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MIRROR'S EDGE
Platform: PC
71

Mirror's Edge Review

Flashes of first-person platforming brilliance are overshadowed by generally frustrating trial-and-error gameplay

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With so many games on the market these days, and with most of them crowded into a select few genres, developers are trying to find new and innovative ways to separate their products from the masses. The most common way in which developers do this is with various gimmicks, and while these ‘gimmicks’ can greatly add to an experience if properly implemented, like with the destruction physics in Red Faction Guerrilla, if not supported by solid game play and story foundations they will do nothing to save the game from mediocrity. Unfortunately, this is the case with Mirror's Edge. It is a game totally compromised of gimmicks held poorly together by a weak story and poorly explained setting. Some of these gimmicks are actually very interesting, and when they come together properly Mirror's Edge can be exhilarating and breath-taking, but much of the time it is simply frustrating and tedious.

Mirror's Edge game
Red = Good. White = Bad. Orange, green and Yellow = bright

The main selling point of Mirror's Edge is that it is a first-person platformer, something that hasn’t really been seen before, and for good reason; it is much harder to judge distance, speed and momentum from the first person view than it is in third person. Dice tries to mitigate this problem by providing a number of visual cues as to where you are supposed to go, the main one being that objects which are of interest to you, aka objects which you can use to progress through the level, glow a bright red. In theory, this should solve the problem of not knowing where you are supposed to go, but in reality this is not the case. Often the objects will remain their normal colour until you go right up to them, and this makes it very hard to know where you are supposed to be going at times. Nothing breaks the flow of free running like having to spend five minutes running around in a small area trying to find where you are supposed to go next, and how you are supposed to get there.

Another more extreme way of finding out where you are supposed to go is to press a button which will point Faith, the protagonist, in the direction of the place which you are supposed to get to. This function is useful at times, but often it shows you the long-term goal instead of the immediate one, and will point you at some object off in the distance without giving you any hints as to how you are supposed to get there. Usually this means taking blind leaps of faith (no pun intended) off buildings in attempts to progress through the level, which reduces much of the time spent playing Mirror's Edge to trial-and-error path-finding.

Once you finally figure out where you are supposed to go and the route you will be taking, you are left to the task of making all of the jumps and landings. The control scheme of Mirror's Edge discourages button mashing; many moves will require you to hit certain buttons a certain number of times. This leads to some incredibly frustrating moments when you hit the space bar slightly too late or too early, causing Faith to fall to her death for the umpteenth time. These high precision controls, compounded with the difficulty of figuring out where you are supposed to go, make the game incredibly frustrating, and this is only made worse by the illogical use of a checkpoint system. Every twenty minutes or so there is a automatic hard save, and in-between these saves at seemingly random intervals are checkpoints that the game will send you back to if you die, although if you restart the game and load the last save it will go the most recent hard save and not the most recent checkpoint. That means if you get stuck at a jump right before a hard save, die six times in a row and rage quit, you will have to complete the level from the start. You will want to have an object nearby which you can break so that your computer and peripherals remain intact while playing this game.

Mirror's Edge game
Once you get hold of a gun, combat is easy. Getting a hold of one is the hard part.

When the stars align, and you make all the right turns and hit the right keys at the right time, Mirror's Edge is a lot of fun. The way Faith controls is fantastic; you don’t feel like a disembodied torso floating through the air, you actually have mass, and will see your arms flailing and your legs kicking as you run and jump around the mostly varied environments. Some level design is a bit questionable, but other levels are really neat and memorable. One of my favourite moments in the game took place fairly early on in a huge underground concrete room which looked to be part of a reservoir or dam. You are trying to find a way out, and gradually climb higher and higher amongst the massive concrete pillars as soldiers take shots at you from below. In this level, it is pretty clear where you have to go, and the jumps are challenging but makeable. If more of the game was like this, Mirror's Edge could have been so much more enjoyable, but unfortunately levels like these are exceptions, and you will usually be left wondering where you are supposed to go next and cursing wildly as you fail to get there.

Combat in Mirror's Edge is also a bit wonky; most of the time in the game you can simply run past enemies, but on a few occasions you are forced to fight (you can tell because the enemies glow red). While you are given a number of fancy kicking and punching moves, they are far too difficult to pull off and combat will consistently come down to disarming the first guy you come to and using his gun to kill the rest of the baddies. Even this manages to become frustrating, as you have to press the right button at exactly the right time to disarm your opponent, otherwise Faith will flail wildly as the bloke she was trying to disarm smacks her and then shoots her. If you do hit the disarm button at the right time, you are treated to a fairly impressive disarming animation, which will leave you with a gun, and once you obtain such a weapon the combat is easy and fairly enjoyable.

Mirror's Edge takes place in a City which clearly has an interesting story behind it; everything is incredibly clean and organized, police are everywhere, it looks like something straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. Unfortunately, you aren’t given any background information about the city whatsoever. Even the main story in Mirror's Edge is confusing and very poorly told; you are a runner who delivers packages to... someone and from... someone else while the government doesn’t like this so they send a load of military personnel after you. What the packages contain and why you are delivering them is left unexplained. A little ways into the game the plot gets more personal when some... guy gets killed and your sister is framed at which point you have to go do... something, what that is and why you are doing it is very unclear, but presumably you want to and are trying to save your sister. Characters appear in cut scenes with no introduction and suddenly are playing a central role. Most of this is told through animated cut scenes in between missions, which really don’t make a lot of sense when connected.

Mirror's Edge game
Indoor environments look particularly impressive

Aside from the single player campaign, which is all too brief at around 5 or 6 hours, there are time trial races in which you must attempt to complete a circuit in as little time as possible. Your time will be compared to others online, but the novelty of these circuits wares off very fast and you likely won’t spend more than a few hours on these races, unless you really love the platforming in this game and want a shot at the leader board (which seems to be filled with impossible times likely produced by trainers).

The biggest strength of Mirror's Edge is undeniably the visual presentation. The graphics are highly impressive from both a technical and an artistic standpoint; indoor areas look startlingly realistic while an interesting use of colours make this game very beautiful and eye catching. In outdoor areas almost all building exteriors are bright white, while indoor areas have vibrant splashes of red, green, yellow and orange. Textures and lighting are astounding in many places; in some hallways no game on the market looks as good as Mirror's Edge. It also runs fairly well thanks to the optimization that has gone into Unreal Engine 3, I experienced no crashing or stability issues. Less impressive is the audio; while detailed, I experience a massive imbalance in how loud things were (this may have been caused by my specific hardware configuration), for instance voices were very quiet, and barely audible, while sounds of the city like traffic and wind were deafening. Even fiddling about in the audio settings and turning dialogue volume way up didn’t help much.

Mirror's Edge game
Those who dislike bright colours would be wise to avoid this

Overall, Mirror's Edge feels more like a showcase for new game mechanics than an actual fleshed out video game. At its best, it is exhilarating and beautiful, at its worst, the game is frustrating and tedious. With a bit of tweaking, DICE could have made Mirror's Edge into a very interesting game, but as it stands there is little joy to be had with this short and tedious first-person platformer.

Our ratings for Mirror's Edge on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Presentation
90
Breathtaking City skylines and photorealistic indoor environments with a very interesting use of colour, although the Audio balancing is a bit wonky. Good variety of environments.
Gameplay
70
When you know where to go and how to get there, the platforming is great, but usually you don't and it is frustrating and tedious. Combat is simplistic although competent.
Single Player
65
Very short at around 5 hours, generally tedious and frustrating with most of the time spent on trial-and-error free running.
Multiplayer
60
Fans of the platforming will enjoy the time trial races, although most will tire of them quickly. Leader boards filled with hackers and cheaters.
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo e7200 @ 3.1ghz
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD 5850 PCS+
RAM: 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
PC Specs

90
Technically stable with a consistent frame rate; runs well for how good it looks.
Overall
71
While Mirror's Edge is visually impressive and occasionally enjoyable, there is a severe lack of content and the gameplay can be frustrating.
Comments
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#5 Dec 23, 2009 23:37:23 (Dec 23, 2009 23:37)

kamikaziechameleon
 I just love how this game has a look and feel all its own.  The input intensive platforming was refreshing after the assasins creed simplification struck most platformers.  I just love the colorful world and great music.  almost finished a second play through.
#4 Dec 23, 2009 16:17:32 (Dec 23, 2009 16:17)

with_teeth26
@sirdesmond - I agree completely, with a bit of tweaking and increased length DICE could make a sequel that improves on the first a lot. ME 1 was an interesting concept, but i think they needed to work on the fine tuning a bit more. 
#3 Dec 23, 2009 14:31:14 (Dec 23, 2009 14:31)

sirdesmond
+1
I loved this game and I really hope that a sequel is in the works because I feel like this game could get a treatment similiar to Assassin's Creed II with a second go-around, fixing a lot of the problems of the first (most notably the short length and frustrating combat).  The music, environments, and platforming was breathtaking.  I need to give it another play for sure.
#2 Dec 23, 2009 00:14:35 (Dec 23, 2009 00:14)

nutcrackr
+1
I never liked this game much. I thought a lot of the praise came to the game because it was a platformer with a first person perspective. Meh, looks nice and all but very short and left me unimpressed. Good review
#1 Dec 22, 2009 11:55:20 (Dec 22, 2009 11:55)

kamikaziechameleon
 love this game.
Mirror's Edge
Mirror's Edge box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Mirror's Edge
71%
Good
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Mirror's Edge is ranked #1119 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #58 out of 63 games reviewed in 2009.
1118. Dark Void
PC
1119. Mirror's Edge
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Screenshots

Mirror's Edge
19 images added Dec 22, 2009 01:05
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