The EA DICE event at GDC last night (as chronicled in the previous entry) really deserves a little more in the way of addendum-mention -- partly because I just got back from it, partly because the bartenders at the Vessel Lounge really know how to make a sneak-up-on-you-and-leave-you-minus-a-kidney Surfer on Acid... but chiefly because of some of the titles they were showing. World War II never looked so goddamned adorable. Wait, what?

From what we saw at the event, Mirror's Edge is a sort of cyberpunk's day-/wet dream of the anemically-marketed, contemporary, "extreme sport" known as Free Running (a derivative of Parkour, or PK): Your urban-hottie protagonist Faith roams a first-person cityscape, in which (apparently) the only truly "secure" method of infotransmission is via the time-tested "sneakernet" -- i.e., actually, physically running the package (or whatever the hell it is) from place to place. Like some heroine out of a daylit, foot-messenger's take on The Matrix, you'll haul virtual ass across, over, through and otherwise athwart the rooftops, fire-escapes, air-duct housings, and other urban extrudimentia of a sprawling city, often looking forward at/down on your own flailing arms and feet as you make adrenaline-pumping jumps from ledge to ledge. The entire game has a vibrant-verging-on-stark animated look, and -- at least from what we've seen -- takes the unusual tack of presenting its world in broad daylight, as opposed to the typical steely-skied, rain-drenched visual copout.

Battlefield Heroes, meanwhile, is a simpler, odder and altogether goofier outing when compared to Digital Illusions CE's early field of battle games. Essentially, it's a multi-player, web-based, free-of-charge, intentionally-humorous transporter accident between a nerdy follow-cam shooter (in the traditional Battlefield mode) and... a sort of non-judgmental, utterly-cartoonish take on various soldier stereotypes lifted from World War II. And when I say "cartoonish," I'm talking cartoonish in the caricature sense, or that too, anyway, but cartoonish to the point where player-customized characters of various apparent nationalities appear to ride on the wings of strafing, Luftwaffe-inspired fighter-bombers (whose wing-markings are merely rotated a few degrees off from those of their actual, historical models -- what a difference a cant makes!), the tanks resemble the sorts of bulbous configurations found in early Advance Wars titles, and the attract-mode cycles of game demo reels go out of their way to showcase that this is the sort of game you might like, if it weren't for the specter of being repeatedly shot in the face by some foul-mouthed, uber-skilled 15-year-old -- even if they're hedging on the side of a bias toward casual gaming, it's a well-meaning sentiment, innit?)