Mirror's Edge Review

Hi peeps. Sorry for the disappearing act. It's kind of hard sometimes to get inspiration to start writing. I am very opinionated, but giving opinions on things that people may want to read about is a whole other ball game.

In any case, here is my review of Mirror's Edge. This game was originally released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in November 2008. I shall be reviewing the Xbox 360 version of the game.
I don't want to dwell too much into the finer aspects of the game, as it's relatively old at this point, so I'll do my utmost to keep it short and sweet.

For those of you who have not heard or played this game, ME (Mirror's Edge) is a first person game based around the recent phenomenon of 'Parkour' or 'Free Running'. Think of parkour mechanics of Assassin's Creed, only in first person and set in the not too distant future and you can start to get an idea.
Faith lives in a fictitious city where the residents live in oppressive bliss. Life is so controlled and watched by the authorites that the city has lost any sort of life and charm to it. Freedom of speech is essentially a thing of the past and propaganda keeps the residents in blissful ignorance. Faith being the upstart that she is, is intent on following or parent's rebellious legacy by sorting out the truth from the bull. What follows is a somewhat cliché tale of intrigue, action and social commentary.

Hey Faith, your make-up's running...

The gameplay mechanics are more than a little different that most other first person games which you may have played. Firstly, the emphasis of the game is on acrobatic movements that you see in parkour. The controls most definitely have a learning curve, but once you get the basics down, you are wall running like a ninja on steroids. The hand to hand combat and the gunplay unfortunately don't seem to have been thought out as well. In particular, I felt the technuque of disarming an opponent was much harder than what was necessary. The player is asked to press the Y button at the moment the opponents gun turns red. Unfortunately, this is much harder than it sounds as the time frame for you button press, is very small. There are also some other moves you can do, which really would have been helped by some sort of lock on feature.

Finally, the gunplay is as basic as it gets, not only in terms of controls, but also in the selection of weapons you can come across.I get the impression that the gun-play was a last minute feature or was purposely made difficult so you would only need it as a last resort. If it is the case that they wanted you to avoid using firearms, perhaps they should have put more focus on the hand to hand combat system. But in fairness to developers, it was made clear throughout the game that your character is designed to evade trouble rather than make it, but too often, the situation calls for it, and a shotgun round to the face is a quicker resolution than doing a leap over a cardboard box.

Graphics are really quite striking, while they aren't the most detailed you'll ever see, they really do have their own character. The game also runs quite smooth with some rare occasions of frame rate drops and screen tearing.

So in totality, the game, overall provided quite a positive experience. The story while looks good on paper, was quite lacklustre and really wasn't developed enough. The cutscenes are done in a sort of cartoony style and unfortunately they look like some poor RTÉ cartoon. I think they should have really left them to the in game engine.

In considering of all of the above, I would recommend the game to anyone who wants a change of pace from the usual first person fair. I would recommend you purchase the game for the PS3, for the simple reason that the 360 analogue sticks are a bit too stiff for the game and I found my left thumb really starting to ache after relatively short periods. I think a sequel is definitely warranted and I definitely see a huge amount of potential in the game.

7/10