Game Review – Mirror’s Edge

Headed in an added direction, we will be reviewing games from time to time.

The first game we will review is Mirror’s Edge, from EA DICE.

Summary: In a city where information is heavily monitored, agile couriers called runners transport sensitive data away from prying eyes. In this seemingly utopian paradise, a crime has been committed, your sister has been framed and now you are being hunted. You are a runner called Faith – and this innovative first-person action-adventure is your story. Flow is what keeps you running, what keeps you alive. Mirror’s Edge delivers you straight into the shoes of this heroine as she traverses the cityscape, engaging in combat and fast paced chases. With a never before seen sense of movement and perspective, you will be drawn into Faith’s world. A world that is visceral, immediate, and very dangerous. Live or die? Soar or plummet? One thing is certain: in this city you will learn how to run.

Review: The setup is simple. There’s a nebulous government attempting to squash the resistance networks of which you’re a part. You play as Faith, a athletic runner caught in an ill-defined web of conspiracy and betrayal, and it seems your only way out is to run your ass off.

The Xbox demo made Mirror’s Edge look like fun, but in essence, it turns out to be a game that can make you so mad that you’ll want to rip the disc out of the console and throw it as far as you can. 🙂 The game’s emphasis is on flight rather than fight, which is fine if you have some superhuman abilities, and have the weapons to defend yourself. But when you take a character that can’t really fight her way out of a wet paper bag, and stick the player in situations where it is impossible to do anything except run, then this is where the game becomes not only challenging but downright frustrating and tedious.

In the beginning of the second chapter, it opens with Faith having to make her way down into a sewer system, with a SWAT team already firing on her from the ground and from the air. The only way down into the sewer system this landscape is to get up to the metal beam overhead, then take a flying jump down to a narrow platform below, while getting your ass shot off by the SWAT team. If you manage to make it that far, then you have to perform almost impossible aerial aerobatics to get to the next platforms and pipes, and if you miss your mark, then you restart the mission from the beginning of the chapter.

The tutorial (the Demo) was easy enough, which made this game look like it would be fun to play. But the actual game itself? Forget stringing moves you did in the tutorial. In the game-play you can barely do the basics because, surprise, you’re being shot at non stop. Which pretty much sums up the game. You run your ass off while trying to find where you are meant to go, while at the same time you are getting your ass shot off.

The checkpoints are VERY widely spaced in this game. If you stuff up somewhere along the line (and you will), you can expect to redo large sectors of the game only to be killed off again and again. (Keep in mind there is no time to stop and look around properly in the environment. You mission is to RUN, and if you make the mistake of stopping for too long to find out where you are, then you can expect to be killed off by the SWAT either on the ground or in the chopper).

In all, the game had a lot of promise, but failed to deliver, hence why it was probably in the bargain bin.

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