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It’s always nice when someone does something innovative in video games, especially when it comes to first-person games. For the last 10 years it’s been the same old, same old, with waves of World War II shooters – countless, even – and looking Master Chief’s visor, blowing away hordes of aliens. Mirror’s Edge changes a lot of things about the genre, many of them good, but in the end it does manage to come up a little short.
In Mirror’s Edge, you take control of Faith, a runner in the game’s bleak totalitarian setting. Runners are the carriers of sensitive information in this world, and they’re forced to move where no one can see them: across rooftops, underground, and through empty buildings. If you haven’t heard already, the game is based on Parkour, and you’ll move Faith across said rooftops and over obstacles using only the abilities of the human body. And when I say jumping across rooftops, I mean across really, really high buildings. Be advised that it’s been said that some people get motion sickness from playing, but I felt fine the whole time.
One of the game’s most significant achievements is its simple control scheme. One button controls all the high movements, like jumping, while another the low movements, like sliding. For someone like me, who was raised on button mashing and memorizing Mortal Combat fatality sequences, I was caught off guard by the simplicity. It really does work well, though, especially given the fact that Mirror’s Edge has you leaping, rolling as you hit the ground, hanging from ledges, and sliding down pipes, all of which are accomplished with just two buttons.
The thrills in Mirror’s Edge can be found when you hit your stride. As you start to string moves along, Faith picks up the pace, and the flow of the moves feels and looks good. But that’s where the game hits its first major hurdle. There are a lot of points where you’ll mess up, spend 10 minutes figuring out what you’re supposed to do or just die about 20 times trying to accomplish a sequence. For a game that puts so much stock in movement, it can be maddeningly frustrating to hit such a wall.
The game also looses some points in the combat department. The game made you feel like you should be running from enemies – which is a unique feat in a first-person game – mainly because it only takes a hit or two to put you on the ground. But when forced to fight, the system reveals its clunkiness. Faith doesn’t have weapon beyond her fists and feet, so the only time she gets her hands on a weapon is when she disarms on of the many cops on her tail. You can make a disarming move with just one button, as long as you time it right, but it seems to not work all of the time. The disarming animations are interesting the first time you see them, but they get really repetitive quickly.
Taking a page from a lot of other recent games, Mirror’s Edge is really short. If you’re an avid game player, you could probably whiz through in a sitting or two. You also have the option of doing speedruns of different levels, but unless breaking records and trying over and over again to do so is your idea of fun, you might be better off making this a rental.
Overall, Mirror’s Edge is fresh and really fun, but with a bunch of missteps along the way. If you look past that, you’ll see a game that makes all the right moves but just doesn’t get a 10 for the landing.
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