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PC Mirror's Edge Uses PhysX To Awesome Effect
Posted by Stuart Houghton at 10:20 AM on November 20, 2008
The reason for DICE delaying the PC release of Mirror's Edge may be a little clearer.
DICE are retooling the PC version with enhanced graphics and - video card permitting - the NVIDIA PhysX engine to allow more accurate physics modelling of the virtual cityscape and the many, many things that can realistically fall off it.
As you can see in the trailer (after the jump) it does look rather lovely. Suitably equipped PC owners will be able to realistically fall off things in January.
Mirror's Edge is a first person action-adventure game that features French free-running art parkour as the primary means of movement, combat, and puzzle-solving. Players take the role of Asian twenty-something Faith Connors and guide her across the rooftops and through the buildings of a totalitarian society where "runners" like her are the only means for freedom of communication. The plot hinges on Faith's sister Kate and a government cover-up of a murder - both of which make for lots of roof-jumping, wall-running, and the occasional melee.
Two nuggets of Mirror's Edge news fresh from the courier's satchel - the PC version of the free running game will be taking the scenic route to arrive in early 2009 and will be turning up at the same time as a load of cross-platform DLC for the game.
Gamasutra's Chris Remo has a nice interview up with Mirror's Edge producer Nick Cannon on the design ethos and process of putting together the game; a lot of the interview is taken up with design considerations and the nuts and bolts of how the game was built, but there's plenty of interesting chatter in throughout. On the issue of the codification of genres and a rigidity in design that seems to be passing, Cannon has this to say:
Do games actually go gold anymore? I mean, as in actually make a proper gold CD/DVD that gets couriered to an actual games factory? Just typing the phrase 'games factory' makes it seem a bit Willy Wonka.
While it's fairly common these days for console games (Wii excepted) to launch with widescreen/16:9 support, PC games aren't so fortunate. Even in 2008, with widescreen monitors becoming so popular that even the Xbox 360 natively supports many of their resolutions, a ton of PC games 
GameStop are taking preorders for Mirror's Edge. Surprise! Well, it is a surprise, actually, since at the foot of their preorder pages lies a little red note in little red text. Says that a Mirror's Edge demo will be available on November 6. And it says that on both the 
