It occurred to us that despite all our passion for first-person parkour-inspired game Mirror's Edge, you probably still don't get the appeal unless you've seen it in action. "A girl running around on rooftops fighting crime?" you ask with a sneer. "I liked it better the first time, when it was a guy, and it was called Batman."

We understand distrust of the unknown (it's the reason we're still alive) so we'd like to present, for your edification, the Mirror's Edge demo. Now, if you can watch this and still not get excited we really have nothing more to talk about.

In case you're curious as to how DICE is planning to fight against simulation sickness in Mirror's Edge (not motion sickness, since you're not actually moving), an EA spokesperson provided a number of explanations during our hands-on with the game. For starters a little white blip is now placed the middle of the screen. It turns blue when it's charged for the slow motion action, but more importantly, it serves to focus the viewer's eyes.

The rep told us that they interviewed ballerinas to see how they perform spins without feeling sick. Their trick is to focus on a certain object or spot on the floor, which inspired the devs to add the dot. For those who find it distracting and obnoxious, there is an option to turn it off.

Also removed was the head bobbing found in the earlier GDC menu. The rep said they are now viewing the game from your eyes and not your head. Finally, the developers of the game told us that the use of the sides of the screens provides a sense of peripheral vision in the game. We were told they hadn't decided whether or not to use letterbox widescreen for 4:3-resolution television screens.

Yeah, but doesn't it give you motion sickness? This is the response you get when you tell someone: "Dude, I just played Mirror's Edge -- it's awesome." And this is how you answer: "No, dude -- you don't get sick."

Mirror's Edge achieves bounding, bouncing payoffs without the queasy side effects with a dot. Yeah, a dot. What you don't see in the "doctored" screens is a tiny blue/white blip. The dot isn't working alone though, the developers found they needed to widen the camera's field of vision as well as place it in the characters eyes as opposed to her head, reducing much of that first-person staple: head bobbing. The effect: a game that seems like it has no right not making you sick.

Want to see the newest trailer for Mirror's Edge from the EA Press Conference? Do you like rhetorical questions? Yeah, anyway, it can be found after the break. Just, please, please, please, don't let the footage inspire you to reenact the scenes you see. Remember, these are professionally trained pixels in the art of parkour.

If you're looking forward to Mirror's Edge the way we are, then you're definitely going to want to check out the four latest screenshots EA drip-fed us for this morning. Alternatively, if you get simulation sickness from just seeing stills of things in motion, best to step away ... slowly. Speaking of seeing things in motion, we've also got a gorgeous cel-shaded trailer for the game after the break which has us questioning our affinity for the game's current Unreal-powered aesthetic. Feel free to start speculating about Esurance: The Game while we watch this thing over again.

So, despite internet kvetching about Battlefield: Bad Company's DLC strategy, turns out it's a pretty good shooter with a fair amount of – you're not going to believe this – innovation. And it doesn't stop there. Developer DICE is still working on the game, putting the finishing touches on the "Conquest game mode" along with the Conquest-flavored conversions of the maps. But when they're done with that, they're looking to address some of the more persistent complaints about the game, including:

• Clan support/private rooms/team chat
• Auto balancing on servers
• Continued support against stats exploits
• VoIP issue on PS3 (working with Sony on this)
• Squads might be split up when joining a server as a squad. This is due to team balancing in the games that are being joined, and usually resolves itself in round 2.

No promises, of course, but if you had an email drafted to jerks at DICE dot se bemoaning the lack of clan support, your finger hovering dangerously close to the send button, you can probably file it away for later.

[Via X3F]

Well, that's easy. While it's currently investigating a permanent solution, EA has advised "some" players of the Xbox 360 version of ragtag romp, Battlefield: Bad Company, to turn off their consoles should they experience online connection issues.

Oh, but you need to turn it back on approximately 20 minutes later. Therein lies the trick, an essential step if you're keen on blasting through walls and otherwise enjoying all those hard-earned weapons. We'll let you know once EA has sorted out the problem, like a good company.

Though gravelly voiced soldiers are always keen to point out the many ways in which war has changed, it certainly hasn't ceased being profitable, least of all in the realm of video games. DICE, developer of EA's popular Battlefield franchise, has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that it currently has five related titles in development. Executive producer for DICE, Ben Cousins, was quite right when he said that's "more than you expect."

With Battlefield: Bad Company out this week and the free-to-play Battlefield: Heroes already impressing industry pundits, we're left speculating about three (maybe more?) additional titles. According to Cousin's comments made at GDC Paris, one will be a traditional game for consoles, while another will be a joint effort with Neowiz, aimed at Korea. As for the third title? We're predicting Battlefield: Field of Battle, a turn-based card game for the iPhone. What say you?

Battlefield: Bad Company has had an unconventional pre-release, to put it kindly. There was the huge kerfuffle over pay-to-play weapons, then the "boycott" and then, an even more convoluted weapon distribution plan. But, if the early reviews are any indication, the game has come through it relatively unscathed, with critics heaping praise not only on the multiplayer but single-player modes as well.

• Game Informer (93/100): "The extreme polish evident in the final product makes it all worthwhile. Both single- and multiplayer shine - at long last redeeming DICE for the crappy bot-fests offline players had to endure in previous games in the series."

• GameSpy (90/100): "Battlefield: Bad Company may look like other FPSes on the market in terms of theme and graphics, but there are enough key gameplay differences to set it apart from the crowd. One could easily say that Bad Company expands the genre itself with its combination of great story, destructible environment and surprisingly deep single-mode multiplayer."

• IGN UK (86/100): "In spite of its sluggish opening, Battlefield: Bad Company goes on to produce one of the most entertaining first-person shooters since last year's Call of Duty 4. Bold and bright in tone, it's blockbuster fare that combines DICE's first-person expertise with a small sprinkling of innovation that's enough to ensure it's a perfect way to shoot the summer breeze."

In the immortal words of Matthew Wilder, it looks like EA isn't letting some early bad press for Battlefield: Bad Company break-a their stride. We've seen a veritable gaggle of promotional material for the controversial title as of late, including two recent trailers which clown on some other popular shooters. The first of which, seen above, parodies the unforgettable Gears of War trailer, and features an unnamed infantryman butchering Gary Jules' cover of the Tears for Fears classic downer "Mad World". The other (available after the break) somewhat mocks Rainbow Six's stealth tactics. It's not exactly uncharted territory, but we can always appreciate such Yankovician displays of friendly competition between developers.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

If you didn't nab a spot in the Battlefield: Bad Company beta and you weren't completely turned off by all the pay-for-weapons rigmarole, you'll be able to get an early taste of the game on June 5 when a demo goes live on PSN and Xbox Live.

But EA, adamant that there must at all times be division in the gaming populace, is giving early entry (like May 29 early) to those people who pre-order the game. Oh, and you'll also get the QBU88 Sniper Rifle. ... Anybody starting to long for the "I give you $50, you give me a game" days of yestergeneration?

[Via X3F]

This is one of those rare posts that we, in the industry, like to call "easy." When we tell you that sign-ups for the Battlefield Heroes beta are now open, the odds are that you've already beat cheeks down to the "Read" link. And that's just fine with us, because it means we can relax our brain muscle, confident in the fact that only us and the spam spiders are reading the text.

It also means we can use the rest of this space to cop to something we otherwise wouldn't with millions of prying eyes around. ... We've completely turned the corner on Uwe Boll. He's out of his mind, he'll fight anyone and he's possibly the greatest self-promoter alive. We love him. And if you're a theater owner who won't show Postal, we think you're a jerk. There, we said it. ... OK, well, good luck with the beta thing, not that you're here any more.

[Via Eurogamer]

Producer Alexander Grondal said the team wants Battlefield Heroes to run on your Grandma's PC and -- with a sub-250MB download and the ability to run on Intel's anemic integrated video offerings -- we're sure it will. But that doesn't mean Grams is going to kick the Pogo crack pipe and be racking up levels in Heroes anytime soon. It's about as simple a shooter as you can imagine -- everything from the cartoon aesthetic to the streamlined controls reinforce the game's message: have fun -- but it's still a shooter at heart.

It's a curious message coming from the same team that's been bringing the popular, and complicated, multiplayer Battlefield games to the hardcore shooter fans of the world. Has some of their audience grown up? Run out of free time? Still using the same gaming rig they built to play Battlefield 1942 in 2002?

In our brief experience with the game at EA's Spring Break event in San Francisco last night, we were initially disoriented by the third-person perspective. Even though you see your character, Heroes doesn't play like a third-person shooter; it's an FPS through and through. A quick mental adjustment later, and we were running after enemies, grabbing flags, flying planes, and driving tanks.

Although they have an in-house engine for the Battlefield series (Frostbite), EA DICE has gone with Epic's mega-popular Unreal Engine 3 for the Parkour-inspired Mirror's Edge. According to the development team (via Electronic Arts PR), the reason was that the Mirror's Edge project began early on in Frostbite's development, so they decided to use the more-developed Unreal technology instead.

DICE is also developing "a new lighting solution that truly makes Mirror's Edge stand-out visually." If you haven't had a chance to check out the trailer, do so now. Full statement after the break.