How to ruin a potential game. part: 87352
EA, Dice
Review by: Sinathor
Played on: PC
3.9.2009
Mirror's Edge tells a story, or perhaps I should say "tries to tell a story" of a woman named Faith. Faith is a "Runner", a sort of an illegal activist who runs on rooftops carrying bags under the eyes of an evil government. Now, I can tell that the synopsis is a little confusing, but I must honestly say that the game doesn't explain things very well. There is no real proof that the government is evil, it is never told what the bags contain and who the runners are delivering them to. And after the first mission, you're not even delivering them anymore, which makes it all quite pointless.
On the roof
Putting the story aside, the game is based on jumping and climbing around on rooftops. You control Faith from first-person perspective as you try to figure out where to jump while you're running fast. During the first few missions it feels really great, there's alot of adrenaline involved and most of the movement is very well done. The movement feels heavy, as a human should and as Faith starts running faster, her breathing and the heaviness of her body starting to light slightly, it feels like you're really running. Combine that with a daredevil jump onto another rooftop and a slide under a pipe, it can be breathtaking at best.
But it isn't without it's problems, not even near to be more precise. As the game progresses, you're almost constantly under fire, forcing you to run as fast as possible and the places where you're supposed to go get harder and harder to recognize. Even with the runner vision which indicates correct route by marking objects bright red, it will be really difficult to find the right way to go. So it all falls to trial and error eventually. While the story doesn't even really explain why you are chased by an army of cops, with helicopter support, it feels really stupid when you can't take a break for five seconds.
The jumping is also kicked by some collision detection problems. Faith doesn't always realise which box you're trying to jump on, or the wall you try to wall run on. And this becomes a problem most of the time, because the cops are constantly on your tail, shooting at you, or it's a critical jump and you soon find yourself smashed on the pavement.
White skyscrapers and bloom
Now, Mirror's Edge looks quite pretty. It has the standard current generation graphics, but instead of everything being brown, everything is white and shines. Yes, the bloom effect goes a little over the top at times, but it doesn't really irritate. Also Mirror's Edge uses strong colours to add variety to the white scenery. Red, yellow, blue, all look great on white.
But the game takes a really strange turn then. Most of the game is based on closed indoors. While jumping on the rooftops was definitely the most interesting part of the game, why did they have to put most of the game in tight quarters? It works at times, it wouldn't be good to be only on rooftops either, but I expected most of it to be. Also when the game guides you to a street, the feeling of freedom completely vanishes.
After the night falls over the city, the game gets visually boring. The graphics lose their uniqueness when it gets darker, making it more boring to watch, while the game keeps getting more and more frustrating.
Combat
Combat must be the worst part of Mirror's Edge. They say that you can complete the game without killing anyone, and I suppose that is entirely possible but will be damn difficult. Most of the time you're unarmed and you need to disarm opponents off weapons on close combat. When you're near an armed enemy, his or her weapon will turn red for a split second, during this time you have to react to disarm your opponent. The game helps you on this by adding a bullet time feature which slows down time way too much. It feels like the game stops upon using the time slowing switch, breaking flow a lot, but it is the only way to disarm anyone. The red light flashes so fast, you need to know the animations for it in advance to be able to click it. Faith can also punch and kick her opponents but it barely ever seems to have any real effect and it mostly just goes to randomly mashing buttons and hoping for the best. So the best way is to disarm the first opponent and use their gun to finish off the rest.
But then... As the game advances, the enemies start carrying light machineguns and they come in large quantities. Other enemies start to move faster than you. The game just starts to get more and more annoying. As the enemies get harder, the combat is even less enjoyable, and there is way too much of it. Like I mentioned earlier, you are almost all the time chased by someone. And when you're not chased, you get stuck and don't know how to proceed, again starting a trial and error sequence.
The end
And when you finally get into the end, there is no conclusion. The story doesn't explain anything, and I kept wondering what just happened. I guessed most of the "twists" ages before they happened even when I didn't know why it would happen. It just seemed so obvious that it would.
Mirror's Edge tried something different, which is rare nowadays. But it doesn't mean it's good. It has great potential but it's ruined by small technical annoyances, stupid story, muddy combat and poor scenery choosing.
+ Good graphics
+ Jumping and climbing mostly works well
- Stupid story
- Really annoying most of the time
- Combat
- Indoors
Overall score: 6/10
Sinathor contact: tharenus(at)hotmail.com