Valve might prefer to be extra super special secret quiet about it, but they do, in fact, still make games. And games, well, they tend to be more enjoyable when they’re easy on the eyes. Now that I have cracked the eons-old mystery of Why Games Have Graphics, let’s get down to business: Valve has scooped up Mirror’s Edge and Dear Esther gorgeous vista warlock Robert Briscoe. Good for Valve, because Briscoe is astoundingly talented. But wait, wasn’t he in the process of moving Dear Esther’s painterly world into Unity’s less-costly frame? What’s going on there?

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Hover: Revolt of Gamer is still pretty obviously early, but goodness do I like where it’s headed. The goal? To marry Mirror’s Edge‘s madly precarious first-person parkour to Jet Set Radio Future‘s groovy techno-tronic cityscapes. Oh, and developer Fusty Games is throwing in an open world for good measure. Also rail-grinding, because who didn’t love the ’90s? The trailer below doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it already looks like it’s on the right track.

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This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.>

Robert Briscoe is obviously not the only great environment artist in games, and it’s a bit weird to say he has a singular portfolio after working on just two titles. What makes it a lot easier is if you think in terms of levels: The Shard, Jacknife, Reflex, Velocity (from Mirrors Edge and its DLC); The Lighthouse, The Cave, The Beacon (from Dear Esther). All masterpieces up there with BioShock’s Welcome To Rapture, Half-Life 2′s Point Insertion and – quick, think of something slightly less distinguished to prove worldliness – that level in Robocod made out of Penguin bars. (more…)

This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.>

Games move pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. The pretties this week come courtesy not of a particular game, nor indeed me, but of the Dead End Thrills Flickr group, a caravan of some 500+ ‘players’ who spend more time stopping games and looking around than they do actually playing. The times we live in.

With some 11,000 images in there, I wasn’t sure how best to approach this. (Drunk, obviously, but how badly?) I’ve gone for the easy option: a round-up of games and/or users that stood out over the last few weeks. What you’ll often find is that wrangling games into ‘screenshot mode’ has knock-on benefits for any PC gamer, so let’s see if that holds true. (more…)

THE WORLD HAS GONE CRAZY. First Activision took some progressive (well, by Activision standards, anyway) steps with Call of Duty, and now EA’s teamed up with Humble Bundle to host a bonkers sale whose proceeds go entirely> to charity. It consists of eight titans of electronic artistry (or whatever EA’s “A” actually represents these days) both past and present, which by the mega-publisher’s count comes out to a $215 value. The bundle is, as ever, pay-what-you-want, but this time around highlights include the likes of Mirror’s Edge, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Battlefield 3, and, er, Medal of Honor. Well, they can’t all be winners. Also, some require Origin. But still: ultra-cheap games for some really great causes! It might be EA, but today I must set aside my torchfork and don my giant rubber applauding hand.

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Mirror’s Edge wasn’t actually that good. Discuss. (more…)

It is one of the more ignoble of ways to be seemingly announced, but the often speculated Mirror’s Edge 2 now has a support page on EA’s site. (Update: since deleted.)

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