Review: Mirrors Edge

Over the past few years, buried away in Stockholm, the Swedish development team of  DICE were busily working away at a new title that tried something incredibly ambitious, by taking a tried and tested formula of first person feeling and controls, and turning it completely on its head. Very rarely is a brand new genre established after just a single game, but Mirror’s Edge has done just that.

In spite of what some sections of the game’s original trailers suggest (along with the inclusion of guns), this is definitely not a first person shooter. If you go into this game thinking that you will be greatly disappointed and will have missed the vertigo feeling that this game can produce. This game isn’t a platformer, or an adventure game, or a sports game. It just doesn’t fit in any current genre.

For as long as I can remember I have not needed to read a manual for a game, for this though I did, I needed to learn a whole new way of playing. The prologue of the game is the same as the demo, so it includes the tutorial, which gladly can be skipped (for multiple playthroughs), but first time around I would not advise it. Even if you think you are the master of the first-person universe and that all first-person games shall bow down to your mightiness. If you begin by thinking, “oh but how hard can it really be?”, you will quickly be knocked off of your egotistical pedestal and pointed and laughed at by all of the games that you imprisoned under you tyrannical reign. As with any new style of game there is a learning curve. Fortunately though the controls are easy to understand and just mastering them takes some time.

As any self-respecting first person game, you play as someone (with the exception of Call of Duty where you play as some persons). You play as Faith, a runner in a city where information is heavily monitored (yes, that is off the back of the box). As the story unwinds you discover murder has come to this perfect city and now you are being hunted (also off the back of the box). The unobtrusive inclusion of Faith’s hands and feet whilst running and jumping that can be seen in her field of view, how you feel when she clatters through a door, the realism of acceleration and effect of incline all help to give a sense of self, unlike many other generic first person games.

One thing Mirror’s Edge does is hold a unique and semi-artistic style to it and provide a striking and stunning environment. The crisp reflection from windows, the clean, oversaturated colours of the walls, the ambient soundtrack; everything is just beautiful. In such a beautiful world I expected to see it packed with people, all wanting a piece of this colourful paradise. This is not the case and the lack of people is actually rather eerie. By lack of, I mean the total solitary of you and your surroundings. Sure, there are police constantly chasing like a dog to its tail, but within the half a dozen or so offices you go into, everyone seems to have had time off all at the same time, and then decide to never go out. There is fellow runner Mercury providing objects and informing you to keep on running whilst bullets clatter all around you and the odd rat or pigeon scattered about but the world just feels empty. The inclusion of ordinary people could have provided an extra element in chase scenes. Imagine, sprinting away from the police, leaping from one building to another, sliding under a suspended drainpipe, smashing through a door into a busy office, having to navigate around people screaming at the gunfire from the pursuing police, papers flying off of desks. The extra dimension that this could have provided would have been an excellent one indeed if done correctly. Perhaps something for a sequel.

The controls are established very early on, as one button used for all ‘up’ actions, such as jumping, wall running and leaping over obstacles, whilst another is for all ‘down actions, like sliding, tucking and rolling. This is a complex control dynamic established into an easy to use control layout. Controls mean nothing though without momentum.

Momentum is the holy grail of the game. With it, you will launch yourself of the top of buildings and make those impossible jumps, hurtle with ease and experience pure adrenaline as you cross several rooftops with such grace, but without it, you’ll stutter and fall flat on your face. During the several chase scenes is where momentum is incredibly important as the urgency of the chases is exhilarating. The level design is very good at channelling you in the right direction, but allowing the choice of several routes on the way. With the addition of Faith’s Runner Vision which provides that helping hand to traverse your path by highlighting certain objects in red as you near them.

The overall pace of the game varies and generally, it is good. Particular platforming sections slow you down and can sometimes be a welcome change having just legged it for several minutes (to you, not Faith). However, one of my main gripes of the game comes here. Why, when the running is so breathtaking and the platforming sections are so well thought out, do you make me stop dead still to press a button on an elevator, get into the elevator and wait fifteen seconds to get out of the elevator? Why in such a fast paced game is there the inclusion of ’stop and turn this valve’ before continuing?

This leads me onto another negative of Mirror’s Edge, the combat. To put simply, it’s clunky and sticky. Achieved with a single button with a combination of either the up or down action button provides for a variety of four or five attacks techniques. Alternatively you can attempt to disarm. In keeping with the simplicity of the controls, disarming is done using a single button press when the enemy’s weapon turns red once they’ve swung trying to knock your head off. If you perform a disarm successfully, you can fire off a few rounds before needing to discard the gun, as the added weight is detrimental to Faith’s running and jumping. Gun play is similar to combat and whilst not atrociously awful is sticky, slow and ultimately under-par The game does however encourage you to use Faith’s agility to run away from enemies instead of engaging them, which the poor combat and gun mechanics encourages even more.

Despite the fact that I have heard many a time that the story is about six hours long, I completed it first time round in about five and a half and the second time in just shy of four, which although is unbelievable short I wasn’t left disappointed. It is definitely replayable, though I see the longevity for this game will come out of the addition to test your skills in a variety of time trials and speed runs. For a strictly single-player game, the addition of downloadable ghosts to race against provides an element of multiplayer showing what they could do in a sequel, with one-on-one races from point A-to-B being on the top of my list.

Mirror’s edge was a risky leap of faith by EA but a well landed one at that. With immersing gameplay and an innovative attempt, Mirror’s Edge is at the very least a must-try and I hope they iterate and improve on a sequel.

Tags: DICE, EA, Mirrors Edge, Review