Mirror's Edge had me utterly stumped when I first thought about what score it truly deserved. The game does a lot right, against all odds. At the same time, it stumbles quite clumsily in other areas. At its best, Mirror’s Edge is an exhilarating roller coaster ride. At its worst, it contradicts its focus completely, offering up slow, frustrating sequences.At first I absolutely loved this game. This goes even farther back than even playing it. The first time I even heard about this game, it just sounded like the kind of experience made for my tastes. I have always loved the platforming genre, yet in the past few years I had gotten very close to the FPS genre, with all of the innovations in games like Halo 3, the Modern Warfare games, and Bioshock. DICE proposed to blend the first person perspective with the running, climbing, and wall-jumping that defines the platforming genre. From the beginning, many people (including me) were pretty skeptical that such an experience could work. How would the quick movement of a platformer work when the player can only see directly in front of them? How easy would it be to judge jumps when your feet aren’t always visible below you?
GAMEPLAY:But despite these questions, Mirror’s Edge pulls it off with a logical, elegant control scheme. Before I even bought the game, I played it in demo form on Xbox Live and was surprised by how elegant the controls were, and how they managed to make a game that feels not too much like either a platformer or a first-person shooter, but rather an experience unlike anything else. The controls may take some time to learn for some, but the layout makes a lot of sense. When a friend came over to see the game, they did not want to play because they said ‘it looks too complicated.’ The beautiful thing about Mirror’s Edge is that even though it may look hard to understand with all of the different moves you can pull off, it really isn’t that complex if you’ve played video games before. There were times where I could have sworn I should have been able to grab hold of something and I didn’t, but it never got to be a big issue in the scheme of things.
Another (literally) tiny detail also adds a lot to making sure the gameplay is as smooth for players as it looks. The little dot that is always positioned in the center of the screen during gameplay acts as a focal point. In other words, while many won't notice its effect, it helps fend of unwanted disorientation and motion sickness, something that could have been a very unwelcome obstacle otherwise.
Guns are in the game, as long as you steal them away from a foe, but you are encouraged to not use them often. They are effective for sure, and surprisingly satisfying to use, but they slow down your character, so they are best used for a quick shot or two before throwing it aside with a button press. The elegant gameplay that controls all of your acrobatics allow you to make some crazy stunts by stringing together moves. Run along a wall, jump off of it, and kick a guy while still in the air and then tell me you don’t agree.
The game also has no shortage of amazing jumps and stunts like walking on narrow poles hundreds of feet above the ground. The best moments in the game happen when you have a long stretch of obstacles that you speed up, under, over, or around while avoiding enemies shooting at you. When the game encourages you to use a ‘don’t look back, just keep running’ mentality, the game becomes a thrilling rollercoaster ride. It becomes as visceral as the best action games, especially since the relatively easy controls don’t hold players back. This is especially true at the few times where you face enemies who take a hands-on approach to defeating you, chasing you around the level while you try running to your goal. At these moments you can hear their footsteps as they get closer, but you just keep on running anyway. The beautiful visuals, solid framerate, and masterful audio (which allows you to hear the ‘woosh’ of the air as you pick up speed), and blur effect while sprinting, all add up to a realistic running experience that are an all-out joy to experience, when dodging either fists or bullets…or both.
The fact that the mechanics can be such a blast to play when it’s all about the speed makes it all the more baffling why the game constantly asks you to stop or slow down. Probably to add challenge and make the game last longer, you are confronted with plenty of navigational puzzles, mostly in the later parts of the game. In these sections, which are far too numerous, the fun is drained almost completely. The gameplay hook in Mirror’s Edge has always been that it focuses on speed and momentum. Yet DICE seemed to lose track of the goals they strove for originally, instead making you stop and smell the roses far too often. A little ways through the story, Mirror’s Edge becomes more of a puzzle game than an action game. Sometimes I would enter a building and it would take me five minutes just to figure out what exactly I’m supposed to wall-jump off of to get to a higher level. And then when I finally would get higher up, I had to figure out what to do next. At the beginning of the game DICE paints certain objects red to let you know the direction. But later on, the red paint becomes much less frequent, making figuring out where to go unnecessarily frustrating. It may break up the straight-up platforming and running action, but the entire point of Mirror’s Edge is to keep running and to gain more speed and momentum. There is even a speed run mode, for goodness’ sake. So why make the player stop having fun with the exhilaratingly fast, acrobatic gameplay to stop and look around for where to go next on such a constant basis. A few times would have been fine. But towards the tail end, it just becomes too much.
PRESENTATION AND GRAPHICS:
Another great aspect of the game is the look of the world. The game takes place exclusively in one city, which you’ll explore over the course of 9 levels. The bright near-futuristic world glistens with style. Whether on the rooftops or inside different buildings, the game always looks sterile, yet there are primary colors laced over much of the environments, giving the game a distinct look. If I were to see a screenshot of the game, I’d be able to tell right away that it’s from Mirror’s Edge. The first complaint I’d like to bring up is aesthetic. When many of the outdoor environments like the long irrigation tract and the numerous colorful office buildings look so great, it makes it all the more confusing why the game also throws in a number of boring, dank, brown interiors. Instead of using these incredibly familiar locales as fluff between the more beautiful areas, why couldn’t they have gotten more creative and introduced more types of outdoor environments like parks or boardwalks? And moreover, while the different office buildings may be coated in bright red or yellow or orange to differentiate itself from the others, it isn’t very creative to keep throwing you back into them.
The game’s narrative is sometimes dished out in-game, but most of the main details are thrown at you by way of 2D animated cut scenes. Cartoonish, if you will. I found both the animation and voice acting to be a little below expectations, and the cutscenes just aren’t too detailed and eye-catching. There’s a skip button for those who don’t care about the story, and unfortunately it’s pretty easy not to. The characters simply aren’t endearing and memorable at all.
The plot itself is also nothing special. You play Faith, a ‘runner’. Runners cross the city via rooftops, delivering information to others in a totalitarian city, where information isn’t too easy to come by. Of course, you don’t play the common delivery girl for very long, as you get embroiled in a murder case, where Faith must find out who dunnit. But surprise, surprise: The whole thing turns out to be bigger than it would first seem. The familiar tale is plenty coherent, but sometimes confusing with the amount of characters introduced. I also guessed one of the major plot surprises, which goes to show how predictable it is at times. Luckily, the story is more of an excuse to have the player zip around the entire city, into places where normal citizens would never even want to go (which is a good thing here).
REPLAY VALUE:
Mirror's edges story mode contains nine chapters. Now, nine levels may seem like a decent number, but some are shorter than others, and most aren’t very long anyways, except when you can't figure out to go next for the 100th time. Mirror’s Edge simply isn’t a very long game, and the aforementioned repetitive interior layouts (albeit usually with different colors) don’t help much. Meanwhile, replay value leans almost entirely on speed runs. A ticker appears on the side of the screen in this separate mode to show you how long you’ve been at it. I’m sure a small set of gamers will enjoy this challenge, and will want to get high on the rankings, as well as download the surreal time trial courses (pictured at right) that have appeared since release on Xbox Live's Marketplace. Most gamers probably won’t spend their time with time trials. There are secret bags hidden around each level as well, but all they equate to is achievements, and we've seen these hidden item 'bonuses' way too many times before. I think gaming should have left random collectibles behind in the N64 generation, personally.Speaking of achievements, those who do love their Gamerscores will find some cool ones awarded for pulling off some awesome acrobatic combos, which helps showcase how a few button presses can lead to some stunning movement chains. You can also earn some big points for getting through the game without shooting a gun. Let me emphasize that the story mode is repetitive enough the first time through to not be a fully intriguing proposition to go for it again, though I may do just that sooner or later, in order to experience some of the better speed-focused moments again. As I have said, the running portions do deserve to be experienced by as many people as possible, so its too bad you have to take the bad with the good.
IN CONCLUSION:
I was originally very excited about Mirror’s Edge. The fact that it manages to be so fun at points, yet so sloppy and frustrating at others makes it all the more sad it didn’t fully live up to its potential. When you’re running, it’s a blast. But when the game forces you to slow down, stop, and look around, it just takes away from the experience. Leaving the city behind could lead to some great level variety if a sequel ever arrives (though I’ve heard this one hasn’t sold as well as expected, so perhaps it’s just wishful thinking). The mechanics in the game are fantastically visceral, and the visuals are crisp and stylish. If only had DICE focused exclusively on speedy acrobatics and kept players moving longer and more often, Mirror’s Edge would have landed its jump feet first.
Title: Mirror's Edge
Developer: Dice
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Platfomer
Players: 1
Release: November 12th, 2008
WHAT IT IS: A stylish parkour-inspired platformer that plays out from the first person perspective WHAT YOU'LL LIKE: Great sense of speed and momentum; visceral action despite the lack of guns; colorful, shiny world WHAT YOU WON'T LIKE: The incredibly dull navigational puzzles; uninteresting plot and characters
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