Another advantage of having the internet again – fast and generous internet again – is that I can finally download the tantalising updates to games that I’ve been eyeing for so long. Both Burnout Paradise and Mirror’s Edge had significant updates released during my year and a half absence of broadband, and both released these updates for free. What’s especially compelling about this extra content is that it’s not just an extra level, or maybe a different skin for the main character; these changes – Mirror’s Edge’s (too many possessives?) abstract time trial levels, and Burnout’s motorbikes – are significantly different experiences than those offered standard in each game.
Mirror’s Edge abandons its setting entirely, indulging entirely in its sleek, clean aesthetic to create abstract levels of floating primary coloured blocks in the sky. The blocks, naturally, provide a playground for the designers to create complex obstacle courses without being burdened by practical considerations of the city sitting. This means levels that explore densely packed vertical spaces, that constantly turn and build on one another, challenging the player to keep their wits about them as anything can happen next. And it’s fun, in the same way Mario Galaxy is fun – by throwing away any sense of reality, it becomes about the joy of movement, the thrill of building up a run and leaping over perilous chasms from one block to the next. It’s an intriguing insight into just what the Mirror’s Edge franchise could be, and maybe what it might become.
Burnout, on the other hand, builds on the universe it has already created, and ads motorbikes. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first took a bike out of it’s garage, but nothing could have prepared me for how intuitive it feels – it feels absolutely, completely, one hundred percent undoubtedly right. The bike’s have a weight and a flow to them that is…how do I explain it? It’s different to the cars yes, but not completely so. It’s a sensation that’s parallel, or tangential, or…whatever it is, it’s completely appropriate. The developer’s deliberately turned down the volume of traffic when riding the bikes, and made them incapable of boosts and e-brake turns (accurately enough, I suppose); and what this does, just like Mirror’s Edge’s blocks in the sky, is put the focus on the sensation of movement. This version of Burnout isn’t as concerned with crashes or chaining boosts – it’s interested in the flow, in the joy of weaving left and right across the road and through corners. It’s about speeding along the straights, and having the confidence to take your finger of the trigger and just drift through a corner. This is decidedly different to my approach in the cars, where my finger never comes off the accelerator, the boost is constantly engaged, and I slow down around corners by using the walls.
It’s exciting then, to find that the developers (both from EA, interestingly enough) have enough confidence in their games to experiment with them, and then to offer the results to the players free of charge. It gives the games an extra life, and it lets the developers try new things with minimal risk. And when the new content can change the experience of the games as much as it has for these two it means there’s hope for future innovation and creativity. I hope that it’s a trend that continues – that games can find a new life just by looking at them from a different perspective, and that it doesn’t take complete expansions or sequels to reinvent them.
