(There’s not really a blog post here, I’m just musing about my recent enjoyment of games which have been, for the most part, strangely non-violent.)
I’m a little struck about how much fun Portal was. I know everyone on Windows with Steam got very bored with Portal when they completed it in 2007 but it’s new to us Mac-heads and even though I bought it as part of the Orange box 18 months ago, I’d never played it because I was too busy shooting Zombs in Left4Dead).
I’m also, as you may have guessed, a little struck on Mirror’s Edge (on iPad as opposed to other platforms). And I think part of that is that it reminds me of Oni which (despite being a smorgasbord of violent action) was a great TPS/Fighter from, you guessed it, Bungie. Oni sadly was a casualty of the financial problems Bungie had with the Windows install bug in Myth 2.
Mirror’s Edge is little different from Super Mario Bros on the face of it – it’s all about jumping over obstacles, using the environment, discovering the easter eggs, collecting things and either slide-tackling or jumping on enemies (who later recover). The only thing really missing are the pipes – which are ably supplied by Portal.
So I find myself wishing for a game to be developed that doesn’t exist without anyone planning to make it.