Recently in Video Games Category

Pre-orders for Windows 7 went up yesterday. If you expect to upgrade an XP or Vista computer anytime in the next year, pre-order Windows 7 before July 11 to save half off retail. Home Premium (super-duper edition?) is only $50.

Mac and Linux remain my environments of choice for real work, but Windows 7 does look promising. I definitely expect to upgrade my gaming rig at some point, and $50 feels right for a Windows upgrade.

In other news, I'm having too much fun with my iPhone to write about it. More later...

I finally have my hands on the recently released PC version of Mirror's Edge. This is the game I want to love, but it has been plagued with difficulties.

I had problems straight out of the box. Actually, it was a padded shipping envelope, courtesy of Amazon. One corner of the game's plastic case had been crushed in transit, so black plastic scattered everywhere as I removed the seal. The DVD was unscathed, so I popped it in. A bizarre error dialog appeared; the autorun was broken. I browsed the disk and launched the setup program manually. I spent the next three minutes searching the case for the product key, which I found on the back cover of the manual, small and unlabeled. I would later notice the "EA Downloader" running in my system tray despite having deselected that option during installation. The score so far: Amazon zero, EA zero.

After that grueling installation, I finally had the game running. The stunning visuals, catchy soundtrack, and novel gameplay more than make up for the game's vague background story. The clean and bright art direction is a refreshing departure from gritty gun metal grays. I was very pleased ... at first.

My first gameplay problem was the wall jump tutorial. The trainer repeatedly failed me and forced a replay of the demonstration, despite my successful wall jumps onto the platform. After a dozen attempts, the game inexplicably accepted my efforts at wall jumping. Okay.

Technical difficulties now trap me in the first level. The game randomly freezes whenever I have cops chasing me. At some point as I run up the stairs or leap to the next building, the game will just stop, the ambient sounds die out in turn, and I'm left staring at a still image. When I minimize the game, I can hear the action resume in the background, complete with gunfire killing me. The only escape is a three key salute to kill the process. I experienced similar hiccups throughout the tutorial level, but the game always managed to recover after five seconds. Not anymore.

Updating my video card drivers didn't help, which means I'll have to spend some time on EA's web site trying to fix this problem. Very disappointing.