It's Friday now I just finished playing Mirrors Edge on my PS3. The game was challenging, difficult, frustrating and fun. Any game that gets you wriggling about on the couch trying to move your character when you're jumping from one roof top to another is a good game in my book. My heart raced with excitement many times during the game. Well done Dice. That said - I assume it'll be episodic? the ending was a classic hollywood "leave a sequel open" ending.

I don't think I'll feel comfortable playing a game again unless I can run, jump, duck and climb like I could in Mirrors Edge.. it's an expectation changer.. why can't my super awesome character know Parkour in every game?

Interestingly enough, while playing Mirrors Edge, I wanted more of Fallout 3 - I wanted to traverse the city by myself, without a story driving me in a specific direction. The Mirrors Edge experience was much like Half-Life 2.. you're in a mad rush to escape the gunfire and you feel like you've made the decision for which way you're going to go by yourself.. exceptional level design if you can pull that off. But at the same time, there was this big beautiful city and I just wanted to -explore-.

Fallout 3 was a fun game too. It had a flaw though - there are lots and lots and LOTS of side quests, but unless you go looking for them, you'll never know. The main plot only takes you to about a 5th of the map. The plot choices you can make become more limited as you progress through the game (Heck, I wanted to join the Enclave! viva la pure humanity!) but no matter what you do, you have only three real outcomes in the game. One applauds you, the other two vilify you. I don't think the game should have done that - instead, it should simply have state what happened and the result of those actions.. it should not have judged you.

The ending for Fallout 3 was a disappointment for me, mostly because the last two acts were unbelievably simple compared to the rest of the game. I was armed to the teeth ready for a huge final showdown. Don't get me wrong - LIberal Prime bellowing "Anchorage will be liberated" and "Democracy is non-negotiable" is just /brilliant/... but still, I felt cheated by the ending and judging.

That said, Fallout 3 had one of the best in-game atmospheres I've experienced to date. All the paraphernalia, posters, dust ball storms, radio stations, .. just everything was put together so well. It sucked you in to a post apocalyptic future and made you live it.. right down to your choice to kill off the slavers or join them. Very fun. If you're currently playing Fallout 3 - make sure you find the Republic of Dave. Hilarious.

One more final thing before I finish this blog post - how is the OpenGL 3.0 branch in Cincom Smalltalk going? Well, here's an example of 500,000 particles with physics running in the GPU. You can find the code for this as Lesson #19 in OpenGL-Lessons in the public store. You'll need a DirectX 9 compatible card to run it.