November 18, 2008 Print Preview

Review – Mirror’s Edge

Mirror's Edge is the latest in a series of EA's latest drive for new IPs (intellectual properties). Mirror's Edge, a first person freerunning (parkour) game, with a bit of shooting added in for good measure.

Do you like to die? Because if games bring out the survivalist in you then perhaps you’d be best off stopping right here and trying something else. You see in Mirror’s Edge you are going to die a lot. Whether it’s being filled with lead, crushed by trains, plummeting to your doom or being electrified to a crispy shell of a woman, Faith, the game’s protagonist, though she may have the agility of a cat will need considerably more than 9 lives.

This masochistic desire for pain that flows throughout developer DICE’s (who brought us Battlefield: Bad Company earlier this year) latest game is without a doubt its most substantial flaw. Mirror’s Edge likes to think of itself as being all about the flow, smooth transitions from rooftop to rooftop, stealing a gun here and wall running there. Unfortunately, with death waiting around every corner, the concept of flow is laughably inappropriate.

It’s not that it is physically impossible to string together a nice sequence of events, but rather, because the unknown is around every corner, that unknown usually being a spray of bullets or a 100ft chasm, it is nigh on impossible to prepare for. Sadly, preparation is not a concept DICE believe in. The introduction to the story mode acts as a neat little training level, as apparently Faith has been out of action for some time and needs to relearn the basics. This is precisely what you get, the basic controls, and while they are perfectly sufficient for the running, jumping, ducking and diving, for the combat it is completely inadequate.

Much has already been written about the flaws of the combat within Mirror’s Edge, what we found however was not a broken combat system, but rather, an ill-prepared player. Every time the game needs to load for any decent amount of time it’ll all too happily display a silhouette of Faith expertly dispatching an enemy with flips, rolls, disarms and all manner of other impressive looking maneuvers. Now, this wouldn’t grate so much if we had been trained, or at least provided a scenario in which we could practice something similar. Unfortunately, the only time you’ll get attempt something similarly stylish is in the heat of combat. Death and frustration follow en masse.

If you can excuse being thrown into a few intolerable combat situations over the course of the 9 chapters then what waits for you is a treat for all the senses. The story locales, while all sharing the same utopian metropolis theme, each have a different design feel, from a bizarrely fresh set of sewers, to the innards of a tanker and of course the much touted rooftops. Each of the locales is designed beautifully, allowing for a variety of ways for you to get from A to B. It’s almost a shame that when enemies are absent, Mirror’s Edge really finds its grove, because when it does you’ll be running at top speed with arms flailing and will see positively hundreds of fantastic pieces of design go flashing by.

The story behind all of this running is explained in several beautifully animated cutscenes, in a style that, if we’re honest, doesn’t really fit with the gorgeous realism of the graphics. The narrative serves its purpose well in that it gives you a reason to keep going, but outside of some stellar voice acting from Faith (Jules de Jongh) and her equally impressive support cast, there’s little that is going to stay with you once the control pad hits the coffee table.

With the game's story mode perched on a slim 6 hours for the first play through, DICE have tried to encourage multiple journeys through it. Scattered collectibles, harder difficulties and a speed run mode are all either present from the start or unlockable and offer something for the completionist in all of us. In addition to this there’s also a very addictive time trial mode which as expected comes complete with online leaderboards and ghosts for that added incentive to improve. These extras are all just lovely, but it does feel a bit like DICE are trying to squeeze every drop out of something already dry, rather than spend more time creating some really interesting modes. A deathmatch along the skyline, for instance, would be an absolute treat.

Mirror’s Edge is a wonderfully inventive title, the likes of which we’re unlikely to see many more of on the HD platforms this generation. As with anything new it comes with its fair share of issues; some stop and start gameplay, annoying enemies and it's an ever so slightly slim package. Fortunately though it’s easy to forgive these foibles, because once Mirror’s Edge has grabbed you it won’t let go until you’ve explored every nook and cranny, or at least until you hit the pavement hard enough to put you down once and for all.

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