Game Review: Mirror's Edge

We exist on the Mirror's Edge. Why?

Because we've put a lot of thought into this metaphor.

It might be a little counterproductive to review a game that's almost three years old, but... Well, nevermind, it's definitely counterproductive. I bought Mirror's Edge with some sly talk and a Gamestop coupon, and ended up walking away from the counter minus nine dollars and change. Not a bad price at all, especially for my penny-pinching self.

I had been curious about this game for quite some time. Its demo was one of the first things I downloaded onto my then-new Xbox 360, and I remember being very impressed by what I saw. A game about real parkour? It would be the first game to attempt such a thing (if you don't count 2007's Assassin's Creed, which wasn't technically parkour), and it turned out pretty well! I got a real sense of speed, vertigo as I jumped from skyscraper to skyscraper, and when I was able to link together several different moves at one time, it was very satisfying.

Now I have the full game, and managed to play through the entire singleplayer campaign, as well as a few of the time trials. How does it hold up to the demo? Weeeeeeell, that's the interesting thing. But let me gush about the good things before I move on to the anti-good things.

Let's set up what this game is: very original, and developed by the studio that created the Battlefield series (Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2, etc.) and are also assisting in the production of Mass Effect 3. So the quality is definitely there along with the originality. The visuals are very good. This isn't really a free roam game, but, like Alan Wake, an entire city was still built around each of the stages. It feels like if there had been a few conveniently-placed planks or rails, you'd be able to run off into the horizon. But I digress...

Running and leaping from rooftop to rooftop whilst dozens of stories off the ground is a surreal experience from the get-go. I'd almost compare it to the first few levels of Portal, where you suddenly have this crazy sense of power and freedom in a new and exciting format. The game has you sliding under barriers, walking across a pole in the open air, and jumping onto the landing struts of a helicopter on the first level. It was a definite rush, and the fantastic visuals and art design only accentuated the experience.

And that's really where the fun and the potential of this game surfaces: in the first level. You get acquainted with what the protagonist (we'll get back to her) calls, "the flow." Where you can see the unseen pathways from building to building, linked together in such a way that it demands someone with the skill of timing and agility to even trespass upon it. After some trial and error, I was linking moves together flawlessly. Bouncing from one rooftop to the other without slowing down for anything, without even thinking about the buttons. There was just the experience.

Here's a great run of the game's prologue. It'll give you a good idea of what the game has to offer.

On that note, let's talk about the bad stuff now!

In making this game, DICE was probably unaware what the public at large would gravitate to, and it would definitely be the free-running aspect. But because, in my opinion, they were unaware of this, they threw a whole bunch of things into the game that can, at times, cause the whole experience to screech to a stop. For one: corridors!

Over the course of the first few chapters, you're steadily thrown into the middle of the story Mirror's Edge, which isn't very impressive to begin with. You play as a Runner named Faith, who has made it her mission to transfer sensitive, controversial material by way of the rooftops. The corporations are corrupt, Faith is not, they try to kill you, and you resist. That's about the long and short of it. Not enough to really keep me involved, so it was the burden of the gameplay to keep me entertained. But, like I said: corridors!

F**k!

Maybe it was just to shake things up, but I don't think I'll ever understand why DICE decided to make the majority of a game about free-running take place indoors. Busting through a door and seeing that you're going to be jumping from shelf to shelf for a while is sure to be an instant buzzkill. Aside from the feeling of confinement, the indoor parts of the game just don't hold up well to the whole free-running thing. I was bouncing off walls, falling through ceilings, falling off scaffolding, falling off stairs, falling out of windows. There was a surprising amount of falling! I think I died more falling off a painter's catwalk than I ever did jumping betwixt skyscrapers.

This is compounded by the many encounters you'll have with the law. See, the combat is good on paper. Your goal is to basically run up, disarm, and gun down any resistance you might have (even though that kinda flies in the face of the game's story), or box Johnny Law to death. The thing is that the combat is imperfect. If you don't get killed running up to the guy with the shotgun in an attempt to knock him out/disarm him, then his three buddies will probably end up doing the job for him. In that sense, "divide and conquer" is the best route, though the AI doesn't often oblige you by doing anything resembling "divide". I died many, many times trying to fight my way through some of these guys, and in later chapters, they don't go down very easy.

So, I guess in the way of the singleplayer campaign, I dislike it because of how it seemed to sabotage its own concept. A game about free-running slowly became a platformer, became a poor first-person shooter, became a game that will probably only be played for its time trials and speed runs.

And yes, there are time trials and leaderboards! It allows you to see who's the best for that week, that month, and of all time - and then allows you to race the ghosts of those players for practice or for motivation. One of the most rewarding things in the time trials was when shaving hundredths of a second shot up to the top of the leaderboards. As of now, I'm in the top 500 of all time! Though that's likely to change. There's an exploitable glitch in the game that allows you to double jump your way through the maps. What's sad is that everyone above me exploited this, which I don't really think is fair.

Unfortunately, there's no real multiplayer, so you can't race a friend directly or do co-op or anything like that. You can race their ghosts, but that's about it.

Much like the aforementioned Assassin's Creed, DICE's Mirror's Edge tried a lot of new things at once and managed to get a few things very, very right. It's a very rare thing indeed these days when a company like EA takes a chance on a game that just sounds impossible to get right from the concept alone. But I have to hand it to DICE for making a great new franchise that I will definitely support without hesitation. Because if Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 are any indication, the good people at DICE know how to improve, and improve in all the right ways.

It has its downsides, but Mirror's Edge is definitely a game worth trying out. (Especially since the used prices for it are nearly rock bottom!) Come on!