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Hands-On: 'Mirror's Edge' Time Trials

Since the game was announced more than a year ago, I have been eagerly tracking Mirror's Edge's progress from idea to execution, but last week, I finally got a chance to play it. EA sponsored a contest for the game's time trial mode, an add-on to the main plot where the point is to get from point A to point B as fast as possible through your character's awesome parkour moves.

The game's plotline follows Faith, a "runner" in a dystopian future who goes from delivery person to solver of mysteries after a terrible fate befalls her sister. Along the way, you'll battle gunmen and your fear of heights as you leap from perch to perch to get where you're going.

Time Trial Mode, though, contains no enemies except the merciless clock. You start out at the beginning of a level and try to get to the end as quickly as you can. Seems simple, but unlike, say, a racing game, finding the best "line" is only part of a winning strategy. Faith must use her moves to overcome obstacles in the best way possible. Example: A simple stairway becomes an opportunity to shave a few milliseconds off your time. You could run up it like a normal person would, or grab onto a bar hanging over it and pull yourself up for an even shorter time. Or, if you want to really shave time, jump towards a nearby wall, time your button push just right, and launch off the wall, spin around and land at the top of the stairs. These strategies require split second timing, and, as it was my first time out, I generally splatted into the wall or missed the overhanging bar completely. It's going to take some practice, but it will be the kind of practice you'll love, trust me.

Your "guide" in the time trial mode is a "ghost" of your best time--or someone else's best time; the game supports sharing of ghosts, so you'll not only be able to play against your friends' best times, but also against the best players in the world through leaderboards. Watching other player's ghosts will reveal the secrets of perfect technique, and thus very quick time.

The game plays smoothly, looks great, and the time trial mode is almost criminally addictive--like a salty potato chip, you will not be able to play it just once, or just 20 times. Sadly, the level I played was only around a minute long (or 57 seconds if you were fast), but I seriously could have played the same level all night, working to cut a half second off my time and finally triumph.

When Mirror's Edge comes out on November 11th for the 360 and PS3, it will feature 20 time trial levels, but if you're itching to get your hands on it early, a demo is set to launch by the end of the month. The demo won't include time trials, but if you pre-order the game from Best Buy, it will come with a code to unlock the time trial mode in the demo.

Xbox 360 Zephyr Vs Xbox 360 Falcon!

Benjamin Heckendorn (G4tv) has been at it again. He wanted to see whether the new Falcon-type Xbox 360 still has overheating issues so he tinkered with a brand new Falcon and tested it against a Zephyr Xbox 360.

The Zephyr he used is a 2008 model of the Xbox 360 Elite. It's the model that sports HDMI support and a new heatsink.Elite models shipped using the Zephyr motherboard 90nm CPU. Taking apart the Falcon Pro, he found that, aside from the 65nm CPU, the motherboard also sports a much simpler aluminum heatsink than the Zephyr.

He took out the Falcon's motherboard and played Gears of War on it while taking a temperature scan. The pictures above show the minimum heat levels Heck was able to record with the GPU and CPU, respectively. But as for peak heat levels, he found that the GPU still shoots up to as high as 150 degrees Fahrenheit, while the CPU is cooler, peaking at 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Zephyr's CPU can shoot up to 150 degrees, so the Falcon (shooting up to a maximum of 110) is a significant improvement.

Still, as Ben Heck remarks, "it's a great step forward," and "once the GPU goes 65nm (hopefully this year) the thing will be so cool it will no longer double as a space heater."

Everything you need to know about the Xbox 360 dashboard update

The New Xbox Experience is due any week now - here's what to expect!!

It's a total overhaul for the the Xbox 360 operating system. Like upgrading from Windows XP to Vista, but free, and hopefully less pointless. In Microsoft newspeak, it's 'The New Xbox Experience'; in layman's terms, it's a redesign for the menus you see when you're not in a game. "When people turn on their Xbox 360s this fall, they'll get an entirely new interface and dashboard, an entirely new Xbox through the magic of software," says Microsoft's head of Live services, John Schappert. Magical, magical software.

Why is it happening?

Two reasons. Firstly, the old Dashboard was always something of an eyesore (all that garish red, green and purple doesn't match an HDTV in the land), and hasn't proven entirely suitable to all the new features Microsoft has shoved into Xbox Live. Finding a specific demo or downloadable game add-on has become an increasingly nightmarish journey through endless sub-menus. The system needed rethinking from the ground up to reflect how people actually get to and use the stuff they want.

Secondly, Microsoft is hoping to reinvent the 360 as more of a family console than simply the gamer's choice – a reaction, rumour has it, to flagging system sales. The unexpected success of the Wii has put the willies up 'em, so the new Dashboard features cutsey 'Avatars' based transparently on Nintendo's Miis.

As well as that, MS has a raft of casual games up its sleeve – quiz and music fare, ideal to gather a luddite family around at Chrimbo. Says Don Mattrick, senior vice president for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, "The new Xbox experience offers more content than you can find from any device that connects to the television. That convergence of entertainment and gaming will bring new people and more families to the category, driving a record year for the games industry."

So what's new?

The most obvious change is the look, throwing out the explosion in a sweet shop design for something a bit more subtle – all silvers and Apple-esque reflections. It's unlikely to be to everyone's tastes, but it certainly doesn't scream "GAMES CONSOLE FOR KILL-CRAZY TEENAGE BOYS" in the way the old one did. It's reorganised too, both to make getting to your content a lot more logical, and to reflect Microsoft's other push – to make the 360 more of an entertainment device than merely a console.

So movies, photos and music now have a much higher profile in the interface, and in the case of the former there's increased focus on paid downloads. "Instead of checking what's on TV this fall, you'll turn on Xbox and ask what's on Live", says Schappert.

Games aren't left out, however – the most exciting part of all this for the traditional 360 audience is that they'll be able to install games to their console's hard drive, which will reduce load time and that damnable racket the DVD drive makes.

What's an Avatar, then?

It's a design-it-yourself mini-you, which your friends (or any strangers you join multiplay with) see as your visual representation in games, as a replacement for the old Gamerpics. Consciously cute, you're not going to be building Chiefy Masters or Death-Beasts, so they may be a little at odds with the Gears of War crowd.

Where they'll really come into their own, though, is in specific games such as Scene It 2, where you actually play as your Avatar. It's potentially the link a more casual audience needs. "Create, share, and have fun with all of your friends... but avatars are just the beginning. The new Xbox is tailored for the living room. Here we are at the community channel – instead of a list of friends, you actually see them.

You can chat with or send messages to your friends, but there's something new: create a Live party, private groups of up to eight people, always connected and chatting as a party," explains Microsoft's John Schappert. There'll also be a lot of ongoing customisability – expect both free and paid clothing downloads, whether it's making your Avatar emo or dressing him in a Grand Theft Auto t-shirt.

So are Gamerpics dead?

No, they're staying around for the time being. They'll even appear on the t-shirts of Avatars if you want.

What if I don't want the new Dashboard?

Tough luck – it should be with us before the year's out (rumour has it that it's due within weeks, even), and if your console's online you'll be essentially forced into downloading it. The old look will be gone forever, though the 'blades' interface will remain in part, as a pull-up mini-menu for commonly-used features while you're mid-game and that sort of thing.

It is good news, though – while it remains to be seen how well the more hardcore gaming audience takes to the Avatars, it certainly makes the Dashboard a much more pleasant place to be.

G1:Google Chrome Review

The battle of the browsers rolls on, now with Google entering the fray with their Chrome browser. Becoming public on Tuesday, we got our hands on it to put it through its paces. Knowing Google, the "beta" tag will probably remain for the life of the product. So how does it fare in these early stages?

We've become accustomed to Google appearing with software solutions and are big fans of their Google Apps. It makes sense that the company with possibly the biggest name on the Internet has its own browser. A quick download and install, Chrome offers to import your bookmarks as you'd expect. It also pulls across your history, something that Google has always been pretty keen on."

The good:

+Clean design
+Eliminates top window bar
+Dynamic homepage
+Incognito option
+Separate tabs
+Download history
+Spell check

The bad:

-Some teething issues
-Flash appeared slow
-Difficult to highlight text
-Can't drag and drop text
-Back button problems
-No Java support

Hands-On: 'Grand Theft Auto IV' PC

Rockstar shows their love for the PC again with a massively up-res’ed version of Grand Theft Auto 4 due out in November, and the improvements and extra features might be enough to inspire even diehard console gamers to jack a computer and give Liberty City a visit on the PC.

The most noticeable difference between the PC version of the game and the console versions are the graphics. GTA IV PC outputs at 2560x1600 with improved textures and draw distances, meaning that even on a 106” television the graphics are downright breathtaking. In the “3 Leaf Clover” mission shown behind closed doors at the Leipzig Games Convention, the improvements are most noticeable when speeding over the bridges into the towering downtown environments. While the port is a work in progress, the best basis for graphic comparison is this: The trees lining the city streets haven’t been redone for PC yet, and basically look like square paper collages compared to the rest of the game, again on a television larger than the walls of many New York, I mean, Liberty City, apartments.

The most impressive additional features aren’t being shown off yet. The PC version will include a replay and montage editor that continuously records the previous 30 seconds of gameplay allowing players, with a simple click of a button, to review their best smash-ups and kill sprees in various camera angles with the ability to add filters and music before uploading them online. Hopefully this doesn’t go the way of the Spore creature creator considering the frequency of strip club visitation.

I asked about the rest of the upgrades, but it seems Rockstar is being hush-hush for now. At least they promise expanded multi-player which will allow gamers to search for specific types of matches: 8 players, rocket launchers only in the conservatory…with the lead pipe? Sure.

Being purely presumptuous I wouldn’t be surprised if they expanded the amount of players in a match as well--with environments that large it’s a logical conclusion. GTA IV PC supports not only the mouse and keyboard but the 360 controller too.

On a side note, even though I spent several weeks of my life playing the console version of this game straight through, I’d never actually realized how brutal (read "violent") the game is until I saw it on that large of a screen (and with someone playing that never misses a headshot).

At this point, you’re epically late to the party but Rockstar gives some solid incentive to buy the game for PC. You'll be able to edit your own Liberty City story this fall.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 vs. Firefox 3.0.1

So, how does Microsoft's latest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 compare Mozilla's Firefox 3.0.1 in terms of speed? Let's find out in this quick head-to-head!

The tests

Two head to head tests:

The results

The results speak for themselves:

The bottom line

It’s pretty clear from these basic tests that Internet Explorer 8 has a long way to go if it is to catch up with Firefox 3.0 in terms of JavaScript performance and ~~CSS~~ web standard compliance [UPDATE: Whoops, I meant web standards compliance, not CSS, I was still thinking in ACID 2 mode …].

However, I think that it is worth pointing out that when it comes to performance, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is three times faster than the Internet Explorer 7. ACID 3 compliance however isn’t much better than that offered by Internet Explorer 7.

IE8b2 report card: C- … Could do better, much better.

Better, More: Epic's Approach to Gears of War 2

This fall, the Epic-created, Microsoft published Xbox 360 Gears of War franchise goes from single, 4.7 million unit-selling game to an expanded franchise, with the launch of Gears of War 2. The team creating the game at Epic Games is keenly aware of the importance of this evolution.

Though the first title was praised for its all-round graphics prowess and slickness of play, it's clear there's room to improve -- especially in story construction and evolution -- for the sequel, and that's just what the team is trying to size up.

For the follow-on, franchise senior producer Rod Fergusson discusses with Gamasutra the execution of an attemped "New, Better, More" philosophy, the meaning of the title in the broader context, and the trials of managing a franchise that has grown well beyond games into other media like comics, novels, and a potential film.

How do you manage the project? Because it has a very tight ship schedule, and it has a lot of features, how do you keep it on track in the way you're talking about?

RF: Take a look at where you are, schedule-wise, and feature-wise, effort-wise; it's the joys of Microsoft Project, the joys of Excel, and the joys of having a good team who understand what it takes to ship a game, and when you have to make that compromise.

If somebody goes -- to use the curb stomp again -- "Hey, I want to do curb stomps," then you have to go, "What are you willing to give up?" You have to look at what the balance is for shipping. So it's finding that balance, and monitoring it, and making sure you're on top of the process all the way through.

And you have a limited number of Title Updates that you can do, I believe, over the lifespan of the product.

RF: We had quite a few with Gears 1, trying to get things, like with the Roadie Run [glitch] and so... We haven't hit that one, and I don't actually know what the ultimate limit is. They have limits in terms of size, and stuff like frequency...

But, again, it comes down to the significance, right? Like, Microsoft is really about, is there a security breach or an exploit that's truly ruining the game? They're not big fans of developers kind of whimsically doing it, just because they want to mess with the game, or whatever. So yeah, you have to have a purpose behind your title update.

Are there any features that have come out of the development of Gears of War 2 that are being implemented in the engine? That are going to be available to all licensees, that you are aware of?

RF: I think the fracture system is probably one of the easiest to point to; that idea of the semi-destructible environment, where you have the inner core with fracturable bits that fall off to make the gameplay a lot more dynamic and interactive. It's because we want to have that sense that you're hunkered in, and you're getting all these chips and stuff flying off.

So that was something that was a feature that came out of the needs of the Gears team in our "New, Better, More"; they wanted to have a more interactive environment, and a more destructible environment, so that got applied into the engine, which then became available to licensees.

There's a fair amount of debate right now about whether or not people want traditionally narrative story in games all -- whether people want it, and whether we should be providing it as an industry, whether it was a stop-gap.

Obviously, it heated up, as a debate, with Metal Gear Solid 4, which is basically the most traditionally narrative game yet released. I don't know if you're familiar with Far Cry 2 at all, but they're trying to do a fully dynamic story... Like, you can kill any character in the game, but they want to create a system so, like, the lines can be delivered by another character. So it's quite complicated -- and it's part of the design imperative.

Everything you need to know about the next Xbox!

'Xbox 720' could be the hottest gift for Christmas 2011

Powering up the Xbox: what's in store for the next-gen console?

Will Microsoft launch its next-gen Xbox in 2011? There have been a couple of articles recently that have speculated on just that.

TechRadar looks at whether the 'Xbox 720' will feature a return to Intel chips, the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive, and more storage than you can ever fill.

A PlayStation 4 and potential 'Xbox 720' could arrive as early as 2011, estimates Crytek president and CEO Cevat Yerli. Industry analyst Colin Sebastian agrees, suggesting that "the general consensus amongst industry professionals is that a new generation of home consoles will arrive on the market in 2011 or 2012."

Terabyte storage for the Xbox 720?

We've already speculated about what Microsoft might be planning for its third Xbox – 16 or 32 processing cores (including onboard graphics), 8GB of DDR memory, broadband connectivity and a hard disk that delivers terabytes rather than gigabytes of storage space.

More storage is a given – Microsoft has recently launched the 60GB Xbox 360 Pro, while Sony has rolled out a 160GB PlayStation 3. Both consoles are trying to sell themselves as digital hubs and any future Xbox is going to need a huge amount of space to store downloadable movies and TV shows, demos and Live Arcade games. A 60GB hard drive is nowhere near big enough.

"One of the problems with the 360," Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser told 1UP, "is the fact that they don't have a significantly larger storage medium than the previous systems. It's a slightly bigger DVD disc... If we're filling up the disc right now, where are we going? It's not like our games are going to get any smaller."

The solution isn't just to add a Blu-ray drive to the next Xbox. The developers of Bioshock recently told videogamer.com that: "in terms of specific things, [Blu-ray] hasn't made much difference. The original game fits on a 360 disk so it wasn't like we were in need of room." The ability to run games from a massive hard drive renders the optical drive virtually redundant.

Xbox 720 to feature Intel processor?

Assuming that Microsoft isn't going to dumb-down the next Xbox in favour of a Wii-style family console, the next-generation of processors could give the Xbox 720 the muscle of a turn of the millennium supercomputer. A return to Intel technology might also be on the cards.

Why Sony's Cell might have got it right

Larrabee isn't just a graphics processor. It's a clever side bet by Intel on a possible future processing paradigm – highly parallel, massive floating point performance. Revolutionary? Not quite.

"The Cell processor was quite prescient," suggests Laird, "as it's philosophically similar to Larrabee. The problem is that the only workload on a console that is currently parallelised is graphics and that's the one thing the Cell doesn't do. Real-time physics and complex AI will become more important on consoles, as will more programmable graphics (ray-tracing is one example). So highly parallel and programmable Larrabee or Cell chips look like the way forward."

Considering that the next generation of processors could pack in several billion transistors, the next generation of consoles should be capable of some truly stunning high-definition games. Any new machine in 2012 will take full advantage of broadband for multiplayer and massively multiplayer gaming, social networking and media sharing.wait and see.....