Chris Longhurst 2008-11-20
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Mirror's Edge is an unique game, and I like unique games. It's always difficult for publishers to come up with a new idea and make it into a game that works, but with Mirror's Edge, EA / Dice seem to have managed it.
The basic premise is simple - you're Faith - a runner. In a city run like a police nation, runners take sensitive packages and deliver them via alternative means. In this case a highly athletic form of street running, or parkour. Each mission is an A to B affair but you have at your disposal the entire urban landscape from the bottoms of the sewers to the tops of the skyscrapers. Run, duck, slide, swing, wall-run, hop, skip and jump your way around obstacles that would, in any other game, be unpassable.
The majority of the game takes place well above street level, hopping from building top to building top, balancing on crane arms, and working your way around air conditioning units, pipes, construction materials and the other detritus you'd find on the top of any modern building today.
Gameplay.
Mirror's Edge is not only unique in it's idea, it's unique in it's presentation because it's a first-person game. You see through Faith's eyes, which means you see hands and feet, and unless you're in front of a mirror, nothing else. This is one of the game's strengths. Trying to use a third-person view just wouldn't work (as it doesn't work in Metal Gear). From a first-person view, you get a proper sense of speed and depth. As you run to slide under a pipe, you'll find yourself ducking in your chair. And if you've got a touch of vertigo, it wouldn't pay you to stand on the edge of a building and look down in Mirror's Edge - the effect is very convincing. The controls are pretty simple - run with the left stick, look with the right stick, and jump and duck. In addition there are basic combat controls to kick and interact with other objects, as well as a slow-motion effect for those hairy moments. You build up the ability to use slow motion by the amount of 'flow' you have. Flow isn't something with an on-screen meter, it's just a natural sense of making progress. If you stop before climbing every wall, and go everywhere at walking pace, you're not really making progress. But wall-run and then jump on to a roof, hop over to an A/C unit then drop off and slide under some pipes - that's a nice, flowing style of getting from A to B. Although when you first pick up the game, you'll be tripping over everything in sight and smacking your head on low-hanging objects all the time.
The game does mix it up a little with occasional encounters with 'Blues' - the police. You have some basic slide, jump and kick skills that can be used to attack them or disarm them but it becomes obvious that more time was spent in the control of Faith as a runner than as a fighter, as the sparse fight scenes are awkward to contend with and you'll often find yourself doing them over and over again just to try and get past the police. In some cases, you don't need to engage them though, so hop up on a container, jump over their heads and get away.
As well as all the rooftop acrobatics, there are many levels set indoors from the cavernous underground water tank in the first couple of levels (think the underground ice store in the film Total Recall) to the frantic subway chase which has you both dodging oncoming subway trains and riding their roofs whilst dodging rail tunnel infrastructure and jumping from train to train.
The game is short - 9 sprawling levels in all plus a training level - but it's exciting and fun to play and you'll find yourself going back and trying to better yourself on the levels you've already done. Having said that, the levels do get incrementally harder as you go through the game, and whilst the run/jump/slide gameplay might seem repetitve, there is always more than one way to get through a level. Crawl through the ductwork, or run through the office itself? Up to you.
You can choose to use 'Runner Vision' in the easier game modes which will highlight objects in red as you approach them to hint at the direction you should go and what objects can be used to achieve your goals. For example pipes light up red to indicate you should probably climb them, but as I said above, there are other ways of completing every task.
There's also trophies to be earned in Mirror's Edge, which is an added incentive to go back and do better. The tropies are nicely balanced between bronze, silver and gold. For example the easiest trophy is the bronze for just finishing the training level, whilst some of the harder silver ones require strings of moves to be assembled, such as wall-run to jump-tuck to slide.
Graphics.
The graphics in Mirror's Edge are excellent. The developers have created a unique art style which is mostly white with very pure colours here and there. It sounds dull, but it looks absolutely amazing when you play it. Your point of focus changes depending on whether you're looking at things up close or far away, and when you get up a lick of speed, there are motion blur effects that are added to the scene in a subtle enough fashion to not destroy the look and feel of the game. The usual sun flare and whiteout effects are present if you look the right way, and if you look down the cavernous canyons between the buildings, you can see people going about their daily lives as well as the occasional police cars parked up looking for you. The lighting and texture work is top notch with bump maps and reflections everywhere you'd expect them to be. Shadows are relatively well drawn too. The modelling of the levels is very very good and so far I have not noticed any popup in the game. That is to say, objects change detail or appear so subtly that your eye is never drawn to them. It's also worth pointing out the 'falling to your death' effect. Rather than simply understanding that if you walk off a tall building, you're dead, Mirror's Edge prefers to show you the ride all the way down to the pavement. As you speed up, the screen becomes more and more distorted until it suddenly goes black with a sickening accompanying sound effect. Whilst on your way to becoming a ketchup pancake, you still have full control, so if you really want to, you can pivot in the air and look at the rapidly approaching ground. But I wouldn't recommend it.
A final note on the graphics - read the signs on the fences before you jump over them, or at least get used to what they look like. Your first encounter with a high voltage fence will teach you that lesson quickly.
Sound.
There's a lot of breathing and panting in Mirror's Edge, as you'd expect from a game which is mostly concerned with running like hell. Other than that the environmental sounds are excellent. As you cross the rooftops, the background noise of a normal city is all around, from aircraft and helicopters overhead to the streets below and everything in between. Chain-link fences rattle when you jump over them. Steam vents hiss as you pass them. Bullets zing past and ricochet off walls if you're being shot at. Everything is properly in its place. The subway levels are made all the more nerve wracking by the sound of the train cars, and especially the train horn if you get too close. More than once, the horn took me so much by surprise that I fumbled a move and ended up as a hood ornament.
The music is very ambient for the most part. A lilting background accompaniment to your superhuman feats of dexterity. But it does change at the appropriate times. As you're getting close to an encounter with the police, for example, it starts to become a little more menacing, to ramp up the tension. And when you get in to a full-on foot chase over the rooftops and through office buildings, the music changes completely to an excellent run-for-your-life soundtrack, very similar to the style in the cult film Run Lola Run. The music in this mode alone is enough to stop you turning around to see how close behind you the police are.
Overall.
I wanted to take a star off my rating for this because of the somewhat clumsy fight mechanics. But the more I play the game, the more I can forgive that element of it because everything else works so well. From jumping over wire fences, to sliding down zip lines, to hopping over subway turnstiles and sliding under closing doors. If you're not sure, download the demo from the Playstation Store first - it's free and you'll get a feel for the game dynamics. I like it. 5 stars.
