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[dragnar]

I can bet someone out there can spin 'totally absurd ideas' so that it would entertain enough to forgive short-comings.

Katamari Damacy.

Games have never really gotten worse, as several have said there were just as many terrible games in the past... but it does seem that the industry goes in phases. The NES was the age of the platformer, the SNES was the age of the RPG, the PS1 was the age of the action game with some RPG crossover. I'm not sure what to call the PS2 and Xbox... FPS maybe? Now... Now we seem to be in the age of gimmiky motion controls and catering to non-gamers.

[Soulwynd]

Katamari Damacy is the greatest ps2 game ever.

[madk]

I put Mirror's Edge and Shadow of the Colossus in the same category. Great concepts that relied way too heavily on a single gameplay theme and their visuals, leaving you a real absence of game. I know people disagree with me there, but eh. I beat SoC, grudgingly. I couldn't make myself play more than 4 missions of Mirror's Edge before I was like "Yeah, there's no way I'm doing this shit for another 20 hours."

To me, ME was like Assassin's Creed 1 or 2, if the only thing they let you do was run across roof tops.

Bah, if you'd stuck in for a bit longer you'd find out the the very open and nonstressful roof-running was like a preparation for the later much more intense and varied (varied to a point, the graphics and most of the scenery remain pretty monotone) environments were very capturing. I was getting pretty tired of the repetition, too, about the time when you're in the office. (That was mission 3, I think.) But shortly afterward the mission settings begin to change very drastically. You're even in a sewer area at one point and trying to infiltrate a naval yard in another, and one that I found particularly interesting involved spanning rooftops and crashing through the windows and navigating through some hallways out back on the rooftops of particularly tall buildings in one mission. Obviously not everyone is going to share my point of view, but I loved every bit of ME.

[nenjin]

So I guess these "gimmick games" SHOULD be short. Like Portal. A bunch of tutorial levels to explain the one gameplay mechanic used, a bunch of "actual" levels where you tightly pack every single set piece you can think using your gimmick, climax, credits. Sure, people might complain that it's too short, but that's far better than people complaining that the game is too long. "Too short" implies that they, on the whole, ENJOYED the experience and would have liked for it to continue longer and will buy a sequel if you make one.

This, more or less. In the case of Mirror's Edge, I'm a little biased because I didn't stick in for the whole ride, and the parts I hated most were apparently at the beginning (eye searing blue skies and reflections, platform puzzle solving, looking for jumps and dying dozens of times before you realize that's not the way you're supposed to go.)

But yes. Single concept games either need to be short, or they need to support that single concept with something. Take Limbo for example. It's pretty single concept. But it's short, priced as such and you sort of give license to a game like that to be short, and punchy.

Mirror's Edge, at that price, with that tech, could have been a lot more and it wasn't. There were some small touches (like with SoC) that would have sold me more on the game. But the repetition and, admittedly, dying a whole bunch just to get the timing right really didn't make for a game.

So what would ME have to have been like for me to like it? If you could have kitted yourself out before missions. If there was more to each level than just where you NEEDED to go. More variety earlier on, in both visuals and game play. (I was annoyed that I had to wait so long for anything combat related...and other than some of the moves, the whole shooting thing felt rather tacked on by that point.)

If I'm going to get frustrated dying doing platforming puzzles, there really should be something in there for me to make it worth my time other than "Finally, I got the timing right." Maybe that just makes me not a fan of platformers...but I've enjoyed plenty, as long as they're backed up by something.

[Grakelin]

My problem with Mirror's Edge is that it wasn't long enough. And it needed a level editor or something.

[Soulwynd]

My problem with Mirror's Edge is that it wasn't long enough. And it needed a level editor or something.

QFT