a long time that can overcome the “been there, done that” feeling of its engine and interface to immerse me in an environment I find myself wanting to return to again and again. I guess if I want to continue enjoying the genres I used to be so drawn to I’ll have to make some changes. I’ll have to learn to embrace the sameness I’ve almost come to despise and learn to extract more enjoyment from what makes each video game unique, the story it’s trying to tell.

This could be bad, Jeremy (my benevolent overlord at b5media) has recently tempted my partner and I to try out City of Heroes. I’m already hard pressed to keep up with my friends playing World of Warcraft, and with Wrath of the Lich King right around the corner, I’d like to hit L70 before it drops.

We’re on a 14 day trial for CoH, and although it lacks the polish of WoW, and is nagging me every 5 minutes to upgrade to a full account (gotta let your game speak for itself guys)… I can see the appeal. I had a blast creating The Boghdoir (my archery blaster on Guardian server). The graphics are dated and the quests are paper thin, yet there’s a hint of promise in the incentives to group up for big XP bonuses. Classes also compliment each other nicely, promising for some good group combat mechanics.

Didn’t get much of a chance to play last night, but they’re running a double XP weekend at the end of the week. City of Heroes has till then to wow me.

GTA’s latest installment has been out for a few days now, I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ve been a fan of the games for some time now but wasn’t really expecting much more than prettier textures out of this latest installment. Little refinements like cover mechanics are making all the difference in the world. As usual, voice acting is top notch with lots of familiar voices in the mix. The radio’s still as hilarious as ever, but why no Colbert on the TV? Driving physics seem a little altered, with the ever reliable hand brake turn at high speed now completely unusable for all but the most high end of virtual sports cars. This bothered me at first, but I’m getting into it as it seems like one more element in the ethereal recipe dictating a new level of gritty realism this game is serving up.