tempest in a teacup

A demo for Mirror’s Edge hit PSN today, so I took it out for a spin.

The demo consists of a tutorial level and what I assume is the first level of the game, that takes place on a series of building rooftops. Incidentally, this is the same level that was shown when the game was revealed for the first time.

Amazingly, I must say, the demo lived up to my expectations. Somehow DICE has managed to craft a first-person platformer that feels right. It reminds me of old-school (read: Genesis) Sonic the Hedgehog games a whole lot, as in there are multiple intertwining routes you can use to navigate the level (although the progression is still very much linear) and there’s a heavy focus on maintaining momentum through good timing and using it to pull off platforming stunts in the game world.

Where it differs, of course, is in elements like combat (which, again, focuses on disarming and incapacitating your opponents quickly rather than engaging in shootouts with them). Combat is fairly simple, in that you have a single button for melee attacks and another button for disarming. The trick is to combine your melee attacks, jumps/slides and disarming moves in such a way as to get the opponent out of your way as quickly as possible - in other words, to minimise their impact to your momentum.

In addition, there’s a mode called ‘reaction time’ that lets you slow down time briefly, allowing you to execute maneuvres like frontal disarms or precise jumps with more leeway. This ties neatly back into the core platforming since the ability to use reaction time is granted when you successfully manage to maintain your momentum for an extended period of time.

If I had to nitpick, there are a couple of things I would mention:

• The game uses Unreal Engine 3, meaning that things like dynamic shadows have aliased/jagged edges, which impairs the look of the game for me somewhat. On top of that, while the NPCs are modeled and animated extremely well, they seem rather crap at emoting, much like Mass Effect and other UE3 games I’ve seen.
• I found it a little tricky to use the right analogue stick to line myself up correctly for precision jumping - this is probably more of a personal preference, though, and I imagine you can tweak the sensitivity settings to get them exactly where you want them.

Overall, though, if the final product manages to maintain the quality of the level design through to the end, this should end up being a pretty damn good game. I imagine time trial nuts (myself included) will have a blast exploring the levels, trying to find that one improvement to their route that knocks precious seconds off their best times.

(Speaking of time trials, the demo also has a time trial mode, but to unlock it you need to have preordered the game on either Xbox 360 or PS3. I’ve already decided to wait the extra two months for the PC version, so I wasn’t able to try it out)

I’ll be heading to Vancouver next week for what will hopefully be a brief trip to get my US work visa stamped. And before you ask, yes, I have to leave the US in order to get my visa stamped. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.

I’ve heard horror stories of people who get stuck for weeks waiting for their passport to be returned to them…I have my fingers crossed that my interview goes smoothly.

This has pretty much been the only thing on my mind for the last month or so.

Otherwise, not much else is going on. Playing TF2 every night with Perfect Stranger and his friends, going to work as usual and otherwise pretending that my continued legal status in this country is not down to the decision of one guy in a building in Vancouver.

So, King of Fighters XII.

A lot has been said about the quality of the graphical makeover - I’ll say that based on the 720p screenshots and videos I’ve seen, I do like it a lot. It leaves just about everything else SNK has ever done in the dust; my only gripe is that Kyo’s flame effects still look pretty bad, particularly the ones for his uppercut and DM. You’d think they’d have noticed that by now.

In any case, while I do like the look of the game so far, I have less confident things to say about how the game seems to play at this point.

The clash/offset system seems to be an attempt at introducing something akin to parries into KOF. You cause a clash by performing an attack just as the opponent’s attack is about to hit you. In the process both sides take some damage and do an automatic backstep (or a backwards jump if one party is in midair). However both characters can also cancel the backstep animation into anything they want - a jump, a run or even another attack.

In its current form there’s clearly some risk involved with clashing - you take some damage in exchange for the chance to mount a counterattack. Unlike parries, however, a clash also resets the opponent to a neutral state, so at best you end up going from a disadvantageous position to a neutral position - high risk for a somewhat nebulous reward. On top of that you can apparently clash with fireballs, and there are already a few videos out there that show people stopping uppercuts by clashing with a jump attack (although given the backhop that results from a successful clash this might actually be a disadvantage for the player in the air). It’s definitely a major change, and I’m kind of nervous that it’ll end up breaking the game in some way.

I’m also concerned that the builds shown so far seem to lack super flashes. Just about all the DMs I’ve seen have ridiculously long startup, making them impossible to combo from anything. Since the game we’ve seen so far is so incomplete as to lack a power meter and a hit counter, and even one of the main subsystems (Critical Counter), my assumption is that DM flashes will be added in later, but given the ‘retro’ tone they’re trying to go for I have my doubts.

Speaking of said tone - I can’t say I’m a fan of it. Regressing in terms of looks is one thing, but some characters seem to have regressed in terms of movesets as well, which is…troubling. The most affected one seems to be Kyo, who’s basically gone back to his KOF’95 version. There are some glowing exceptions - Ralf and Iori seem to have gotten complete movelist makeovers, but characters like Terry apparently only have one DM, and Shen Woo seems to have lost some moves as well.  On top of that characters like Andy seem to channel their original Fatal Fury 2 incarnations rather than any recent KOF version. And needless to say, I’m still puzzled at their decision to drop the successful system they had developed for KOF XI to start from a blank slate.

I think we’ll only start to get a real sense for where KOF XII will be in terms of mechanical soundness when the game is complete and ready for beta testing. The game is slated for an April 2009 release in arcades, so that should be pretty soon.

Not much else I can say, really, other than to thank StyLe for the stuff he got me, and to thank my colleague Corey for the delicious cake she brought to work yesterday.

I’ve kind of fallen out of the habit of celebrating my birthday, because it always came around when I had midterms during college. In particular remember that I spent my 22nd birthday cramming for a Microsoft interview and an Econometrics exam at the same time.

(Yes, I know this post has nothing to do with KOFXII, but I’ll get to it next time)

Someone really needs to tell me what the fuss over LittleBigPlanet is about, because I don’t see it. It’s a level design toolbox for a fairly average platformer, and it looks like you can’t modify the basic mechanics in any way, so…what’s the big deal?

The only thing I can think of at this point that might get me to buy the game is the fact that Stephen Fry does the tutorial voiceovers.

(Next post will be about King of Fighters XII, now that I’ve had some time to sit and think about the ramifications of the new system)

I mentioned in my review of Sonic Chronicles last week that the music was rather terrible. Well, the folks over at Sonic Stadium have managed to get their hands on a complete rip of the game’s soundtrack. I’ve taken a listen to the tracks I didn’t get a chance to listen to (since I didn’t get that far in the game) and all they do is reinforce my opinion.

You can download the tracks here.

More disturbing, however, is the fact that the music appears to have indeed been composed by Richard Jacques. If this is true, then how did he go from composing the cheesy-yet-awesome Sonic R soundtrack and the awesome Euro remixes for the console/PC versions of Outrun 2 to making terrible synthesizer beeps and bloops? I mean, some of the tracks are remixes of tracks that he originally composed for games like the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast, and even those are terrible.

Some samples for those not willing to do the legwork:

Original (Sonic 3D Blast Genesis version, Diamond Dust Act 1, composed by Jun Senoue)
Remix (Sonic Chronicles, Central City)

Original (Sonic 3D Blast Saturn version, Diamond Dust Act 1, composed by Richard Jacques)
Remix (Sonic Chronicles, Blue Ridge Zone)

Original (Sonic CD JP version, Collision Chaos Bad Future)
Remix (Sonic Chronicles, Angel Island)

Original (Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Final Boss) - yes I know Doomsday Zone is technically the final boss but whatever
Remix (Sonic Chronicles, Nocturne)

Why did they phone it in so badly? God knows.

There may be legitimate reasons to buy this game (depending on your perspective), but the music is most certainly not one of them.

I really want to know how Sarah Palin thinks John McCain is going to improve government regulation of Wall Street while simultaneously reducing taxes and the size of the federal government.

Then again I suppose self-contradiction is nothing new for the Republicans…

As some of you may know, Bioware has been developing a DS RPG set in the Sonic universe for Sega. The game, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was much anticipated by the fanbase, seeing how it was developed by a studio known for its expertise in developing RPGs on PCs. Well, the game is out in North America as of yesterday, so how is it?

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Or so Nintendo would like to remind us. They just announced a new DS model: click here for more details

In a nutshell, this is what has changed:

• No more GBA slot
• The unit is thinner, and the screens are slightly bigger
• 3-megapixel camera
• MP3 player
• In-built web browser
• SD card slot for storing photos and MP3s
• Onboard storage…and this will apparently be used to download games from a DS game store, much in the vein of the Wii Virtual Console or WiiWare.

The price has also gone up, to about USD180, and the new version will be launched on November 1st. To be honest, this new version will only be a must-buy for me if they managed to work WPA encryption support into the device…I really don’t want to run WEP on my router. Other than the addition of internal storage and the online store, I’m not sure the other additions are really worth the asking price.

At the same event, they revealed that the Wii will allow you to download games to SD cards starting next year. It’s not as good as a hard drive, but given the unit’s limited capabilities it will have to do. The Wii can only read non-SDHC cards, so the maximum storage capacity will be 2.5GB - not great, but better than nothing.