Mirror's Edge Time Trial Mode Hands-On

Dice's upcoming shooter-meets-parkour game is certainly an interesting direction for first-person action adventure games. After playing it for just a few minutes, it became clear that it was unlike anything we'd ever played before, and something that really has to be seen--preferably played--to be fully understood and appreciated. Set in a future dystopian society, the game's protagonist Faith is a "runner" who uses rooftops to courier messages that her clients don't want intercepted by the oppressive authorities. When things go awry, it's up to Faith to save her sisters from the regime.

We got a chance to play the game's Time Trial mode at EA's UK offices recently. Not content with forcing you to leap from rooftop to rooftop across dizzyingly high chasms without falling to a grizzly death, Mirror's Edge also features a timed mode for those who want to run the gauntlet in the shortest time possible. In addition to the addictive need to beat your own personal best scores time and time again, you'll be able to compare yourself with your online contacts and, we're told, also compare ghost data. You'll unlock time trials through various means, including completing the story mode's prologue and third chapter, and beating several specific time limits in the game. We tackled several Time Trial levels including the rooftop Edge and the subterranean Stormdrains One.

It's worth mentioning before we move on that one of the best features in Mirror's Edge is the way it conveys a sense of motion, which is obviously quite important because of the free-running-inspired action. In addition to Faith's huffing and puffing, and the visible swing of her hands, you'll experience a jostling camera, motion blur, and your vision will even flip when you execute a barrel roll. It's a bit disorienting at first, but a reticle in the centre of the screen will help you keep your perspective. Dice has also employed a control scheme that's both intuitive and simple, and it seems to work quite well. You'll only need to use the analogue sticks (left to move your body, right for your head) and two buttons in time trials. L1 is used for upward moves--jumps, leaps, vaults, pulling up--and L2 is used for downward moves such as slides, barrel rolls, dropping down, and so on.

Each level has a number of checkpoint stages, usually around four to five, and before each attempt you'll be given the overall length and pass times to achieve one, two, or three stars based on your time. The first level that we attempted, Edge, is 220m long in total. It's worth paying attention to each level's length because you'll be given the distance you've physically run after each attempt. If it's way off (in our case, 346m), it's clear that you're not taking the shortest path possible and that you should retrace your steps to find a shortcut. It's also worth seeing how well you do on each checkpoint in the level, given that it's easy to tell if there's a particular part of the course that you're struggling with.

The environment in Edge looks much like what we've seen of Mirror's Edge before: bleached, sterile buildings mixed with glass skyscrapers, rooftops covered with various buildings, equipment, and scaffolding for your use, and some indoor areas. The first part of the level takes place inside a fire-escape stairwell, and from the very start, there are a number of ways to approach the first checkpoint. You can run up the stairs, wall-run between staircases, or run flat-out at the wall and vault over the first handrail--which, if done correctly, will shave a few seconds off your time. At the top of the stairs there's a passage that you'll have to pass through to exit onto the city's skyline. Every little movement can make a big difference; for instance, the angles you approach corners at can save seconds, or result in Faith clipping the doorframe and slowing your momentum to a halt. The key to time trials is keeping your momentum up (displayed onscreen as km/h). A brisk pace will let you jump, vault, leap, slide, and roll with ease, and when timed correctly shouldn't slow you down much. Mistiming a move may result in you grinding to a halt (permanently if jumping across a high divide), and you'll lose valuable seconds while you get back up to a full speed of around 28km/h.

Edge has a good combination of interior and outdoor areas, and you'll need to tackle air-conditioning units, rails, ramps, pipes, rooftop ledges, and walkways in the best way you see fit. The only thing you need to do in each level is make sure you pass through the checkpoints (visible by a transparent red marker) on your way to the finish line; your course is up to you. The goal for Edge was 47 seconds for three stars, 55 seconds for two stars, and 1:10 for one star.

Stormdrains One leads us to believe that not all of the single-player career levels will be rooftop runs, given that it takes place in the sewers...although very tall sewers, we might add. Though most of the environments use red or orange extensively as a visual clue to interactive objects, Stormdrains uses green instead. At 422m in total length, it has more-generous goal times but was much more grueling than Edge. The level is centred on a series of huge concrete support pillars, and each has a number of points conveniently attached to it with which you can interact. We took Faith from start to finish, leaping from gangway to gangway, climbing over cases, leaping across gaps to hanging ladders, swinging from poles, and finally using a zip line to cross from the top of one of the central pillars to a concrete platform perched on the side wall of the sewers. It isn't as easy as it sounds, and we scraped in at 2:13:11, a far cry from the 2:00 needed to get one star, and even further behind the 1:22 needed to achieve a three-star award. It looks as if it will take quite some time to perfect our technique and earn those stars.

The Time Trial mode in Mirror's Edge should make a great accompaniment to the story mode, and though it's not a multiplayer mode per se, the ability to share times and ghost data with contacts will surely keep purists occupied in the pursuit of beating their friends. Mirror's Edge is launching in Europe on November 14 and in North America on November 11.