Mirror's Edge Review

Recently, my mom, who I am eternally thankful, bought me a new laptop computer. It is really awesome, and really kicks ass at playing video games. It is also more conducive to my lifestyle. It is absolutely fantastic to have a gaming computer. It is by no means the best gaming computer around, but boy does it get the job done. It can run Star Craft II on Ultra. That's pretty dang good. So, now that I'm part of the PC gaming community, I can now take part in many of the great things about PC gaming. Like the Steam Summer Sale.

One of the games that was on sale for the low price of $10 was Mirror's Edge. Oh, Mirror's Edge, such fond memories of fun and exciting new gameplay, and such disappointment.

Mirror's Edge actually kind of holds a special place in my heart, as it is the first game that I ever officially reviewed. I say "official" in that it was the first game review that I ever had published. However, my game review career had just begun and I was limited to only 250 words. That, frankly, is no where near enough to describe my experience with Mirror's Edge.

Mirror's Edge comes to us from DICE, the creators of the Battlefield series. Mirror's Edge is quite the departure from the norm over at DICE, as the principle behind Mirror's Edge is to run away rather than fight directly. The game is about a group of people called runners who use parkour to leap across rooftops and deliver information to resistance groups in an overly protective city. The main character is Faith, a girl who gets mixed up in a murder mystery with her sister who is framed for murder. The game follows Faith as she investigates to find out who framed her sister for a crime that she didn't commit.

The gameplay of Mirror's Edge is in the style of a freerunning platformer game, but also a first person shooter. Platforming, or jumping doesn't usually work out in first person shooters, because the player can't often see their legs. In Mirror's Edge, if you look down, you can actually see the character's legs, but you won't be staring downward the entire game. Not unless you want to see where you're going, which is difficult as is given the poorly constructed level design, which often fails at conveying where to go next. This confusion is made even more difficult with the consistent barrage of bullets that are fired at you by large men wearing more than enough body armor. Players can't exactly explore and experiment with the character if they are always being shot at and left defenseless with only their fists. You don't go into a firefight without a gun, but the game always puts the player into this situation. The levels are designed like a first person SHOOTER would be, but being that there is a focus on not shooting things, these two decisions in design clash with each other.

The first half of the game is actually pretty well done when it comes to the running away bit, however it seems had fallen back into their ways of making another Battlefield game. As the story, which is only 4-5 hours long, progresses, the security gets tighter and there are more guards. This game can't decide whether it wants you to be a runner or a fighter. For the first few levels, players have their guy back at HQ telling them that they should run away. Yet, in several spots in the early half of the game force the player to fight the bad guys with a "looks like you're going to have to fight them", like a father pushing his kids into the pool to teach them how to swim. The game doesn't even give you the option to run away. I feel like there should have always been that option to run away from the bad guys in Mirror's Edge, even when your superior is telling you to fight. Players should be able to outsmart the cops when you're a small lightweight girl whose job it is to run away. I think that Mirror's Edge could have been a much better experience if there was a stealthy element to it. Stealth usually consists of slow moving sections that involve the player waiting for guards to pass by, but hear me out.

Mirror's Edge often puts players atop high places to overlook the landscape and find a path, of which there are regrettably few to choose from. I think that if the level design was a bit more multifaceted, then there could be a bit more room to play around and zip past the guards undetected. How cool would that be? The player is already basically a modern day ninja, what with the running and the jumping and the rolling around. But, this is just an idea that I had while playing through the game.

The animation of the character is fast and fluid as it should be with a freerunning character, which is really impressive given that it's a first person game and you can't exactly see the entire character. Yet the movement of the camera, and even that subtle inclusion of the characters lower body being visible really adds to the feel of the character. The way that the camera sways when sprinting down across a rooftop or sliding a stairway, it all feels natural. This combined withe some of the most impressive visuals I have ever seen in a game make for a very pleasing visual experience.

The graphics of Mirror's Edge are some of the best I have seen. It's not only the detail of the graphics, or the fluidity of the character animation, it's actually it's use of color. Mirror's Edge effectively uses a simple basic color scheme. Each level has it's own primary color. Kind of like levels in old school video games. Most environments are primarily white with a select color. The contrast of the color on the white makes that color all the more vivid, as white seems to brighten up whatever color it is put up against. Though, as impressive as the graphics are, they do not make for a great game. Graphics are important, but only to set the tone and personality of the game.

All in all, Mirror's Edge is just another pretty face, and sadly there isn't much going on behind that face but broken level design that clashes with it's game design. It's almost bipolar how this game treats the player, first it wants you to run, then it forces you to fight. It doesn't make much sense, and the player pays for it dearly. The level design doesn't allow for much freerunning and feels blocky and stagnated, and doesn't give a good sense of flow to a game that should be all about flow. I admire Mirror's Edge for its trying something new, but it just fell a bit short.