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Mirrors Edge was born out of Parkour/free running and places you in the role of Faith, a messenger for the people of the city who don’t trust electronic communications. Faith travels across rooftops, out of sight and out of mind of the authorities. However things are about to change.
I’m a bit late reviewing this, since it came out on PC in the early days of the site and I had already bought several games to review. So I’ve had the “opportunity” to read other reviews of this and see if my hopes that it would be the great landmark game it seemed like it could be. Apparently not!
So now it was my turn to have a go and see if I agreed with the general consensus. And the answer to that is yes and no.
You’re taken through the basic training that shows you how to do the special wall running/jumping and rolling that helps you traverse the landscape. I have to admit, I tried this on the Xbox-360 and I found it far easier on the PC. Throughout the game I did come across some areas that took me many, many attempts to get past. I remember one area where it took me almost 30 times to get a tricky jump right. So it’s not easy anyway. However, when you get it right, it’s fabulous fun and the whole world feels completely accessible. I was really, really hoping for more possible routes in places though, they could have reduced the difficulty by doing this and made the game a little more fun for those of us who don’t care if we get every move spot on.
The scenery itself however really appealed to me. The bright whiteness and huge scale of the city really gave Mirrors Edge an Epic feel to it. The problem was though, it’s a bit like driving:
You don’t really notice the scenery when you have to drive.
Combat wise was a similar story to the rest of the game. They suggest you try to isolate the enemies before you take them down, but the process of isolating them is tricky. If you get more than one attacking you in close quarters you can pretty much guarantee you’ll be returning to the last checkpoint in no time. On the other hand, there are times where the combat just flows beautifully and you seem to be running rings around the bad guys. I do wish there had been a little more stealth in there. When you’re taught combat you’re shown how to disarm someone from behind. But I only came across one opportunity to do this. The bad guys always, always knew where I was otherwise even if they hadn’t seen me for a while, so there was no real way to crawl around in secret and then disarm them easily. Additionally to this, the actual window of time for disarming some of these enemies was ridiculously short and I was forced to jump kick everyone and then run away before they could react nearly every time. Either that or use bullet time (oh yeah, they have bullet time) to slow everything down enough to get the click in.
The story of Mirrors Edge is short. It’s a complaint I agree with, but on the other hand this is a fast game so the large areas that would take quite some time in your standard fps game take only a few seconds here. And although the story is short, it’s not bad, which is a relief considering the daughter of the great Terry Pratchett was involved! I really hope that a sequel that focuses more on the story is on it’s way because if there was just a bit more plot I think this could have been the hit of the year.
Some of the story is told in animated comic-book format. You’ll either love it or hate it. I, for one, thought it was great.
The story is well matched by the music score that really worked for me. The minimalist sound really lent itself to the huge openness that the game, at least, portrays. I’m also a fan of the theme song, which helps I guess!
Basically the main problems with this game revolve around its length and it’s unforgiving nature in regards to jumps and combat. It has huge plus points in its setting, quality of story/setting and fun once you’ve gotten used to it. If you can get your hands on the demo or not you’ll know the second you start playing if this game is for you, but I think it’s excellent.
Score: 80 out of 100
Final words: Mirrors Edge is a great game, but look before you leap! Try the demo first as it’s not for everyone!