Mirror's Edge

"Urban Ninja"

Electronic Arts has been a pretty controversial developer. For a while, they have simply milked off franchises like Madden and Harry Potter, but after the quality of their games slowly started to decline and some employee controversy was made public, EA has shaped up its act, and has been drastically improving its gaming quality. Sure, some series like Need for Speed has fallen into a complete oblivion, but others like Battlefield have been taken from absolutely terrible to of extreme quality. They also aren't just milking on tried-and-true franchises; they have published the highly successful Rock Band and they have paid a lot of attention to a couple of outstanding original IPs like Boom Blox on the Wii and Dead Space on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, there is another original IP that EA has decided to create this generation, and while it's not as good as Boom Blox or Dead Space, it's still solid enough, and that game is Mirror's Edge.

The point of Mirror's Edge is to simulate the sport of free running, which anyone familiar with those Urban Ninja YouTube videos should have a pretty good grasp about. For the ones out there that have no clue what I'm talking about, free running, or parkour, is essentially running around on rooftops, quickly evading obstacles and making pretty damn impressive leaps and taking some equally damn impressive falls.

How does Mirror's Edge incorporate this relatively unique idea? Well, and this may surprise some people, but it does it in a first-person perspective. Unlike the Prince of Persia games, which have tried to emulate this culture with the Prince's wild acrobatic maneuvers, Mirror's Edge tries to make the player really feel like they are doing these actions. You can get motion sickness pretty easily from this title though due to the protagonist Faith's fluid movements, but after a while you should get used to the motions.

You don't have to hold down a button or anything to get Faith to run. This is a godsend considering the rest of the game's controls can be pretty annoying getting used to. Of all things, the LB button is how you jump and LT is how to slide under things. RT is understandable the attack button and everything else is pretty much useless, except for the A button which interacts with objects. I honestly don't know why the jump button isn't targeted to the A or Y button like is custom, but you will have to give yourself time to get used to the controls before just jumping into the game. This definitely derails some momentum that it would have otherwise had.

The feats you can accomplish once you get a hang of the controls are pretty damn amazing though. You will find yourself running along the roofs, sliding under obstacles, jumping over pipes, running along walls, and swinging from bars in a nice fashion. The way you accomplish this is sort of linear, but there are always a couple of ways to get from point A to point B. Just in case you don't feel like trying to exploit the game in this way, some objects will be a deep red color and this indicates that your “Runner Vision” is on and that's the direction you should head. I honestly like this system a lot better than the Dead Space and Prince of Persia's ways of pointing you in the right direction.

Being in first-person, a lot of you are going to expect this game to be centered on running and gunning, but the simple fact is that Mirror's Edge is a lot more entertaining if you don't even bother shooting any enemies. The option is available to you by running over to an enemy and tapping the Y button at just the right moment to commandeer their weapon, but generally you'll want to stay away from running straight towards enemies. You can chain together some melee moves and mix in your acrobatic skills to take down your enemies in some pretty entertaining ways though, so the combat is still nicely entertaining even though you're not pumping everyone full of led.

That's really all of the main game consists of, but you'll still get a kick out of the various moves you'll be able to pull off. As you beat the chapters and progress through the game though, more modes become available to you, such as a hard mode that forces you to improvise your runs as Runner Vision is turned off all the time and there are some Speed Runs and Time Trial modes to get your blood pumping. Unfortunately, the Time Trial modes are just smaller portions of the chapters for you to play through, making the two modes feel two similar to each other to really matter.

The story of Mirror's Edge is an original one, but it's not one of the game's strong points. You play as Faith, a woman who works as a Runner. Runners are working against the government and pass along secret messages and such to their clients. In Faith's world, the government more or less controls everything, and her parents have rebelled against it as a result. There are some decent moments in the game, but the plot boils down to being rather boring and a little too quick on its feet so that you never will really feel engrossed with it. Faith is a pretty terrible character with qualities that are generic and unlikable, as are pretty much the rest of the characters in the game. It's quite pathetic really how lame the plot and characters feel.

Thankfully, most of the game looks pretty damn good to counteract the lame plot. The colors absolutely pop against the brilliant white buildings, especially the greens, blues, and reds. The textures are rather terrible most of the time and the character models are a little generic, but most of the game looks pretty good. Unfortunately, it does suffer from some lagging and frame rate issues which are totally unacceptable in a game that doesn't have nearly as much content as other games on the market that are loaded with much more content. The cut-scenes are shown to you in an anime sort of way, and even those chug along at a slow rate at times, plus the animation is just general horrible. Think Teen Titans but with a lot less effort put into it. On top of all that, the game crashes!

It just gets worse from there. The audio quality is puke worthy. The soundtrack is a terrible and looping mix of techno that will grind your ears to the point that you'll want to turn the volume down. Voice acting is decent, but it's muddled by some terribly awkward dialogue and conversations that I expected to conclude with some girl-on-girl action. I don't know how EA managed to screw up the audio quality of this game so badly, but seriously, Mirror's Edge probably has the worst audio experience on the 360 to date.

Mirror's Edge spans anywhere from four to six hours, but this experience may even be lengthened depending on how fast gamers get used to the oddly mapped controls and the trial-and-error gameplay. Gamers looking for a challenge will definitely tap into the old-time feel that the gameplay there brings to the table, plus some of the achievements are actually pretty interesting and fun to work for.

Mirror's Edge is a lot of things. It has solid gameplay that, while it doesn't necessarily bring anything all that new to the table, does entertain for as long as it lasts. There are some pretty awesome set pieces in there as well that I refuse to ruin for you, and the color scheme is brilliant. If only the game didn't suffer from some technical setbacks, a ridiculously poor audio showing, and a lame story, or else Mirror's Edge would be one of the must-own action titles on the 360. I highly suggest at least picking this baby up for at least a rent, because there probably isn't going to be anything that much like it any time soon.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/09

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