it is time to play Mirror's Edge again

I spent 45 minutes mucking with settings and weird driver nonsense but it appears PhysX support is irreparably broken in 2018

RIP kicking this specific dude through this specific tarp
;__;7

best tarp in the history of the medium

I love this fully modeled and animated and voice acted dude who shows up for four seconds to say one line and is never seen or referenced ever again

there's so much weird jank in this game where it's jarringly obvious that whatever the devs *intended* to make got massively cut down or overhauled on the way to release

I love it so much

like I'm pretty sure at one point they were intending to have regular AAA-style mocapped cutscenes and then just... either didn't or couldn't?

Instead it's got these honestly p cheap-looking flash animations BUT ALSO realistic 3D models for every character

like the police commissioner dude features heavily in the animated cutscenes but he's ALSO present as a legit 3D NPC who's visible for literally several *seconds*

I can't imagine they would have bothered modeling him if they hadn't originally planned for 3D cutscenes

Also great: The horrific shadow acne on Faith's hands. In a game where they ripped out basically the entire lighting system to create a completely timeless aesthetic, the one piece of default UE3 rendering tech just absolutely *screams* HEY LOOK GUYS IT'S UE3

best maintenance hallways in the business

been in love with this corner since 2009

white walls/floor, in shadow; whole area's lit up gold from sunlight bouncing off the neon orange building across the street

Something cool ME does that I rarely see discussed:
You spend a lot of the game running away from cops/helicopters, and the level designers controlled sightlines such that the most visually interesting thing is always in the direction you're supposed to run

Your eye is naturally drawn to detail and color, and the levels are laid out such that if you follow your eye you'll always end up subconsciously going in the right direction

Check out these two views from the same position at 180 angles:

Or a more dramatic example:

You can do this pretty much anywhere

They don't stop there though. The game is split into two basic objectives: either running away from stuff outdoors over rooftops, or navigating spatial puzzles indoors (bc this game is literally DICE making a 3D platformer)

So the outdoor areas have this super carefully-controlled distribution of color to guide you through them. The indoor areas though? Color and shapes and light just absolutely blasted EVERYWHERE

When the challenge is about nailing platforming under pressure they use color to guide you, and when the challenge is navigation and traversal they completely overwhelm you with color, resulting in a completely different way of reading the space

The game is seriously a masterpiece of level design

it's very important that you complete this section without dying so the music doesn't stop

Combat nuance: You can take about 8-ish bullet wounds but if a guy holding a gun smacks you with it twice you die

All-time Top 10 Videogame Room tbh

if you're putting a crawling-through-ducts level in your game in 2018 and it doesn't look at least this good you should probably stop

Anyway I finished it so thread's over

Best game about dickpunching a cop so hard he clears an entire flight of stairs ever made