The starting date for my school got pushed back a few days so they can have some big staff meetings. Of course, they really should have planned it way in advance instead of making it some last minute decision that they announce less than a week before the original start date. As much as I love the teachers and atmosphere at my school, upper management (whoever they are) seems to have some real problems when it comes to planning ahead. On the bright side, I get a longer vacation (though I'm not sure if I'll be spending those extra days in CO or AZ).

Moving on, I might have mentioned before that, since my parents have a new HD TV, I decided to save some PS3 games to play on it while on break. The first, Mirror's Edge, is an extremely unique take on platforming.
Mirror's Edge is, at heart, a game about running. Main character Faith is a runner, a group that works outside the law, delivering items that residents of the city don't want to pass through the government's strictly regulated channels. The government seems rather like a dictatorship and isn't to happy about anything outside of its control so runners stick to the rooftops, counting on their agility, ingenuity, and fast thinking to keep them safe from the police. It's not an easy job to begin with but, when Faith's sister is accused of murder, things suddenly got a lot more complicated. The plot works, although there's nothing particularly special or gripping about it, And the ending, while not a total cliff hanger, is clearly setting things up for a sequel.
But enough about the plot, it's the gameplay that makes Mirror's Edge stick out. As Faith, you'll vault fences, slide under pipes, run along walls, and perform death defying leaps hundreds of feat above the ground, often with bullets whizzing past...all in first person perspective. While a real world platformer is odd enough, the first person view point really sets it apart. Amazingly enough, it works. The controls are easy to learn and use and the perspective, while it takes some getting used to, significantly enhances the immersion. Add in solid graphics and a fitting (if not particularly memorable) soundtrack, and you have the makings of something incredible.
Unfortunately, Mirror's Edge falls somewhat short of its full potential. Make no mistake, when you're tearing across the rooftops, using Faith's runner vision to find the route on the fly, cheating death with every leap, it's incredible. But things don't always progress that smoothly. Despite runner vision and a button that sometimes points you in the right direction, there are plenty of times when the next part of your route just isn't very obvious and you have to slow down and carefully examine your surroundings until you find a way up to that high ledge or across to the next building. While a few such moments are easily forgivable, they happen a bit too often (the fact that Faith has a tendency to miss an important grab and plummet to her death if you haven't angled her just right doesn't help either). What's worse, is that they usually happen while you're trying to escape from the very trigger happy police force, leading to a long series of repeated deaths are you struggle to find the next part of the route before getting killed. Make no mistake, Faith can fight, and her flashy disarming moves and athletic martial arts combos are fun, but at times they can be rather hard to hit with. She also can't take many hits, so trying to take on more than one enemy at a time is most often suicidal. And, while she can steal enemy guns, Mirror's Edge was never meant to be a shooting game and trying to make it in to one slows Faith down and can easily lead to more deaths. While it's possible to run past most enemies once you figure out the proper route, the times when Faith is forced to slow down and fight through groups in order to survive aren't much fun.
The graphics aren't without flaws either. For one thing, they tend to be pretty repititious. Most rooftops and building interiors simply look the same. Which kinda makes sense, but still gets a bit old. What's strange is that the cutscenes use a completely different graphical style than the main game (stylized cartoon/pop-art vs realistic CG). Both look fine, but they're so different that there's more of a disconnect when switching between them than in most games. Finally, while you don't spend a whole lot of time looking at the city streets, they're very sparsely populated when you do.
While the main game will probably only last 10-15 hours on a first play-through (mostly depending on how much time you spend trying to figure out the less obvious routes and dying due to gun fire and misaligned jumps), it becomes considerably shorter (and more fun) on subsequent play-throughs once you know where you're going and how to get there (letting you run more and stop less). Add in a few hidden items to track down and a large collection of time trial courses and speed-runs (most of which don't involve fighting), and there's no lack of replay value.
In the end, Mirror's Edge is fun and very unique game. Your first playthrough it likely to involve far more death and frustration than it should, but stick with it and you'll find a game that, while not quite the genre defying masterpiece that it could have been, still offers a highly unique and memorable experience. Everyone with a PS3 or 360 should try out the demo at very least, for a tantalizing glimpse into the world of the runners.

Josiah

I was all set to write up my impressions of Mirror's Edge for today but I got caught up working on some stuff for my dad and sprites for my game project. Speaking of which, I may post some screen shots and basic info once the next build or two is finished.

Meanwhile, I can't stop watching School Rumble (it helps that I can watch TV while spriting and doing most of the stuff for my dad). I even went out and used my Best Buy gift card (and them some) to get season two, despite the fact that they broke it into two boxsets and charged full price for each (so season two costs around twice as much as season one, since you're buying two DVD sets instead of one, even though they're both 26 episodes). Funimation seems to have been doing that with a lot of their new boxsets and I really hate it, so I've been waiting for stuff like One Piece season one part two and Ouran season one part one to go on sale. I certainly could have gotten much more bang for my buck by getting something else (and there was some really great stuff at Best Buy) but I've been having so much fun with School Rumble that I just couldn't bring myself to pass up season two, even if it is a bit overpriced.

Well, I can't think of anything else to say at the moment. Or at least nothing that wouldn't take a significant amount of time to write about so it'll have to wait. Later!

Josiah

Happy new year! Gee, now I need to get used to marking all my news posts as 2009... Anyway, you can help get Pebble Version off to a strong start on Top Web Comics this year by using the TWC banner or button to vote and see the new bonus comic.

I've been playing the Nintendo DS port of Chrono Trigger. CT is a classic Square RPG that was originally released on the Super Nintendo, and later rereleased on the Sony Playstation. Anyway, I already have the PS version but I picked it up for the DS since they added some new stuff (most notably, a couple new dungeons and a new ending). Plus, I'm hoping that if it sells well they're finally make a new Chrono game. I like CT a lot and its sequel Chrono Cross is one of my favorite games ever, so I'd really like to see the series continue.
But anyway, I was playing through the first new dungeon (Lost Sanctum). It's actually kind of a collection of a few dungeons which you can explore tied together with a hub, and you can get to it from two different time periods (Chrono Trigger is a game about time travel). There's a village at the beginning of the area and the people there ask you to do things, which all tie together into one large quest. Sounds good? Well, not really... It essentially amounts to a large amount of fetch quests (go to get item A, take it to person B, etc). Those can get kind of annoying in general, but it's much worse when nearly every run involves running back and forth through the same area. A large part of the dungeon is made up of a mountain, and I must have run up and down that thing at least a dozen times already between the two time periods. Around 80% of the whole big dungeon quest literally boils down to talking to someone, running all the way up the mountain (and fighting a few unavoidable monsters on the way), doing something quick on top of the mountain, running all the way back down the mountain (while fighting those same monsters again), then being told that you have to go back to the top of the mountain again to do something else. After a couple of rounds of this it starts to get really annoying. Seriously? What Square designer actually thought players would enjoy running through the same area that many times in a row? Repeating it once or twice, a minor annoyance but ok. Repeating it more than that? Bad idea, especially when you really shouldn't have to go down and come back up to accomplish most of the required tasks. At very least, there should be a shortcut up and/or down the mountain so the player doesn't have to run all the way up and down every single time. Ugh... If I was in charge, I would totally demote that quest designer...
The Lost Sanctum dungeon aside though, Chrono Trigger DS is an excellent game and certainly the best version of CT out there.

And that's all for now. I've still got to run up and down that stupid mountain a few more times... See you Monday!

Josiah