Thursday, January 29

Mirror's Edge A.K.A. Caveat Emptor ... for software

As the Good Google teaches us, "Beta" is the new "Release".

Nowhere is this clearer than in the new EA release, Mirror's Edge.

It works like this: you buy the game (for a mere 50EUR :(), wait for it to download and after a day and a half of waiting, it doesn't start.

You have to browse the forums (Google search: Mirror's Edge stuck at splash screen, Mirror's Edge crashes, etc.), then start playing with your settings:
  • update drivers a couple of times
  • read the forums again
  • try a couple of hacks (rename a DLL, set the antialiasing manually in some config files to a low value, etc)


The game finally takes of and it's all good.

Except it's not.

It's crashed twice on me, and at some difficult parts in the game (usually where you are most immersed in the game) it started crawling, drawing the frames at one-two frames per second, and mainly became unusable.

Come on guys!

I know you had a deadline to keep, but what you did here is BETA QUALITY.

The game-play is great and looks polished-enough, but all that can't be enjoyed if you have to fight it to play it.

These are the kind of problems that should have gone away after beta testing, so it's either a problem with the testing, or with the bug-fixing, or it's a problem with management sticking their tails where they don't belong and forcing the deadlines.

I hope I don't offend anyone when I say that the only way I'll buy another EA game is if I download it first from torrents, and decide it's streamlined enough to be worth the money (as this one definitely wasn't).

For other potential buyers: if you want to buy the game, wait a few months until they get some patches out (if they do at all). Otherwise, only buy the game if you don't mind a few hours making it run.

Edit: It seems the game actually works after all. Just, not for Windows Vista.

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