Mirror's Edge

Once the game's controls click with you, Mirror's Edge has one of the most intuitive free flowing movement of any game to date, even more than a decade later. To compare this game to third-person or 2D platformers is to entirely miss the point. It's not about extreme precision or completing the game for the sake of completing it. It's about a unique experience, about mastering semi-realistic movement through a semi-realistic world in an immersive perspective. It's about flow and being able to intuitively feel when to take certain actions.

Few games give me such pure aesthetic bliss while playing. The art, the music and the flow of running through the city (or the abstract worlds in the DLC) come together perfectly. This game is proof that not every game needs to adhere to supposedly universal rules of game design, and that if designers follow their vision without compromise, an audience will find it. That's why the game is still talked about and remembered twelve years later.

I like the concept of a first person parkour game, and visually its very appealing (high contrast, super clean), but thats all its got going for it.

The controls are unresponsive, clunky, and the animations feel artificial. The worst thing about the game though is the terrible game design. I had to play with the hint button on all the way because you have no idea where to go, and in most of the cases you need to run fast away from enemies. There is no sort of consistency what your character can do, one moment she does impossible jumps, while at other times she is uncapable of climbing the most simple ledge. I had this sort of trouble in Uncharted, but in that case the camera angle usually did a great job of hinting where you need to go. Then the combat of the game also feels equally unresponsive, and the gun mechanics are very mediocre (again they are absolutly optional and they shouldnt be the focus of the game). Its a very frustrating game, since you will keep dying and dying because its not clear where you have to go and jumping between tall buildings is not a very safe thing to do. Because of the low FOV it also gave me motion sickness.

The story is also very poor. It has a very predictable twist, and i couldnt relate to any of the characters or their struggle. Im not even bothered by the cartoony low budget cutscenes, its more their juvenile attempt at a conspiracy that annoys me.

Its a unique game, but it doesnt land the jump.

"There is no possible fraking way to jump accurately from a first person perspective. All of the things that would let you do it in real life (sense of balance and momentum, awareness of your body) are gone. Also, you can't see your fucking feet."

That quote comes from Cracked's (I know) Seven Commandments All Video Games Should Obey, and it explains the crippling flaw at the heart of Mirror's Edge more succinctly and damningly than I ever could.

Let's focus on the good parts first, though. The game looks very good, its hyper-clean, bright representation of a dystopian society making more sense to me than most of the more traditional views, ones that depict dystopia as dark and dingy - you'd think that if one person or one party wielded so much power, they'd get all their infrastructure and civic upkeep done right, you know? Or maybe that's just nearly two decades of playing Civilization interfering with my thought process...also, the storyline and the characters keep the world convincing too. I'm a big fan of the highly stylized, anime-esque cut-scenes as well, and feel that they bring a lot of personality to the game.

It's all undermined by the gameplay though, which is genuinely horrific at times. Timing your jumps when moving between narrow platforms, as you're often asked to do, is a tedious, thankless, and counter-intuitive process - without being able to see the ground you're standing on, you can't tell when you've reached the edge when making a running jump, and the window of opportunity is so narrow at times that you literally have to make that jump on your very last footstep to avoid dying, and it's needlessly difficult to judge when that last footstep falls. There are a number of mechanisms that could have sorted this out, like a shift to a third-person view for the trickier platforming moments, or a fail-safe mechanism that stops you from being able to just run off a ledge to your death (a la Prince of Persia); instead, you're pretty munch left to your own devices, which involve watching your character fall to their death 25 or 30 times. The field of view doesn't help either - I'm not going to hold it against the game too much, because I've never heard anybody else make the same complaint and am happy to accept that it's probably just me, but the second time I sat down to play I only lasted 20 minutes before I was physically sick. I struggle with motion sickness all the time in cars, sure, but this remains the only time anything on a TV has ever literally made me vomit.

Weirdly, it feels like two good games mashed into one mediocre one. Take that storyline, these characters, those cut-scenes, and turn it into a third-person stealth game, and you'd have something. Make a game about parkour, from a first person perspective, that has a free running mode and a set of objectives like a Tony Hawk game, and you'd have something there, too. Mash them into each other, though, and you get a game where a few good elements simply exist to nullify each other. You can't appreciate the scenery when you're so busy trying not to die (often at the hands of gun-wielding enemies that you can't even look at without endangering yourself), and you can't appreciate the gameplay when you're always in danger of dying in a way that would be eminently avoidable if only the camera was a few metres behind your head.

In the realm of missed opportunities, this is up there with Gascoigne vs. Germany. I really do look forward to somebody making a dedicated parkour sports simulation, though.

almost like a love/hate game, but i feel its really unique and actually super fun to play because once you learn how to git gud its an experience like none other. its really short, and once its over its almost pointless to come back, but the first play through was really fun for me.

7.0/10

I don't normally have ideas for new games, but one idea I had was a first-person platforming game. After stating this idea to my friends, it was quickly shot down as a stupid idea, since it would be very disorienting as you are running around and would probably be hard to judge platforms, leading to many frustrating deaths. It seems that someone at Dice also had this idea and managed to get their idea to market.

The background story to Mirror's Edge is a bit vague. What you do know, is that an oppressive government is in power, and a group of 'runners' use their parkour skills to deliver packages; evading government surveillance. You play as one of these runners called Faith. Her sister is a cop and has been framed for the murder of a mayoral candidate. Despite the two sisters having conflicting careers, Faith puts family first and goes on a quest to uncover the truth.

You move with the left stick and look around with the right. The Left Bumper performs jumping and climbing manoeuvres and the Left Trigger performs ducking and sliding. Right Trigger punches which is used in combat or to force doors open. Right Bumper quickly turns which is useful for more acrobatic manoeuvres such as running up a wall then jump-turning to reach an opposite platform.

You will be running along rooftops to travel through the city, then taking a detour through buildings. You will be climbing, wall-running, sliding, balancing and swinging your way through the environments.

When you are moving at pace and fluidly navigating the environment, the game is very fun and looks quite the spectacle. However, all too often, the pace is brought to a standstill as you are search for the next location.

The game usually highlights the points of interest in red. A wall will be red to highlight that you should wall run across it, a red plank suspended over the edge of the building will guide you for a running jump, a red box will prompt you to use it as a spring-board to new heights. However, this feature is really inconsistent. You may have performed a sequence of moves using several red objects then all of a sudden, there's no red in sight. You can also press the B button to make Faith turn in the direction she needs to go but this is inconsistent too. Sometimes it's the exact direction and it's obvious where you need to go, but sometimes it's a direction that you can't actually go to and you need to take a detour to get around it. There were moments where it even pointed me in the direction I came when it wasn't the correct way to go at all, or just plainly flat-out refused to work.

The art design is really cool, which mixes stark white environments with a contrast of bold and vivid colours. Sometimes the graphics were overly bright, with the white been so shiny it was blinding. Then you get indoors and are navigating through ventilation shafts which are too dark.

You will be dying plenty of times in the game. Some deaths are simply caused by slipping off the edge of a building, others come from feeling rushed to make a jump so you expect a platform to be there when it isn't, and many others come from Faith not grabbing onto ledges like you expected her to do (which happens an awful lot). The check-points are frequent, but it still doesn't stop you from raging when you are forced to replay sections which you blame the game's design or mechanics for. I've played many rage-inducing games before, but this one is right up there; frequently causing expletives to be launched at the TV.

The check-points are pretty dodgy, but work in your favour. Sometimes the game places you further than you were. There was one instance where you are overwhelmed by soldiers, after I finally got gunned down, I was placed in the scene but without the soldiers. One time I failed to make a rooftop jump, but it decided to place me on the rooftop after the reload. There's times when it places you in a different section (like a different part of the roof) which is disorienting to work out where you are when you previously haven't actually seen that particular location.

There's combat within the game, but Faith isn't a combat expert and has a significant disadvantage when the foes she is facing are armed police. You are guaranteed to fail if you try taking on more than one enemy at a time. You are encouraged to run past/around them, but there are situations where you are forced to fight, especially in the last few chapters. If Faith takes a few hits, then she will die. I found that fights usually involved me sliding as I approached so their mêlée attacks miss, then throw a few punches. If their weapon glows red, you can press the Y button to disarm them and knock them out. You can then use their gun but have limited ammunition before you have to discard it. Faith can slow down time by pressing X which makes the disarming easier. The AI is pretty simplistic, so often they are happy to stand still and take shots at you from afar rather than using any kind of smart swarming tactic.

The game is short, so the 9 chapters will only take you around 6.5 hours. You could play the Time Trial mode to extend this further, but most people will find the content lacking.

I thought that the high-density city was rather lacking in population. Apart from the cops that you fight, and the tiny people and cars you see when looking down from upon-high; you don't see anyone. Pass through a building; totally vacant. Running around on ground level; streets are empty. It would have been a nice touch to dodge crowds, or barge through a building to the shock of the residents/employees.

Each chapter features the same game-play. Run along the rooftops, run into a building, escape the cops. It can be exhilarating performing parkour to outrun the cops and helicopters under a tirade of gunfire, but it also can be very frustrating when it's not obvious where to go. You are put under a lot of pressure when the cops are gunning you down, so you have to keep moving and think fast.

That's basically the overall verdict. When the action is tense but flowing, Mirror's Edge is a brilliant experience. The problem when the action grinds to a halt when you wander round like a headless chicken, not comprehending what the game expects from you. Forcing you to fight during the game's final moments is another downer, since that's not what the game is all about. I think there's potential for a game like this, but this instalment misses the mark since it's more stressful than fun.

In an era of games where collision detection and kinaesthetic satisfaction are paramount, Mirror's Edge probably, actually, was ahead of its time, the first person parkour angle making for some very interesting moments and enough spins on the simple gameplay of urban platforming to be engaging throughout its short run time. The world was so obviously cheapened by bad direction, probably influenced by financial bigwigs not interested in the actual game, the dystopian backdrop giving way to a bad paranoia-fuelled murder mystery and the setting not always committing to the simplistic colour concept, and obviously the poor focus on guns, the achievement of not using them doing little to numb the pain. But it works more than it doesn't, and remains as original and playable now as back in 2008.