Mirror's Edge

Yeah, I know Mirror's Edge is a little old, but I got my GameFly account so I can review games, and I haven't covered Mirror's Edge even after finishing it about half a year ago. So, is it still worth the money? Well, yeah – NOW. I was only going to recommend it for a rental after I finished it, but now that the game's only 20 bucks, it's worth a purchase.

Mirror's Edge is a game about parkour - that's right, free running. Sometimes I like to call it Extreme Walking. It all takes place in first person, through the eyes of a Eurasian woman named Faith. Part of a group of people called Runners, she's trained in the art of parkour to quickly travel across rooftops to easily transfer parcels and information to underground gangs (of course, I use the term “underground” as a simile). So she's kind of like a human carrier pigeon. Faith starts the game by responding to her sister who's in the police force, investigating the murder of a mayoral candidate of the unnamed city. Since the current mayor Callaghan is now running unopposed, they begin to get suspicious. There's a surprising amount of political intrigue, which is rewarding to those who are interested, but if you're not, the game is still fully playable. The first time I played it, I just focused on the core gameplay – running to evade the bad guys – too much to realize there was actually a fairly decent backstory tucked in.

As previously mentioned, this game is about free running, and Mirror's Edge does a fairly good job of emulating that. Not that I'd know, considering how little I try stay in shape. The controls are easy to get into, and I play left handed, which means I moved with the right stick and looked with the left. Even then, I had no problem with the controls. This is mostly due to the fact that most of the action controls are mapped to the shoulder buttons. The right trigger focuses on upward movements, like jumping and wallrunning, and the left trigger focuses on downward movements, like crouching and sliding. There are context buttons mapped the face buttons. It's as if they made the game with southpaw players in mind, unlike SOME critically acclaimed games... I'm looking at YOU, Gears of War. Thankfully, while the levels are linear, there's usually more than one way to get to where you need to go. My only beef with this is that sometimes, Faith doesn't want to do some of the things you want her to, like wallrunning, or grabbing on to edges.

While the level design is well done, and makes great use of your parkour abilities, there are moments when the speed is disrupted by indoor stages, and you will sit through plenty of dreaded elevator rides. Even so, it still feels like the setting of the game wasn't made just for you; an immersion complication most games have, good or bad. It also looks fantastic, with a unique colorful style that everyone can identify it just from a screenshot. There's tons of detail in the textures and bump mapping, even on the 360 it looks like it belongs on the PS3. It looks even better on an Nvidia-equipped PC with PhysX support. Even the menu looks great. It's easily one of the best looking games so far this year. As for the music... meh. It gets upbeat when it gets hectic, but it's music you'd pretty much come to expect in games. It gets the job done, though.

Unfortunately, there's a huge problem with Mirror's Edge: Combat. When the game gets into combat situations, it quickly turns into monotonous tedium trying to take out the police. Sometimes you can run away, and the game encourages you to do so, but when you're forced to, the game just stops. It's not as halting as the Night stages in Sonic Unleashed, but it still takes away the sense of speed and agility that the game establishes well with the parkour sections. You can slow down time, which is helpful yet done a million times in other action games, but that even further takes the feeling of speed away from the game. And you can also take the enemy's guns, but they're myopic in execution, resulting in agitating moments of trying to find the exact moment to hit your enemies. You'll end up draining your ammo completely by the time you actually hit them. With a bit of practice, it might not be much of a problem – all the better to get the crappy combat sections out of the way so you can get to the fun parkour stages. Thankfully, these sections aren't nearly as boring as Sonic Unleashed, there's still a sense of suspense regardless of the fact that you've stopped moving, and I'm sure at least someone would enjoy it.

To make sure I cover everything, let me briefly say that there's no multiplayer, but there are leaderboards for a time trial mode. But that just means that you'll get to the crummy combat sequences faster than usual. While I enjoy the mostly well-done parkour elements Mirror's Edge provides, I despised the combat because of how quickly they interrupt the flow of the game. I wouldn't have as much of a problem if using the weapons wasn't so bad. Mirror's Edge is a great platform game, but it fails to appeal as a first person shooter. Now that the game is $20, I'd say give it a shot, as the main draw of the game really is worth getting through the poor shooter elements.

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Posted on 09 Sep 2009 by Bryan Skinner

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