I’ll admit it: I was one of the people who bought into the Mirror’s
Edge hype. Those first screnshots in February really piqued my
curiosity, and I admit to getting delicious flashbacks to my time with
the Prince of Persia series when I saw the game in action three months
later. I’ve always found parkour fascinating and will forever have a
massive love for platformers, so I was understandably very excited
about this game. As time wore on however I started to have doubts, and
took a more cautious approach. I decided that the platforming itself -
or at least what we’ve seen to that point – looks like it might be top
notch, but the question is if the developers can sustain this
throughout the game or if it’ll be a very short and/or padded
experience. Playing the initial level at PAX and the demo a few months
later only reaffirmed that opinion.

Now that the game is out and I’ve had a chance to play through it, has
it met even my cautious expectations?

In short… sort of…

Mirror’s Edge casts you as Faith, a “runner” who delivers illegal
messages using the tops of buildings as your pathways while constantly
avoiding the police. The story is told through a mixture of in-game
dialog and animated cut-scenes in between chapters. The cut-scenes
themselves are average quality at best, looking like they were done in
Flash and while providing a sense of style, really contrast with the
visuals of the rest of the game. The story itself while not bad is
pretty unmemorable and you’ll very likely be able to predict all of
the twists that eventually get thrown at you.

Speaking of the cut-scenes some of them might have made for some nice
levels, which is tragic considering the length of the game. The entire
story will likely take about 5 hours to run through at the very most,
mostly padded due to the trail and error nature of the game, and
considering how the game ends is something I find rather insulting.
Even if the creators hadn’t already stated their plans for a trilogy
it was obvious that they plan on making this a series, as the ending
isn’t really an ending at all… really just setting the stage for the
sequel and not actually resolving any sort of conflict. It might not
be fair to compare this game to a Valve title, but the Half Life 2
episodes sadly had better conclusions than Mirror’s Edge, actually
having well defined and achieveable goals in each. Sure there’s the
overall goal of overthrowing the Combine, but at the end of each
episode you’re left with the feeling that you’ve actually accomplished
something meaningful and grand in scope, which is definitely not the
case here. Sure, you save someone, but that’s it. It’s implied that
you may have done more, but only in one sentence if you’re willing to
sit through the credits and listen carefully. The point is if an
episodic game can properly end AND create anticipation for the sequel
it is inexcusable for a “full” game to even accidentally not do it.

As for looks, thankfully the game itself looks far better than the
once-again-mentioned cut-scenes. The city and characters all look
quite good, and animate very well. One thing that is obvious when
looking at any screenshot is how bright the colour palette is, leading
one to think that this game follows the “blue sky in games campaign”.
This is a myth, however. You can still count all the different colours
in this game on one hand, it’s just that instead of brown with
smatterings of gray and black you get white with smatterings of red
and blue. At a glance it looks very pretty, but the lack of colour
variety is still there meaning that one hallway or rooftop really
doesn’t look any different than all the others. Also, despite being a
bustling city there is a disturbing lack of people to be seen, and
even looking town from a building will only yield a glimpse of a
couple of vehicles on the roads.

One other thing, and this just may have been an issue with my
television, but the difference in lighting levels between indoor and
outdoor environments is rather extreme. An acceptable brightness level
for outdoors means indoor areas are pitch black, and likewise what’s
acceptable for indoor areas blinds you as soon as you step outside.
Thankfully you can adjust these in the options during play but it
really breaks the flow of the game to have to constantly fiddle with
them and I’m sure isn’t something the designers intended.

Now it’s time to get into the meat and potatoes of the game, the
platforming gameplay. Being a parkour-inspired platformer you would
expect lots of wall runs, jumps, vaults and rolls and that’s exactly
what the game gives you. What might surprise a lot of people is that
despite being in first person it’s done exceptionally well. All your
platforming is done via the analog sticks and three buttons: one that
does a quick 180 degree turn and two that map to “up” and “down” which
mean different things depending on where you are, such as jumping as
opposed to running up or along a wall. They work exceptionally well
and aside from occasional issues detecting wall running they feel very
fluid and satisfying when pulled off successfully. The levels are
completely linear but in terms of the platforming are designed very
well, offering multiple solutions for getting around many of the
obstacles that aren’t always obvious.

Where the gameplay falls apart however is the combat. Every now and
then the police/private security catch up to you and you can either
try and get past them or fight. Fighting options involve either a
series of melee attacks or a disarm move. The problem with this though
is that all of the later enemies can block all of your melee attacks,
and disarming is essentially a quick-time-event that leaves you
painfully vulnerable for several seconds while you mess up someone’s
shit. You can pick up weapons from fallen enemies but the game clearly
discourages you from doing so as you’d swear Faith has never touched a
gun in her life. The most frustrating parts of the main game are
during the far too frequent combat sequences (especially later in the
game) where you’re not allowed to run away and be chased by enemies
and instead have to actually deal with them.

To add value to the short main game there are runner bags to collect
(which look just like the lovely bag I got for pre-ordering the game
^_^), as well as speed runs and time trials to go through. The latter
two seem like a good idea given the race-like nature of the
platforming mechanics, but after a few runs it becomes apparent that
they are far to unforgiving as in order to beat the target time and
progress you need an almost perfect run. If you miss a jump or fall
splat on the pavement once you might as well start over as you lost
your opportunity to beat the target time. For the 1-2 minute time
trials this is okay, but the speed runs take you through the game’s
chapters and can take up to 10 minutes to complete. Asking the player
to do a 10 minute perfect run is a little unforgiving, and only helped
me give up on them that much faster. Also in a nearly unforgivable sin
hard mode needs to be unlocked, which to me is just a sad attempt to
lengthen the game.

Now it seems like I’m really dumping on this game, and I suppose that
I am. However the platforming occasionally achieves moments of sheer
bliss that is unlike almost anything experienced before. If the game
had overhauled the fighting mechanic and had been longer (or at least
had a satisfying conclusion) I might be more forgiving, but overall
it’s far more frustrating than fun. I’m certainly intrigued enough to
give the sequel a rental when it comes out to see what has been
improved however, but it isn’t a game I’d recommend to buy unless
found for cheap, or as a rental just so you can say you’ve experienced
how they managed to pull off the first person platforming.