Matterfall

How very Outlandish…

Of all the developers we expected to announce a game with a pre-rendered cinematic trailer, Housemarque was the among the last. For a studio that’s repeatedly made ripples in the industry for its visually impressive arcade shooters, and consistently innovative 2D-plane mechanics, a CGI trailer feels… at odds with the developer’s typical gameplay-centric approach.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

We’ll go to very distant lands

NI NO KUNI is back! Are you excited? Once again, it looks as though we’ll be playing as a little boy going through some tough times, though instead of fish-out-of-water Oliver dealing with grief and thrown into a fantasy land, we’ll be focusing on Evan. Actually, King Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, dealing with a coup, trying to regain the throne of a fantasy land. And it’s here that our excitement wanes a little – we’re not sure that’s as relatable an initial premise, to be honest. The hero’s journey template is the standard for a reason; we’re not convinced that a story about a rich, powerful child trying to regain his riches and power is going to resonate so well in our current times. It’s tricky to be on the side of a king regaining his power when you’re not entirely sure that a democracy wouldn’t be a better idea. Also, we’re hoping that for the game proper, King Evan won’t sound quite so whiny. Still, Ni No Kuni was one of our favourite RPGs of recent years, so we’re hoping Level-5 can deliver another gem.

10 things you need to know about Final Fantasy XV

The road trip RPG rumbles ever closer

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There’s yet another version of the Duscae demo on the way apparently, hopefully giving us a chance to play around with the magic system that was sadly missing from the previous versions. As long as these constant demo updates aren’t eating into the progress of the core game, we’re all kinds of fine with this – more public exposure to games during development can only be a good thing and the team has made it clear that it is reacting to feedback.

Best file-transfer services

Pushbullet is a popular tool for transferring files between devices but changes to the free version have left users unimpressed. Edward Munn compares it to other services that transfer files wirelessly, even when your devices are in different locations

Our guide to Li-Fi

Lightbulbs delivering internet access 100 times faster than Wi-Fi sounds like science fiction but, as David Crookes explains, Li-Fi is about to become a reality

What is it?

Li-Fi is short for Light Fidelity and is a way of transmitting data at high speed using the visible light spectrum rather than radio waves. The bi-directional technology is built to work with LED lightbulbs, which means it’s very easy to set up and the potential reach is huge.

Boundless

A huge, connected world that’s thinking with portals

Ambitious. There’s just no better word to describe this impressive online sandbox.

Announced for PS4 at Paris Games Week, it’s a beautifully colourful world where everyone’s connected. Yep, whether you’re on PC or PS4, you’ll share one single universe with the rest of the planet.

“We think players get excited about games that try and do something not seen before,” enthuses game director James Austin. “We wanted to create an open-world sandbox where everyone survives and thrives together. For some players this just clicks and they want it. They’re desperate for something they can put time into, and with Boundless everything they create, everything they craft, every Titan they fell will be visible to every other player. Their actions persist.”

Acer Aspire R11 (R3-131T)

Life in plastic's not fantastic

We don't often talk about the benchmark tests we use to rate computers’ performance. That's because they’re boring. Really, seriously boring. Sometimes we actually fall asleep while doing them. There’s plenty of time for sleeping when a PC comes in with a Celeron processor. The name comes from the Latin for ‘hurry up!'.  Presumably this is Intel’s little joke. We prefer to think of it as an abbreviation of ‘Cornu aspersum’, the garden snail.

Vodafone Smart Speed 6

An Android smartphone for 50 quid

There's plenty of choice when it comes to phones. Some people like iPhones; others prefer Samsungs. Google's Nexus series and Sony’s Xperias are popular. One bloke in Norwich has a Window's Phone. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Or in this case, you mostly skip the first part. At £50, the Smart Speed 6 is cheaper than phones used to be before they put computers in them. That’s on pay-as-you-go (PAYG), with no contract or obligations. The only catch is it’s exclusive to Vodafone, which isn’t the cheapest network and may or may not have good reception w'here you live.

What's the fastest browser for your tablet?

Still using Safari on iPad and Chrome on your Android tablet? Tim Danton reveals how to boost your device by ditching its default browser

Firefox fans around the world rejoiced when, on 11 November, the browser's creator Mozilla released a free Firefox app for iOS. If you own an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, you can now use Firefox as the main browser on your device.

And yet, just because the Firefox app is hot off the press, don't assume it's better than others. With more and more browsers available for your tablet and phone, this is the ideal time to “shop" around (but not pay anything - all the browsers we feature here are free).

Changing your browser could be all you need to breathe new life - and speed - into your old phone or tablet. We tested this theory by running a number of browsers on Android and iOS tablets and phones to speed-test them in everyday use. Here we reveal which browser may give your device the biggest boost.

Windows 10: The biggest controversies

Windows 10 is great - but it's not been without its clangers and scandals. Jonathan Parkyn delivers our verdict on every one

On the surface, Windows 10 feels like a return to Windows 7. But underneath the comfortingly familiar Desktop and Start menu lurk a number of radical changes - not all of which have been well received.

We've had a lot of good things to say about Windows 10, but since (and even before) its release, Microsoft’s new operating system (OS) has found itself mired in controversy.

We know from your letters that you have strong feelings about some of them. Now it’s time to tell you what we think.

Don't Get Hacked in 2016

Hackers are changing tactics in 2016 - and you’re in more danger than ever. Jane Hoskyn reveals next year's threats and what to do to stay safe

2015 was the most dangerous year in malware history. You already know that, because we told you in our article (The Worst Malware Ever). We also said “and 2016 will be worse", but you may have missed that bit - especially if you were in an understandable hurry to get on with reading the feature.

So let’s drag it up again, shall we? While you’re setting the table for Christmas dinner - or perhaps relaxing with your favourite magazine while you digest your figgy pudding - we’re here to remind you that 2016 will make 2015 look about as digitally dangerous as a festive game of charades.

Is Web Design Dead?

Conny Liegl wonders if, as the web grows up, web designers are becoming obsolete

When I was 25, I did not have my life figured out at all. I was in a state of flux, woth a mind that was constantly being filled with new ideas. Now, at 34, I see a lot of my own ‘awkward 20s’ in the development of the world wide web.

Remembering… Netscape

This week, we salute the king of browsers

Back when the internet was still a little new and didn’t have the polished gleam of HTML5 and other sorts of impressive modern content, we lightly moved from one home grown web page to the next using Netscape. Well, most of us did, anyway.

Netscape was lightweight, and it didn’t rely on the constant drip-fed advertising that Internet Explorer was pushing on early users of the web. It was a simple browser for a simple internet, and it evolved into something more complex as the online world grew around it.

The 20 Pieces Of Equipment That Every IT Professional Should Own

Mark Pickavance reveals the gadgets and gizmos that help anyone who works in IT to perform at their best

If you work in IT or just take your computing seriously, then having the right tools for the job is rather critical. Trying to bodge something or just running into a brick wall can make a small job take much long than it should, and in a business context, time usually equates to money. However, a few mostly inexpensive items can provide you with the key accessories to help you fix problems and do so efficiently.

Here are some of the items that IT people should own or have access to in the modern computing environment.

Ubuntu Touch – Android Rival?

What is the Ubuntu Phone OS actually like? Chris Salter gives it a test

There are currently three big phone operating systems: Android, iOS and Windows. Combined, the three have a huge share of the smartphone market, certainly in the Western world. However, they aren’t the only phone operating systems about, and the likes of Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch have been looking at changing that, if not in the West, then in the emerging markets, where high-end smartphones along the lines of Apple and Android are being challenged by locally produced and cheaper alternatives.

Bookeen Cybook Ocean

If you haven't heard of the Bookeen Cybook Ocean before, theyn you're not alone, because we certainly hadn’t either. However, it’s quite a popular e-reader in its native France, and it does offer something a little different from the other e-readers we have on test.

The Cybook Ocean is a monster of an e-reader, the huge 8" e-ink screen dominating the device and making it feel more like a tablet than most e-readers. But the 1024 x 758 display with its pixel density of 160dpi and 16-level greyscale isn’t too shabby.

Nook GlowLight Plus

The Nook didn’t have a very good start here in the UK. Created by the American bookstore Barnes & Noble, it has gone through a number of changes and is classed as the entry-level device next to the Samsung Galaxy Tab Nook models that Barnes & Noble now offers, primarily because B&N took a bit of a hammering in the market over the Nook and now sells Samsung tablets with a Nook interface.

Kobo Mini

The second Kobo e-reader of the group, the Kobo Mini, isn't actually being produced any more, but it's being sold online and through a number of high-street shops and online, which is why we've included it here.

It’s certainly a small e-reader. Weighing 134g, it has 5" touchscreen and measures 102 x 10 x 133 mm. The 800 x 600 e-ink screen has 16-grey levels, and the Kobo Mini contains roughly the same features that the previous e-readers in this group have: 802.11b/g/n wi-fi, 2GB of storage, and the ability to read ePub, PDF, TXT, HTML and so on. Sadly, though, it lacks a backlight, but you can alter the contrast, and you can further improve the reading of the screen by tweaking the sharpness of the font.

Kobo Aura H20

The Kobo Aura H20 is the successor to the hugely popular Kobo Aura HD that was released a few years ago. Since then, Kobo has made some slight changes to its line of e-readers, but the Aura still remains at the top of the range.

This is a 6.8" screen with a Carta e-ink HD touchscreen and a maximum resolution of 1440 x 1080, which puts it well into the realms of the tablet world but also makes it one of the highest-quality screens out of all the e-readers on test.

Ectaco jetBook Mini

The Ectaco jetBook Mini is the more modern version of the ill-fated Ectaco jetBook Color Deluxe, a larger 9.7" e-reader that tried so hard to be an allin-one educational reader, but which failed at nearly every step. Has the company been able to improve things since then?

It has a 5" 640 x 540 display, with 16-levels of greyscale and a featured ‘no glare’ technology. It measures 116 x 126 x 20mm at its thickest point, dropping to 10mm at the thinnest part. It’s reasonably pocket-sized, but the design is really quite awkward, with an almost game controller look to one end of the device.

Lesser Known Web Browsers You Should Check Out

We all know about browsers such as IE, Firefox, and Chrome, but there are many more, and some are well worth a look

The internet browser is an essential application. Everyone with a PC needs one if they plan to go online, and a minuscule amount of PC users go without one. Therefore, the humble browser is probably one of, if not the most used PC program of all, aside from the OS itself. It started to become the dominant app it is today when Microsoft began bundling in its own browser, Internet Explorer with Windows, and since then the PC using public have never looked back. IE’s inclusion with Windows caused a bit of controversy, with accusations of monopolies and even some other browser companies going under, such as Netscape, but this all led us to the current influx in browsers, although you’d be forgiven for missing this explosion of programs.

Understanding Graphics Cards

We try and get our heads around the complexities of the GPU

A fair few years ago, we were spoiled for choice when it came to picking a graphics card. Should we buy an ATI card, Voodoo Banshee, Matrox Millennium or a Savage S3? It could lead to some interesting, if a little confusing discussions.

These days there are the two main players left: AMD (formally ATI) and Nvidia. But even though there are only two manufacturers now, it hasn’t got any less confusing. Where we used to simply look for the make and the amount of memory the card had, now there’s the GPU clock frequency, GPU shader clock, number of shaders and cores, memory type, memory bandwidth and TDP to take into consideration. And all that is before we even look to see if our case is big enough to fit the card in the first place.

Infinity Bluetooth Speaker

Michael Fereday journeys to infinity to check out a light show

With the number of small-to-medium Bluetooth speakers currently on the market, manufacturers are looking to different ways to make their product stand out from the competition. Attractive packaging and adding extra functionality are just two ways I have noticed recently. Thumbs Up!, the company responsible for this next offering, has gone for the latter method by introducing a light show feature to its Infinity speaker.

Edifier CineSound B3 Soundbar

Spice up your TV and video enjoyment with this sound bar from Edifier

TV’s offer good imagery, but are not so good at enriching the experience with quality audio. Towards the end of CRT production, the large cabinets allowed the installation of fairly decent speakers, so these heavy-weights were getting closer to what might be called Hi-Fi. However the latest slimline TFT and Plasma TV’s simply don't have the real-estate available to fit decent speakers into their ever thinner cases.

Penclic Mouse R2

A new design for a more comfortable peripheral

Although the modern mouse has gone through a number evolutionary stages – adding a scroll wheel, using a laser or optical sensor to track movement, and including a number of other useful buttons – the overall design hasn’t changed all that much.

One of the main concerns for the modern worker with regards to this design is the onset of RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury. Let’s face it, holding a mouse with your palm held flat for eight hours plus a day can lead to some painful and long-term problems. Thankfully there are ways to help prevent RSI, but a Swedish company, Penclic, may have a better solution.

Western Digital My Cloud 2TB

Western Digital spreads some sunshine in a cloudy world

Many people have an issue with ‘the Cloud’, or rather their lack of control over personal information stored out on the Internet. Given the poor attitude that both security services and commercial companies have to privacy these days, that’s probably not being paranoid.

The alternative, partly, is to have your own Cloud service, where you can centralise your files on an Internet accessible device that is located in your own home. That’s precisely the thinking behind Western Digital’s My Cloud range, and the entry level My Cloud 2TB is the first rung on this ladder.

Adam Elements ROMA 64GB

Adam Elements provide proof that the USB Type-C floodgates are opening

I’m a complete sucker for classy looking technology, and the ROMA by Adam Elements certainly fits that bill. Its precision metal finish and leather strap elevate it well above the plethora of plastic devices we’re pushed by other brands. My only initial concern was that like many Apple-related products there would be a major cost implication to this level of build quality. Amazingly, at least based on the MSRP I was provided, this is quite competitively priced for a 64GB flash drive. Adam Elements also plans at 128GB model in the near future, though I’ve no pricing for that currently.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware 11

If you are looking for a new antivirus program, this one should be on your shortlist. Roland Waddilove checks out the latest version

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a lightweight antivirus program for people that do not need a full security suite with all the bells and whistles. It provides a basic level of protection against viruses, spyware and other types of malware, web protection, and a behaviour blocker. It costs £28 for one computer for one year, but three computers work out at £14 each. There are additional discounts for two or three year licenses.

Brother MFC-L2700DN

Focusing on the office, Mr Fereday checks out a new all-in-one

Designed for office use, the MFC-L2700DN is an All-in-One device. Based on a mono laser printer, this product combines Fax, Scan and Copy facilities with an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder). The 'DN' of the product’s title indicates that you also get Duplex and Networking capabilities.

Sony SRS-X88

When we were children, this is probably what we thought things would look like in the future: robotic chrome, straight lines, blinking lights. That we also thought those things would be able to fly is rather beside the point.

Regardless, the Sony SRS-X88 has plenty of other features that would have boggled our infant minds. Essentially, this is a pretty clued-up piece of wireless kit, heavily focused on delivering highresolution audio. For that, Sony has its own Big Three: the S-Master HX amplifier, which it claims will reduce distortion and noise; its Digital Sound Enhancement Engine, which upscales compressed files to nearer high-resolution quality (the SRS-X88 is happy to play AAC, WMA, AIFF, ALAC, DSD, WAV, MP3 and FLAC); and ClearAudio+, which Sony says optimises audio for clarity and separation.

Cambridge TVB2

Over the past few years, Cambridge has found a comfort zone in soundbases. Its TV2, TV5 and Minx TV have all achieved five-star fame, collecting two Awards between them. So it’s not surprising the British company has the confidence to have a crack at a soundbar. Say hello to the TVB2.

Our only criticisms of the company’s soundbases have centred on their basic remote controls and the absence of HDMI connections (although the latter is becoming a trend in TV audio solutions).

Yamaha RX-A550

In previous years Yamaha has preserved its high-end Aventage range for its more high-end models, saving the very best of its components, fine-tuning and engineering for receivers costing £800 or more.

This year it has decided to show the popular £500 price point some love, and included it in the Aventage line up for the first time. The aim? To offer superior design and performance without focusing on specification-pleasing. The only question is, why can’t we have a bit of both?

View Quest Blighty

For such a tiny portable radio, available at this budget-friendly price, the little Blighty (made by radio specialist View Quest) is rather well-featured. It has FM and DAB tuners on board (and DAB+ for the countries that support it), 10 presets to save your favourite stations, and a battery life of up to 10 hours.

Sony Xperia Z5

If you’re now thinking ‘what about the Z4?’ don’t worry – you didn’t sleep through it. While most of the world got the Z3+ in the summer to replace the Z3, in Sony’s native Japan it was officially called the Z4. Head-scratching, yes, but technically Sony is conforming to the sequential running order with the arrival of its new flagship smartphone: the Z5.

Sony h.ear in NCs

‘People who plug their keyboards into their hi-fi aren't idiots, that would be stereotyping'. ‘The latest iPhone is a huge 6s.’ Everyone loves a good pun – or even a couple of mediocre ones – including Sony, by sound of its latest buds. Pronounced ‘hear’ (their less puntastic model name is MDR-EX750NA), the h.ear in NCs have been released alongside the h.ear ons (on-ears) and two Walkman music players.

HRT dSp Headphone Digital Sound Processor

The hairy, spiky Rambutan fruit hardly screams ‘come hither’ to food shoppers, but give it a chance and from that moment onwards, no other exotic fruit will do. The same goes for the HRT dSp. An uninviting plastic design that looks nothing more than your average throwaway USB key casing, it is actually a wonderful thing. Once you’ve tried it, you won’t want to be without. High Resolution Technologies (HRT) calls it a digital sound processor. To you and us though, it’s a DAC. HRT has a handful of small portable DACs in its portfolio. Its microStreamer won an Award in 2013, taking the gong from the Audioquest Dragonfly before the rival’s mk2 version (v1.2) nabbed it back last year.

Geil Super Luce DDR4 Memory 3000MHz (2 x 4GB)

DDR4 done right, done cheap

Now that Skylake and its hunger for high-speed DDR4 memory is here, it’s time to ditch those shabby old DDR3 modules and upgrade. The thing is, at Skylake’s default memory speed of 2133MHz, it’s not actually that much faster than DDR3 in real world scenarios. Enter kits like this one from memory masters Geil, which promises an easy 3000MHz frequency, without costing the Earth.

Samsung Galaxy Gear S2 Classic

Wearables are the latest trend with many smartphone manufacturers. The Galaxy Gear S2 Classic is Samsung’s fourth wearable, taking over from the Galaxy Gear S. But is it a big improvement?

What Samsung is going for here is to convince you that you don’t need that classy Omega. I mean all it does is tell the time and has that tachometer you’ll probably never use. Omega also does watches that work in space, yet again we ask, are you going to use that feature regularly? What Samsung has here is a watch that is much more practical, with a less jarring price. The wearables market is just coming to form, with the past couple of years being formation years. You know when a trend is serious when Apple decides to join in, having only released the Apple watch in April this year. Samsung has been in the wearables game longer, so will the Gear S2 Classic display its wisdom in the wearables game?

Gigabyte Geforce Gtx 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming Waterforce

The best just got even better 

Our current favourite high-end GPU is undoubtedly Nvidia’s Geforce GTX 980 Ti. It’s basically as powerful as a Titan-x GPU for $500 cheaper, whips AMD’s Fury x into a bleeding little pile of chunks, and does it all without sounding like there’s a hairdressing salon in your PC. One of our favourite versions of the Gtx 980 Ti is Gigabyte’s Windforce 3, but they’ve just released a new model that goes one better – the horribly named GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD. Let’s see why this is quite possibly the sexiest graphics card for those with money to burn, yet a fetish for water.

Asus Strix Raid Dlx sound card

Despite onboard motherboard audio advancing in leaps and bounds, we still think that a dedicated sound card is a worthy inclusion for those who really care about their audio. Obviously the sound outputted by your system is going to be highly reliant on the speakers or headphones you use, but there’s no point pairing a $350 set of cans with a low-end motherboard audio codec. With a street price exceeding $300, the new Asus Strix Raid Dlx is obviously targeted at the upper end of the audiophile spectrum, and demands a quality set of speakers or headphones to go with it.

Powercolor Devil 13

This speedy devil gets hot and bothered

When a graphics card includes a special mounting bracket to stop it shrugging free of the shackles of its PCIe slot, you can rest assured it’s a behemoth. The new Devil 13 from Powercolor is one such heavyweight, with a slightly absurd weight of two kilograms. There’s a good reason for all this extra baggage though, as hidden beneath the frankly gigantic heatsink is not one, but two AMD Radeon R9 390 processors. No wonder it costs so darn much.

Razer Mamba Laser Gaming Mouse RGB

Ouch. $220 for a gaming mouse. That’s got to be a record, but it’s no surprise to see that Razer is the company behind this ultra-elite gaming mouse. It’s claimed to be the world’s most advanced gaming mouse, but can Razer really justify such a stratospheric price when $100 mice seem to be perfect already?

Hard West

Ready your turn-based six shooter...

The difficulty in designing a turnbased game is that the little details have to perfect in order for it to stand out from the crowd. With plenty of time to digest what’s happening, and with an intelligent approach the best means of success, the player has every incentive to fully understand even the most unassuming of design choices. It’s not a genre that allows developers to hide from their audience. Everything contained within that digital packet will be picked up, spun around and observed in extreme detail.

Massive Attack

Everything we currently know about Mass Effect: Andromeda, the franchise’s debut game for Xbox One

In classical mythology, Andromeda was a pretty lady who had to be fed to a giant sea monster after her dad annoyed the gods. She was spared this fate when the hero Perseus came by on a winged horse. Typical Ancient Greek playboy behaviour, that. Now, imagine that Andromeda is actually a trillion stars arranged in a rough spiral, that the monster is some sort of angry extraterrestrial species, that Perseus is a refugee from the Milky Way galaxy, and that the winged horse is a tricked-out spaceship. Congratulations: you've basically just thought of the elevator pitch for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

BioWare has yet to reveal much about the first Mass Effect game for Xbox One, but it has dropped hints aplenty in addition to some fetching concept artworks, and it's obviously possible to extrapolate from the events of Mass Effect 3. Polish off those calibrations and join us for a rundown. Beware major series spoilers.

Crackdown 3

Reagent Games builds skyscrapers up to the cloud, then topples the lot

Shocking plot twists aside, the Crackdown series has always been defined by its focus on freedom. Each game sees you leaping about the city like a superhero, becoming ever stronger, faster and more likely to harm the innocent as you dismantle criminal networks by going on a series of decreasingly discriminate rampages. Crackdown 3 continues this tradition, but ups the ante by handing you the keys to two entirely different cities in which to run riot: one that offers a fresh twist on the narrative-driven sandbox and the kind of familiarly robust buildings that will happily take a volley of rockets and stay standing; and another especially laid out for online multiplayer that raises the roof (potentially all of them] with cloud-powered physics that render every piece of it entirely destructible.

Street Fighter V

A true fighting evolution, and this time everyone’s invited

Capcom could have simply refreshed the fighting roster and polished up the visuals. That, for many, would have been enough. Capcom could have just added some new moves and tuned up the overall gameplay. That too, for a lot of players, would have been enough. But for a developer like Capcom – one that, if it didn’t invent the one-on-one fighting game, certainly honed its execution into an art form – that wouldn’t have been good enough. Not even close.

And so Street Fighter V isn’t an incremental update, or a polished improvement. It’s an exhilarating, across-the-board clean sweep, which resets, rebuilds and revitalises everything you thought you knew about modern Street Fighter. And, rather wonderfully, everything you thought you knew about Capcom, too.

NeuG

Can adding a tiny, ARM-based 32-bit computer to your Linux box really be all you need to improve cryptographic security?

Entropy – the contents, basically, of /dev/random – isn’t something to which most Linux users give a second thought, but it keeps server administrators and cryptographers awake at night. A system starved of entropy or, worse, filled with poor-quality entropy, can suffer everything from performance issues to security holes – and it’s a problem that becomes much larger when you get into the topic of virtualisation.

Steam Link

The war for the living room, as pundits in thick-rimmed specs are so fond of calling it, is fought with a blitzkrieg of features; manufacturers and platform holders do battle over who can fit the most functionality into the smallest box possible. As we’ve already discovered, that’s a risky approach indeed, and it’s refreshing to unbox a device with a singular purpose. Steam Link streams games from a PC running Steam on a local network. And that’s it.

Guild Wars 2: Heart Of Thorns

What if questing in an MMOG was more than a checklist of chores to be ticked off as you lap each area? With Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has always sought to challenge accepted MMOG design, and the game’s first major expansion, Heart Of Thorns, presents an alternative vision for how massively multiplayer environments should work. The result is exciting and fresh, even when it falters.

Mirror’s Edge

The anti-authoritarian adventure that opened a window to a new world of firstperson play

Mirror’s Edge arrived in 2008 as a searing white riposte to a jus t-ended generation of over-brown WWII shooters and firstperson trudging. It was different, and new – different partially because it was new, forming a partnership of opposites with fellow EA newcomer Dead Space. Both were fresh IP, released a month apart in a publisher’s schedule otherwise dominated by licences and sequels, and both were built upon contrasting foundations of meaningful design. Dead Space, made in California by Visceral Games, encapsulated a grounded American industrialism, a practical celebration of blue-collar capability that informed everything from its violence to its visuals. And Mirror’s Edge, built in Stockholm by DICE, was almost comically Scandinavian, a bright, minimalist vision of sleek architecture and graceful action – part parkour playground, part Ikea dystopia.