Sometimes, in the absence of anything better to do, my mum and I sit down with a cup of tea and play Oblivion. (Obviously, that’s a cup of tea each, otherwise things would rapidly become unpleasant.) We alternate who gets the controller. Two pairs of eyes often work better than one, if you can stand the backseat driving – the person who isn’t currently being flayed alive by imps often notices things the other would have missed. Mum is a pretty nifty console hack’n’slash fighter, which I hate, and I have good directional memory, which stops her running around the same room eight times looking for the way out. Plus, wisecracks are always a lot more fun when there’s someone other than your character there to hear them. It’s actually a pretty fun way to play the game.

Thank God, because otherwise I really hate Oblivion.

Honestly, I don’t really know why I don’t like it. It’s a fantasy universe. There’s a linear overall plot supported by optional side quests, a rambling world for you to explore, moral dilemmas and so on. It could justifiably have the label “RPG” applied to it. It is, in essence, identical to most of the games on my top favourites of all time list. For some reason, The Elder Scrolls series and I have just never clicked.

Oblivion – like Fallout, BioShock and dating back to some of the older pseudo-RPG look-alikes on the market – plays like a shooter. Or rather, it plays like a shooter on ketamine. Combat is first person, hack’n’slash or sniping, and consists of a large quantity of strafing, and if you’re me, not being able to turn around fast enough and wondering why the monster is behind you. And whilst I’m not claiming to be the worlds greatest console gamer, I managed Mirror’s Edge and Portal just fine, so I’m forced to conclude it may actually be a clumsy system, not just me. The stealth system is pretty neat, and some of the dungeon design is sheer genius, but bottom line, as a shooter, it’s no Half-Life.

On the flip side, it also seems to want to be an RPG. Your character is an original creation, unlike the games mentioned above, but the creation process is an ordeal. In all honesty, it seems like the personalisation of the character has been taken to ridiculous proportions as a cynical ploy to boost marketing potential – when there are hair-trigger sensitive sliders for the width, depth and length of the character’s nose, chin and eye setting on the character creation screen, things Have Gone Too Far. Hypothetically, you could have your character look however you liked. Practically, the combination of too much control and badly rendered graphics meant it took me a few days to realise my Argonian had no chin.

The other major issue for me on the RPG side is the conversation. The NPCs are wooden puppets. They talk to each other , but it’s a string of pre-generated responses which often makes no actual sense. I’ll give you an example of a conversation which has occurred as I was writing this:

“Ah, it’s you. Hello.”
<pause>
“Please, go on.”
<pause>
“They say that someone somewhere has been attacked by goblins.”
<pause>
“Hmmm. The country has seen so much political unrest since the Emperor died.”
<pause>
“Goodbye.”
<pause>
“Farewell.”

To be honest, I’d have found the world more immersive if they’d just shut up. It’s not as if I make a habit of listening into the conversations of other people as I stroll through life anyway. I was wounded and going to sell loot. I doubt their loud conversation would really have been on my character’s mind. Likewise, the responses in PC/NPC interactions are wooden and repetitive. I’m not averse to dialogue screens which make it possible to go around and repeat what you missed, but the one-word topic prompters given for your character remove the opportunity for them to develop any kind of discernable personality. The persuasion system for making merchants like you plays as a mini game featuring four styles of conversation and four “quantity” segments, where the player has to match up the biggest segment to the conversational styles the NPC likes best. Again, it’s a nice idea but in practical reality it just results in NPCs smiling at coercion and implying any joke your character tells is crude. Goodbye characterisation, hello dumb-but-muscular hero of the realms. Mum gets around this by playing a slightly dim but likeable Argonian named Horace, but then, she spends most of her time picking flowers in the wilderness and murdering goblins, so maybe social interaction just isn’t high up on Horace’s list.

I suppose, at the end of the day, that’s my problem with Oblivion. The world is beautiful, and a lot of thought has gone into the design (the alchemy system, in particular, is excellent). It’s a good game – but that’s it. It’s noticeably a game. The RPG attributes don’t make me care enough or connect enough with the character to feel immersed, and the shooter elements are rarely tense. Monsters walk back and forth along a single line, posing at the end of each wander in order to give you a better shot. The connection just isn’t there. In all honesty, that’s probably why it’s a good one to tag-team. Wisecracks and backseat driving can’t break an immersion which never existed.

I’ve been programming ever since I was 12, when I cracked open a copy of C for Dummies and tried to figure out what all the weird curly braces meant. I loved the style of that book: the first thing it told you to write was a program that spat out “Goodbye, cruel world!” in an attempt to cast off the shackles of convention, and then it told you to ignore half of what you’d written and that it’d explain it later. Perfect for a 12-year old with the attention span of a hyperactive butterfly.

When I tell people this, they always react with derision, shock, snarkiness or, if they’re about to ask me a computer-related question, elation. What they never ask, with a couple of notable exceptions, is “why?” You see, the reason I picked up C programming is because I read, most likely in a copy of PC Gamer, that Quake III Arena was written in C. At the time, I was a huge fan of Quake III (the demo – I didn’t have the patience to save up for the real thing, nor would the wonderful people at Gamestop have looked down at my pre-pubescent features and willingly handed over a copy of the 15-rated Nirvana-inducer), and I wanted to know how to make games just like it.

What’s that? I should get to the point before you finish making up your mind to stab me in my sleep? Fine, here we go. Today, I came across an article from 2005 detailing the square root algorithm used by Quake III, most likely originally coded by the geniuses that worked at 3dfx (and not the fools who ran it). Now, I understand that out of the four of you that read this, three of you will not care how a computer finds the square root of a number, but that’s not really what I want to talk about. Suffice it to say that computers usually have an operation built into the hardware for finding the square root of a number, and that id’s software implementation was faster than the instruction that was built into the chip. Someone out there found that if you were willing to accept a higher margin of error, you could get away with combining very few simple instructions into a passable function which was much faster than the standard way of doing things. This, to me, encompasses what Quake was all about: pushing the boundaries to make a fantastic game. The tools the guys at id were given weren’t good enough, so they made their own, they made them better, and they made damn sure they kicked ass from day one.

That “day one” concept is important. Time and time again, we’re seeing developers release patches in the first few days after release. You often hear people comment on negative reviews with “Don’t worry, I hear the developers are going to patch that soon.” The attitude of “ship first, fix later” is one born largely of laziness and a lack of enthusiasm for the very project the developers are working on. It smacks of an Electronic Arts-like culture, where a game’s release date is based more on public holidays and trade shows than its quality and progress. To make a game great, you don’t just need a solid pitch – everybody working on it has to have the same enthusiasm they had when they first uttered the magic words to the lead designer: “Wow, that sounds awesome!” Have you ever wondered why the indie gaming scene is killing it right now? If you’re an indie developer, you’re the boss. If the enthusiasm stops, you don’t release the game. I have no doubt that the number of indie games out there is far greater than the number of professional games: it’s just that the bad ones, the unfinished ones and the flawed ones don’t often see the light of day. I’m sure I have eight or ten sitting on a hard drive somewhere which I wouldn’t even show my mates.

Of course, there’s a downside to putting your all into a game, and polishing the hell out of it until it’s perfect. It’s the same with any medium, any project, any piece of art. It’s never perfect. There’s always something more to be done. I think this is what happened with Duke Nukem Forever: the team was never truly happy with their project, and management was too sentimental to stop them, so they kept plugging away, completely writing and rewriting everything from the ground up until the whole company ground to a halt. It’s a damn shame, because you never really know when to stop – it’s just an arbitrary line in the sand. “We’re not done yet” plagues some developers more than others – Valve are renowned for it, but I don’t see it being a huge problem in the long term: if your game is exciting enough, journalists will write previews, people will find out about it and they will force you to get it out the damn door. Just please take a lesson from the current innovators of the industry – the indie devs out there – and make sure it’s the game you said you were going to make; the game you’re proud of; the game you want nothing more than to sit down and play.

The second issue of the magazine has only just hit the news stands and there’s already a drastic civil war being waged inside the dungeons of Another Castle. A certain Samir reviewed DICE’s recent first-person platformer for Issue 2 awarding it two stars, essentially pointing out that whilst Mirror’s Edge is a good game, the repetitious sound of breaking bones as you plummet 40-floors to your death and the designers’ decision to make combat mandatory later on in the game made for an experience too frustrating to be worthy of glowing praise.

We’re one big happy family here at AC, and whilst we don’t make it general policy to beat down each other’s opinions (in fact, I’m breaking Infuriating Gamer Habit #2 just by writing this…), our fellow writer’s view has caused a stir. Placards are being constructed as I type. Megaphones have been bought and eggs are being left to rot all in preparation of a protest outside of his house.

Mirror’s Edge has quickly been dubbed a “Marmite” game, and the polarised views in our office are no exception. Since the review copy was submitted, myself and Mike have both slipped into Faith’s camel-toe shoes and been thoroughly captivated. I can only speak for myself obviously, but I have played nothing quite like Mirror’s Edge, ever. It’s fresh, it’s different and it succeeds where others have failed. When Gordon Freeman was forced into platforming across the planes of Xen at the end of the first Half-Life, the anguish of screaming gamers could be heard across the globe. In a peculiar bid to presumably offer light relief from the endless shooting, one of the most revered games ever created managed to fail miserably at implementing platforming.

In general, platforming in first-person shooters has always been regarded as a no-no; it’s like pairing up De Niro and Pacino after Heat – a fucking disaster. FPS games traditionally struggled with platforming because they’re usually designed from the ground-up so that strafing, running and shooting all feel fluid. At most, you’re usually only required to jump over a few crates and then it’s back on with the running and gunning. Estimating distances you can or can’t jump is frustratingly difficult because you’re hampered by your point of view. In a third-person game you can see precisely where you are in space, but you can’t even see most first-person character’s legs or feet. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. One of my favourite games ever, Quake 3 mod: Urban Terror combines platforming elements and frantically fast twitch-shooting to great effect, but it’s limited in its scope. Mainstream games especially though haven’t fared well in bringing the genres together.

Which is where Mirror’s Edge comes in. From the moment you slip into those shoes, it feels natural. You know when you’re going to make a jump, before you’ve actually pressed the jump button. Hallelujah! But how come it works so well? Well, Mirror’s Edge allows for failure, you see. In most first-person shooters, succeeding when jumping means landing feet first on the opposite platform. But in Mirror’s Edge, Faith’s arms aren’t just a cradle to hold a shotgun or some other weapon – they can actually interact with the environment. If your feet fall short of a ledge, Faith has an ability like no other star in a first-person shooter before her: she can actually grab onto things and pull herself up. For me, this is Mirror’s Edge’s biggest success. It’s only a subtle adjustment but one so effortlessly executed it makes you wonder why the two genres haven’t been brought together like this before.

Look deeper, past Mirror’s Edge’s down-with-da-kidz obsession with free-running and minimalist, post-modern aesthetics and you find a very traditional, almost retro game. You have to get to the end of each level without dying. That’s about all you need to do. Sure, you can collect a few briefcases along the way, but the primary objective is: move forwards and jump over things. That’s closer to the original Mario Bros than Super Mario Galaxy. There’s no need to collect stars to unlock new worlds, no need to upgrade your powers and no need to do side missions. Mirror’s Edge is as linear as the best retro platformers and as linear as the oldest and goldest first-person shooters like Doom and Quake. And this makes it all the more refreshing in a world of epic, 40-hour plus blockbusters.

As Samir so succinctly put it: Mirror’s Edge is all about the flow. It’s about feeling the wind whoosh past you as you sprint away from your pursuers. You draw breath with every leap and bound. Turn up the bass on your sound system and you can practically feel the bullets punching holes in the walls inches behind you as you hop from rooftop-to-rooftop. Even on your first run through Mirror’s Edge makes you feel like a pro free-runner. Despite not knowing where to go, you sprint on anyway, taking your chances to go left instead of right, taking the risk to jump gaps confident that you won’t fall to your death – all at breakneck speeds. It makes you feel liberated precisely because it’s so linear. You forget about making sure you see every single pixel the designers’ have lovingly crafted, and you just get on with it. And as a result you’ll most likely polish it off in a few sittings. Both myself and Mike polished it off in three goes – a testament to just how addictive Mirror’s Edge is. Eight hours of gameplay doesn’t make a huge game, but like Portal, when the substance is this delectable you’re going to abuse it.

Frustration was one of Samir’s main criticisms, but somehow it rarely threatened to spoil the experience for me. The times I plummeted to my death, the loading screen was so brief I didn’t care when it took four or five attempts pass the offending obstacle. I even enjoyed the combat in the game despite it being a common criticism levelled at Mirror’s Edge, not just by Samir. I adored the feeling of sliding towards an enemy, kicking him in the gonads before slamming his face into my knee, then stealing his weapon and gunning down his cohorts. Once the bodies hit the floor I’d casually toss my newly acquired machine-gun aside and I was off again, back in full flight, back on auto-pilot. Perhaps because I was playing the game on PC using mouse and keyboard the combat actually became enjoyable, but for the most part the combat sections were a welcome addition to running, running, running.

I concede: Mirror’s Edge is not perfect. On rare occasions the jumping mechanics don’t seem to register. Sometimes, clinging onto a pipe, you turn and press jump and instead of leaping to the nearby ledge Faith limply falls off the pipe into the abyss below. On these occasions Mirror’s Edge irritates because you know what you’re doing is right, instead something under the hood is plainly failing to register. More detrimental for me though is the completely throwaway plot. I haven’t actually described it till now, not because the game’s been out for ages and everyone knows roughly what Mirror’s Edge is about anyway, but because I myself don’t actually know. Even after completing the sodding thing. I think, basically, er… there’s some kind of corruption in some massive corporation and Faith becomes entwined in the whole affair after her sister is implicated. Thus, the plot twists and turns as predictably as most of the summer blockbusters do that Mirror’s Edge aspires to mimic. Thankfully it doesn’t really detract from the experience either, but it’s something DICE needs to build upon when the inevitable sequel eventually rears Faith’s Eurasian face once again.

But these are minor quibbles. Mirror’s Edge is one of the most refreshing games I’ve played in a while, probably since Portal. Like Valve’s sumptuous slice of gaming heaven, Mirror’s Edge gives the player a small set of moves and a simple control scheme and presents him/her with a variety of finely crafted levels each incrementally tweaked so that the challenges never get old. It’s pure, old-fashioned gaming given a post-modern twist and a lick of primary coloured paint. You want to keep going and you constantly lust for just one more go. Mirror’s Edge symbolises EA’s changing perspective on videogames development: it’s brave, it’s risky, it’s innovative, it’s empowering and it most definitely is awesome.

I got back from a Dungeons & Dragons session a few hours ago, and it provided some insight into just how far behind computer-based RPGs are. Let me give you an example: in World of Warcraft, you might cast a dizzying array of pre-prepared spells in a precise order, so as to inflict the most amount of damage on your terrifying foes. But at Nick’s place today, our new fighter suddenly dropped into JRPG mode as he ran circles around what our DM, Jen, portrayed as a terrifying, violent, and most importantly, hungry dungeon-dweller, and what Jon described as “Aaah, fuck.” Trailing his sword along the stone floor, he launched into an aerial spin and whipped his sword round straight into the vile creature.

And promptly missed.

You see, the beauty of role-playing games is the free rein they offer you over your character and his actions. Eve Online, while a sexy beast, will not let me park my ship, wander over to the nearest diner and hit on the pump-adorned waitress. Your cleric (who, in our case, spends more time hitting things with his massive hammer than actually, y’know, helping people) can’t sneak into our party leader’s tent while he sleeps in Warhammer Online and set fire to his hair because he divvied up the gold unfairly. Nowhere else can your resident bard – that’s me – charm an innkeep so well that not only does he obtain all the information you desire, but also three lovely wenches for the night.

Thanks, by the way, Jen.

OK, it’s not all shiny. It’s a little bit of a pain having to roll for everything, and it does make it easy to metagame. It’s tricky, separating your knowledge from your character’s, and takes a while to achieve the balance you need to have fun whilst still maintaining a believable universe. Oh, and levelling up by hand is a bitch. As someone who dislikes computer-based RPGs because it’s too much about the statistics and not enough about going out and bashing in the heads of goblins with my pet mace, Lilah, I’m still not happy that I have to know my character’s exact charisma score every time I want to play my goddamn lute. That said, I love the fact that in this game, though my friends may hate me for it, my career choice of a professional lutist is more fun than being able to juggle any number of broadswords.

This was my second ever session of a tabletop role-playing game, and it’s easy to see why so many still stick with them even when a computer screen offers so much in visual detail, endless content and the ability to connect with people all over the planet. I think it’s the level of freedom a pencil-and-paper game offers over the online equivalent. I may be able to hook up with friends in Guatemala and topple beasties of all shapes and sizes in Age of Conan, but I can’t trip up a friend and push him into a room because I’m afraid I’ll be pelted with more poison-tipped bolts than you can shake a kobold at.