Mirror's Edge

"Big Brother is Watching You"

Mirror's Edge has been praised as 'Original', and original it certainly is. Developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and released in 2008, Mirror's Edge is a first person platform game featuring a totalitarian government, guns, murder and a plot that could have been. I'm going to state early on that one of the things that ruined Mirror's Edge from being an excellent game was the demo. Demos, while being an excellent marketing tool designed to make people want to buy your game, also set a standard and people playing Mirror's Edge expecting it to be the joy-filled ride that the demo was are going to be disappointed.

You play as Faith, a 'runner' who (get this) runs. She runs around the rooftops carrying packages supposedly containing highly sensitive information. This information, from what little was explained and what I was able to gather is so sensitive, if it were to be discovered by the Totalitarian government it would earn you a trip to the Ministry of Peace. I mean jail. I'd like to say more about the plot, but that pretty much sums it up. Of course there is actually more to it and bad things start going down very early into the game but the plot isn't particularly fantastic, unfortunately. Any game set in the future with a government that not only keeps its buildings squeaky clean, but keeps it citizens in fear (from what I gather. They really ought to have explained things in a bit more detail. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I complain about the plot) should have a very awesome, intense plot filled with things of varying degrees of awesomeness and intensity. Ironically, I wrote a whole lot more on the plot in this paragraph than I was expecting to.

First person platforming is asking for disaster. You can't see your feet (well you can, but all of the time, obviously), so it's generally hard to judge where you are in relation to the edge of a building. You will however be able to correctly judge your distance and won't go plummeting downward. Most of the time. Of course I'm no game designer, so I'm not going to say the things I think Mirror's Edge should have done, but rather, the things it should have done better. The first thing that comes to mind is collision detection. This sort of thing, while I don't entirely agree with the idea of patches... could be easily fixed. With a patch. There are times when I have been playing when I've been standing next to a knee-high ledge, jumping up and down desperately trying to not become Swiss Cheese, and the game just doesn't register that I am in fact trying to jump over this particular knee-high ledge. Another thing that springs to mind is cut scenes. The majority of cut scenes use a cartoon-style aesthetic. As... interesting as they are, I think that the in-game graphics would have served just as fine. Better, in fact.

As you may have inferred from the end of my previous paragraph, in certain sections of the game you have to either run away from, beat up or shoot government agents and/or Police Officers. The combat in this game is faulty, so it helps that there really aren't any sections where you are forced to fight enemies. There is almost always a way to escape without tangling with the men in blue (or black, as the situation may warrant). While it isn't compulsory to use the combat system too much, I feel that Mirror's Edge would have greatly benefited from a better combat system, partly the hand-to-hand (I quite like the disarming) stuff but also the shooting. I do feel that's perfectly reasonable to have one clip to a weapon, and even the lack of a good selection of weapons doesn't bother me. Perhaps an auto-aim feature wouldn't have gone astray.

Moving on, I think that jumping around on rooftops is fun. It's just a same that DICE decided that putting you in claustrophobic hallways way too often was a good design choice in a game like Mirror's Edge. Oh yeah, and the PS3 version implements the Six axis Motion Controls. You aren't required to use it, though. I myself am not in the habit of using it, but it wouldn't bother me too much if I were forced to. Mirror's Edge should be a game about flow. But once you think you're on a roll you're forced to stop to orient yourself, so Mirror's Edge is constantly breaking the flow of gameplay. This isn't a problem if you plan on playing through the game more than once. My final thoughts in terms of gameplay are that Mirror's Edge is frustrating. Very frustrating and not really rewarding for the effort.

Now onto something that I've been dying to write about; graphics. If there's one thing I love about Mirror's Edge it's the graphics. The reason I love the graphics so much is because the graphics (wow, I'm saying graphics a lot) are unlike anything seen before in this generation of gaming. Why? Because it doesn't run on brown power. Or gray power, either. There are nice bright colors pitched against white. Not only red and blue, but green, yellow, orange and pink too. Not only is it pretty, but it also applies blurring very well to make it as though you are looking through actual human eyes.

Mirror's Edge is short. If you were really devoted you could probably finish it in a day. Oddly enough I'd say that your second playthrough will be more enjoyable than your first, if you choose to have a second playthrough. Also, the addition of trophies will keep you playing as well, if you could be bothered. There's also the online time-trials to consider as well.

Finally (The 'Too long; didn't read' version), Mirror's Edge is a good game, but it does suffer from bad design choices. It is indeed original, but the gameplay does get frustrating. Perhaps if there's a sequel it could involve ninjas, and it would be awesome.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/09

Game Release: Mirror's Edge (US, 11/11/08)