This week had us gawking at art and photography that transports — to places magical, funny, troubling.
First Person Soccer – super visceral ad by Guy Ritchie (Mr. Madonna, Lock Stock) makes you the soccer star
First Person Parkour – graphically beautiful game puts you in the head (and in control) of a free running master (find out how it works at Edge)
First/Third Splitscreen – Radiohead goes activist with a video that thoughtfully compares a kid’s life in the first and third world. Kudos to MTV Exit
Subway Culture Jam – mystery editing of NYC subway ads results in fall down hilarity
Massive Moving Wall – Beijing’s GreenPix gets in your face with is a huge, gorgeous media wall that has zero carbon footprint
Where the Mekong Die – Suthep Kritsanavarin captures jaw dropping scenery and puts you in the shoes of fishermen along the Mekong in Thailand
Mirror’s Edge looks amazing and promising. It’s the game I’ve always wanted to make. Well, mine would take place in the Integral Trees universe, but still.
Free-running gameplay, interesting plot, novel use of first-person, themes of subversiveness and tension, and very shiny graphics… if Mirror’s Edge ends up sucking despite all its promise, there’s no justice.
It does look stunning, doesn’t it? Bonus for having a female protagonist that actually looks human. And the risks they’ve taken with the palette in a world of games featuring muddy browns and grays is stunning.
The main concern I have is that it’s tough to imagine satisfying control of a character so intimately involved with the environment when you can’t see her limbs. But the developers spend a good amount of time discussing the challenges of doing just that in the Edge article. Here’s hoping they get it right.