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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I preemptively think I’m gonna be sick. Don’t get me wrong: there are few things in this world I want more than Oculus Rift virtual reality for my mad dash through Mirror’s Edge‘s theme park of parkour, but now that it’s probably going to happen, I realize that I should probably bid farewell to any lunches I’ve had in the past couple months. And who will I have to thank for my sudden bouts of violent nausea? Interestingly, it won’t be EA. Instead, a third-party toolset called Vireio Perception is primed to add Rift support to Mirror’s Edge and other older titles.

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As the decidedly not very good Medal Of Honor: WARFACEFIGHTER received its critical pannings, one refrain was repeated again and again: they’re the games EA puts out on the year’s DICE don’t have a new Battlefield ready. That may well be true, but EA are now at pains to point out (not necessarily in reaction, I should say) that DICE are not “a Battlefield factory”. (Imagine a non-gamer reading those words. “Dice are not battlefield factories? And you say FPS games HELP your minds?”) There’s more to the Swedish team, they insist to OXM today. And in response rumours that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in development have once more bubbled to the surface.

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Are you sad? Tired? Angry? Upset because you spilled some milk and, contrary to popular opinion, it was in fact the end of the world> after all? Well, don’t be. Today is a happy day, because criminally underrated first-person runner (with some shooty bits that should’ve leaped off a building and never looked back) Mirror’s Edge is on the comeback trail. For a while, it’s mostly been wishful thinking from folks at DICE, but now the people with the money are talking, and they’re saying wonderful, joyous things.

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I snarked on Twitter a few days back that the people making the new Spider-Man film (a reboot, hilariously) must be more than a little familiar with Mirror’s Edge given the astonishingly familiar first-person-perspective ultra-parkour sequence in its trailer, but this cheeky compar-o-video makes for proof positive. ..
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