Mirror's Edge

"A good game, but with many problems"

When I first heard of Mirror's Edge, I thought it looked so insane; I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I always loved parkour and Free running (Even though I can't do any of it). So I thought this game would fulfill what I wanted, because the closest game I've played to that would be Assassin's Creed.

Now, when I first played the Demo for Mirror's edge, I became even more pumped for this game. The demo was short, but it made me want to play the real thing even more. So, I finally picked it up a little after it came out. Now, when I played though it, I loved the game, but it wasn't the game I was expecting.

The story isn't all that much. It's not too exciting, and doesn't really make you care about what's happening, or about the characters. Don't expect anything great from the story.

The graphics are amazing. They impressed the hell out of me. There are a few problems though. Some textures don't seem to appear until about 5 seconds after you start. It's not that big of a deal, but it's worth mentioning. I didn't find any slowdowns, and it seemed to “flow” great. The cutscenes though aren't so great. They made them have a Cartoonish style, which I really don't think works for the game. Also, They are quite boring. All there really is is people talking, with some mild action in about two of them.

The controls feel great. They work really well, and don't take long to get used to. You might mix up and duck instead of jump a few times, but other than things like that, the controls are awesome.

The game play is not bad, even though it can mess up at times. Doing some of the moves you can do is very fun at first, but by the end of the game, it kind of loses its charm. While doing all these acrobatic moves is really fun, there are just not too many of them. The levels may be different, but the things you do are mostly the same. There are a few glitches and stuff, which will make you fall off/miss objects, when you clearly didn't. Also, there are about 63 elevators in every level, and you spend about 20-30 seconds in each one. They seem to just be loading times, but even with stuff to read inside of them, they kind of kill the feel a bit. They don't however ruin the feel of the game as much as the in game loading screens. They seem to pop up at the worst times, and leave you sitting there for about 20 seconds. I would have preferred that they put most interesting elevators in, which you sat in longer, if it meant we didn't have this “out of the blue” loading. While you can install the game to your hard drive to decrease the loading time, you shouldn't have to do that, just to get rid of this annoyance.

Something that drives me crazy is that you can mess up on some really easy jumps over, and over, and over. After awhile, you get a little mad. But, after it happens about 15-20 times, you can get extremely angry at this game. Don't say anything about sucking at the game, because that isn't it. Some things in the game can be insanely hard, and others can be easy, but ruined my glitches that make them almost impossible.

One thing worth telling is the game is very short. I can't really put an hour number on it, and there are 9 chapters, 10 including the Prologue. There isn't really a lot of replayiblity. You can replay on Hard mode, which isn't really that much harder. There are also time trials, where you play a small part of one Chapter, racing to each checkpoint. It's fun, but again, kind of gets old after awhile. There are also speed runs, which let you play the whole chapter, trying to get though as fast as you can. There are leader boards for both Speed runs and Time Trials, So if you're into trying to beat others, you might enjoy that. You can also download other peoples "ghosts", so you can race an outline of other people's times. There are 30 hidden runners' bags to collect, where some are pretty easy to find, but there are a few that can be easily missed. In my opinion, there aren't that many different things to go and do to make you replay, but it is fun just to play the story mode a few times.

There is one huge thing that disappointed me about this game though. The level design. When people heard about this game, and saw trailers and whatnot, it was more about running fast, and jumping across rooftops. Well, that's only there for part of the game. You will spend more time thinking about what to do, and making jumps, and moving slower, than free running across rooftops. It seems like the whole "running" part wasn't really needed. When I was playing, I guess it felt more like a puzzle, and thinking about where to go next, or how to get past that obstacle, rather than running uber fast away from people wishing to put bullet holes though me. It seems it doesn't know if its wants to be an action, puzzle, or Running (Lol, Sorry, I couldn't think of a good name. Maybe adventure? I don't know) the game has too many slow parts to fulfill the running part that it was shown as. The action isn't to fun, and is too fast of a game for action. It seems to fit in puzzle the most, but even the puzzle parts aren't too good. Half the time you won't “get it” for awhile. The ones that do work get really old after awhile. I think, the game is worth playing for sure. It's a great rental game, but maybe not worth buying.
Final words: The game is great fun, but there are many things I don't enjoy about it. It has an okay story, and it is fun to play. But gets old after awhile, and doesn't have too much of a reason to replay. Sorry If I was a little hard on this game, because it was really fun, and worth playing, but it's most likely not worth buying.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/08

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