Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

In the crowded market of the first person genera that is populated largely by shooters very rare do we see publishers attempt to try something new and different from the norm of just doing a first person shooter. In that regard this is where Mirrors Edge stands. Mirrors Edge attempts something new and different with the first person perspective and the results are surprisingly interesting. Mirrors Edge is available in two formats. On disc and as a downloadable title from the Playstation network for $14.99 with the downloadable version coming in at just a few MB's shy of 5GB's of hard drive space. The story follows a female runner called Faith as she attempts to uncover who framed her sister for a candidate for mayor's murder.

As far as graphics go Mirror's Edge is fairly solid but at the same time it is a bit of a mixed bag. For the most part Mirror's Edge largely uses a white and red color pallet with a focus on bright colors and this for the most part works. The red is largely used for something called runner vision which is just a fancy way of saying that red highlighted things are typically what you can interact with. This focus on bright colors for the most part works within the games setting as your typically running on rooftops or what feel like sterile hallways. It also helps lend itself to the world as whole. On the downside the cut scenes don't look anywhere near as good as the actual in game graphics do. Instead the cut scenes come off as rough and look like somewhat like rough old comic book based hand drawn scenes. Think of an old game from the last gen consoles called Killer 7 and you should get the idea.

On the gameplay front Mirror's Edge attempts something new and interesting with the first person view and for the most part it works but not all of the developers ideas worked in practice. For the large part you engage in parkour like movements with a lot jumping, running and stringing together different movements as you navigate the world as you attempt to get from one location to the next. That is to say that this is not an easy game at times as you will encounter trouble spots along the way as you have to learn how to around certain obstacles in your path. This can be frustrating at times till you learn how to proceed and get past a part where you may get stuck but the sheer thrill of stringing together different movements together effortlessly is a joy and really gives you a sense of what people who actually practice and do parkour sometimes go through. However though like I said not all of the ideas the developer had worked in practice and this cannot be more said of the shooting. Yes there is shooting but faith does not carry a weapon on her so she must either disarm or knockout an opponent who was one in order to use it. To knockout an opponent Faith must engage in hand to hand combat and the controls for it are fairly straight forward and easy to grasp. However to disarm an opponent tends to be more tricky as you have time your button press or analog motion at very precise time and in a small window of opportunity. Once you have a gun then things tend to get a bit farfetched. Faith can fire any gun that you put in her hands but she cannot aim down the sights, reload should she still have gun in her hand and come across another gun of the same type or even find out how much ammo she has in the clip. This largely does not make any sense as considering the fact that she can fire a weapon you'd think she'd have at least learned to reload or have some way of telling how much ammo she has left but instead she does not. This makes these sections in which you have armed opponents after you difficult at times and not all that fun.

Audio wise Mirror's Edge has pretty solid audio all around. The voice actors do a solid job on bringing their characters to life but the opening song is a real stunner and works well with the game. To make thing even more interesting the opening song is available from the Playstation Network store for free.

As a whole Mirror's Edge attempts to try something new with the genera and while it may not appeal to everyone it is still a solid a game.