system: Xbox 360
one sentence description: 1st person parkour goodness with style.
graphics: 8.5 | sound: 9| playability: 7 | challenge: 10 | value: 9 | bias: 8.5
total: 8.6
the low-down
Let’s start with the fact that I like this game more than the number I’ve rated it might indicate. Let me also state that this is absolutely not a game for everyone, which I think is why, despite the far-ab0ve-average reviews it has received, it has not sold as well as EA expected.
Step into the world of Faith, a ‘messenger’ who leaps across the expanses of large buildings in leaps, rolls and bounds. She is trained in the art of parkour, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is kind of like an an exercise in urban gymnastics and agility training.
The setting is a dystopian one. The city in which Faith lives is clean and seemingly innocent enough on the surface. Digging deeper reveals a society based on government control. The story is woven inside that world, with Faith becoming embroiled partially through her role, but also because of her sister. Her sister, one of the societal police, is framed for the murder to a well-known politician who appears to have wanted to change things away from this controlled environment.
With that, the plot is set and you’re off. To say the least, it’s a pretty breathtaking experience. Mirror’s Edge does one things absolutely unlike any other game before it, and that is capturing the feeling of true motion and momentum. Unlike a lot of FPSs, Mirror’s Edge makes you ’self-aware’. In other words, you’re not just some nebulous presence floating around with a couple of hands sticking out to carry items. Rather, if you look down, you will see your legs moving as they should. Your arms move and sway along with the motion of the rest of your body.When you run, you feel like you’re running. It’s like there’s a camera glued directly into the middle of your forehead. It’s a pretty amazing effect. But for those with uneasy stomachs or anyone prone to any kind of motion sickness, this can be disconcerting…even vomit inducing…especially when you’re running full speed towards the edge of a building and decide to attempt to jump across a huge expanse of air…
The graphic style is distinct with a lot of hard clean lines. It’s very beautiful and harsh at the same time. There’s a perilous sense about it for certain, and that is the intended effect. There are many other examples of this subtle dichotomy throughout the game. There’s the calming sound of the wind with the undertones of sirens or announcements for you to ‘not run’ when being chased. There’s calming electronica music playing in the background (when you’re not being chased, of course) while jumping insane, mind-blowing distances through the air. Your vision blurs at the edges as you gain speed, and you can hear Faith breathe as she continues her forward momentum. It creates mood and environment in a far less heavy-handed way than I’ve experienced in other games.
The only ‘bad’ thing graphically is some of the character animation. For a game that touts fluidity and flow, some of the other characters don’t feel like they fit. Celeste, one of Faith’s partners-in-crime, looks a little robotic. There’s an in-game cutscene between Faith and her sister that feels awkward. These strange moments are only amplified by the fact that most of the rest of the cutscenes are handled by very cool hyper-stylized animations.
For all that the game does well, it must be said that it’s extremely challenging, and not in a way that makes it easy for someone to just step right in and feel satisfied. This isn’t bad; it’s just different, and if you go into the experience knowing that, you will be much better off.
The controls are the first large learning curve, as they break your typical FPS convention. Normal FPS control schemes are based around the XYAB buttons, which control jumping or switching weapons or performing some kind of action. Triggers and shoulder buttons would normally be assigned using weapons (primary and secondary actions) or switching them out. Mirror’s Edge has the majority of your controls in the L/R tiggers and the L/R shoulder buttons. If you want to jump or perform an ‘up’ action, you press the left shoulder button. A ‘down’ action is assigned the left trigger. These are combined with the right shoulder/trigger buttons. So if you want to perform a sliding attack, you would run towards your intended victim, press and hold the left trigger to slide, and then hit the right trigger at the right moment to kick out. If you want to scramble up a wall and hold on, you’d run at the wall and press and hold the left shoulder button. Even opening doors requires you hit the right trigger. The XYAB buttons are hardly used for anything save for disarming an opponent or hitting an elevator button.
The other ‘different’ expectation you should set for yourself is that this is not a run-and-gun FPS. The only way to get weapons is by either disarming an enemy or by finding the occasional handgun on the ground or on a desk. And when you pick them up, you don’t keep them. Once they are out of ammo, you simply drop it.
The primary intent is not to blow as many of your enemies away as possible. It is not to your advantage to charge at 4-5 of your antagonists because they will finish you very quickly. Even if you should happen to gain a weapon, you’ll find that it’s not at all easy to aim and hit an enemy…which, frankly, is more accurate to ‘real life’ than any other FPS game. Your goal is to move, run and generally do anything you can to survive. The second you stop moving is when everything goes downhill. This alone can make things incredibly frustrating, especially given the fact so many games allow a breadth of choice in your approach to a challenge. This allows the same, but it’s more focused around how you choose to move from place-to-place. In other words, do I run up the ramp, jump over the barbed-wire fence and roll under the large vent shaft for cover or do I vault over a place in the fence where there isn’t barbed wire, run up the side of a wall to the top of a roof and jump over to the next building? It’s all about efficiency of movement through your environment, the same principle used in parkour.
To help you move through your environment, the game uses a simple effect called ‘Runner Vision’. Runner Vision simply highlights the areas which can/should be used for actions/moving in red. Of course, higher difficulty settings result in Runner Vision being turned off, but once you start to recognize where opportunities for movement are, it’s not that big of a deal.
Once you’ve completed the story and feel like you’ve mastered the controls, you can move on to ‘Race’ mode, which is a timetrial-like mode. EA has downloadable content coming out for it which will add some new maps to make runs through.
There really is a lot to like with Mirror’s Edge if you set your expectations correctly. The unique art style, the environment and the rush of consistent movement and making death-defying leaps is what makes the game memorable and worth playing.
pros
- Visually distinct
- Captures the feeling of movement unseen in other FPSs
- Intense, desperate chase scenes
- Very well-crafted level design
- Use of music to induce a mood is excellent
- Race mode provides extra value
- Interesting story conveyed by good voice acting
cons
- Learning curve for the controls is a little intimidating
- Combat is not-at-all easy
- Failing a sequence over and over can be frustrating
- Some of the in-game character animation is not good
- There isn’t much mid-ground in gameplay; you either get it and like it or don’t and hate it
