Stalking Venus

Mirror’s Edge is a new First Person… er… Jumper, that makes leaping around the tops of tall buildings an integral part of the game play.

If the game is as good as the footage looks, this first person Parkour based game from Electronic Arts is going to be awesome!

The story’s protagonist is a Japanimation-style freerunner chick called Faith (yeah, very subtle). Faith grew up on the streets after her folks were killed during a government protest. She learns the art of running while lurking about with the free-thinking rebellious underworld types that live in the shadows of the surveillance state.

Because of all the Big Brother nastiness in the form of enough surveillance to make Britain look like they’ve never heard the word ‘camera’, sensitive and private has to be delivered by specialized athletic couriers known as runners.

For some reason, the government has abducted Faith’s sister, and the game revolves around Faith using her runner skills to try and rescue her.

The game is being developed by Electronic Arts and DICE, and is set for release in 2008 (although the sketchiness of information currently - and, to be honest, my general skepticism about release dates - means that we may only get to see it in 2009).

One of the selling points of the game is the heavy reliance on physics, and utilizing ideas such as building up momentum while running in order to fling Faith across the rooftops in a series of multiple jumps and runs to create a string of combination moves that will probably be optimized to look graphially spectacular. In the above screen shot, you can see Faith about to slide down a cable. When she does this, she’ll build up enough momentum to allow her to combo jump onto the wall next to the cable end and lever herself off and up to the rooftop, or something along those lines. It’s easier to understand by watching the video below.

Clever use of blurring techniques and subtle changes in movement like the ‘camera wobble’ speeding up and getting smoother as Faith runs faster supposedly make for a much more intuitive play experience. The screen shots have been out for a while, but the spanking new video highlights the physics and graphics.

I can’t say I don’t have my doubts about the playability of the game. I guess it seems weird to me that you can move with such a great degree of freedom, but without being able to see your body. I know that in theory it’s the same as an FPS like Quake or Half-Life, but I guess I think this one’s gonna make me nauseous. I really hope not though, coz it’s a really cool idea, and a great way for me to exercise my Parkour fantasies without breaking any bones!