Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rrp: £9.99 on Steam £4.25 on Origin
Released: 12th January 2009
Available on Steam and Origin
Played using: Mouse and Keyboard
The world is run by corporations, and the general populace pay no attention to the fact that ever their every move is being watched. Once there were those that did stand up against such things but they were beaten down. But those dissidents are still around and want to pass information and messages to each other without being monitored. This is where you come in, you play as Faith, she’s a Runner. Runners carry the information and items that these dissidents wish to share, and they do so by staying off the streets and out of where surveillance cameras can catch them. They stick to the rooftops… usually.
Have you ever watched those videos of people doing Parkour (also known as Freerunning) and wanted to give it a go yourself, until you realise it takes years of training to get to their level? Well Mirror’s Edge is here to give the opportunity to at least try it virtually.
I’m going to say this now to get it out of the way, THANK YOU, just thank you for giving me and the world another character who isn’t a straight white male with brown (or black) hair! I love the character of Faith and the backstory she has, even if the information that’s given is a little on the spartan side.
Mirror’s Edge aesthetic is very clean, the stark whites and sharp corners contrast with the few smatterings of colour the game gives you. That is until you reach an area that’s mostly green with smatterings of white… Either way it has a fantastic clean look that holds up well to this day. To go with this the music is well suited to the game, changing up from the more calm and serene electronica to a much heavier beat as events heat up.
The clever thing the designers have done is to incorporate the games aesthetic to the actual play of the game. As you run around the games environments certain portions of what’s around will turn red, this is known as Runner Vision and is the games way of notifying and guiding you. This effect wouldn’t work as well if it weren’t for all those stark whites and sharp edges.
I highly recommend doing the tutorial first before jumping into the game as the controls are very different than most other games set in first person. One such example of those differences is that the default key to crouch is [shift] since Faith runs by default. Another unique feature is the ‘Reaction Time’ ability, this allows you to slow down time briefly thus giving you a longer time to react to situations that need quick reflexes.
There’s also no health bar to speak of, in fact since there is virtually no gun play at all the HUD is non existent. The only indication of your health that you receive is that when you take damage the screen become more greyscale with exception of a red border, that’s it. Your health regenerates and as it does so the colour will return to the world.
Though this game is set in the first person combat isn’t the main focus of this game. While you can disarm someone and use there gun against them you certainly don’t have to. You can instead chose to evade them, disarm them and deactivate the weapon or quietly knock them out. The thing is, disarming your opponents isn’t that easy and it requires fairly precise timing, thankfully this is where the ‘reaction time’ feature comes in.
Sadly like most things in life Mirror’s Edge is by no means perfect. In fact one of its greatest strengths is also its biggest weakness, and that is the parkour. The problem is that the levels are designed in such a way as to look like a living city when in actuality you have a pretty linear course to go along. Due to this you sometimes will try to go to areas that seem like the right way but just end up getting you killed. It’s clear the designers have tried to combat this by including a feature where when you press a certain button will cause Faith to face the way she’s supposed to go. Unfortunately doing this breaks the flow of the game which is bad in any game but is doubly so in a parkour game.
The collision detection is also a bit off too, with many of my failed jumps having a lot more to do with wonky collision detection than my lack of skill. It’s also clear that the game was designed with a console controller in mind, the keyboard controls, while functional, are something of a mess.
Then lastly there’s the story, it starts off well. Really well, giving me a real sense of mystery and making me question things around me and then it just… Peters out, it’s also far too short.
You may note that I didn’t include the combat among at its problems. There is a reason for that. I don’t believe it was a problem. Sure it isn’t perfect or as smooth as it could have been but it certainly isn’t broken. Many of the complaints about the combat I’ve found come from those that are used to the likes of Halo, Call of Duty etc, FPS’s in the truest sense. Whereas Mirror’s Edge isn’t about combat, it’s about running.
So, is this one I would recommend? Unequivocally yes. It’s a flawed gem and something unique in the triple A industry. Yes, its story is short but in honesty it was more of a vehicle to get you from environment to environment. The game also gives you a time trail mode to play as well. I’ll admit it doesn’t really have a great amount of replay value, but you won’t find anything else quite like this anywhere else. I suppose If you really wanted to extend your playtime you could go and find all the collectible bags to unlock artwork etc.
If this interests you then perhaps try;
Vector
Brink
Any of the Assassins Creed series (except Unity)
