Fails to live up to the hype, but delivers a unique experience
Mirror's edge is set in this really clean, idyllic, utopia type city. A lot of things are clean white and is filled with skyscrapers. You play as Faith, a runner who carries sensitive information around. However, you're sister Kate has been set up for a mayoral candidate's death, and you have to try and free her. The story is pretty engaging and cutscenes are done nicely in this comic-anime style.
The first thing you'll notice when you first play the game is it's impressive graphics. Everything looks great and polished. What really stands out is the colour scheme. The majority of the environment is a polished white, which is handy with your runner vision. Runner vision makes things like ramps, pipes, poles, doors etc. that will get you from A-B stand out in a bright red, so it's clear where you need to go next. However, when you get into these red & orange buildings later on in the game, you'll find things hard to spot, thus making the game harder.
The game is basically built around getting from A-B via jumping, running, swinging, etc. The best parts of the game are when it gives you a stretch to run about really fast, giving you huge jumps over buildings and slick wall-runs to complete. However, these are few and far between. Surprisingly, a vast amount of the game is indoors. Although this gives you a break from the usual skyscraper humping, it hands you acrobatic puzzles rather than a straight A-B stretch.
And that where the game fails in my view. It feels that challenging you to figure out how to get from A-B using wall-runs, swinging from poles and wall jumps would be better than giving you lengths of running ground. A lot of times, these are subjected to trial and error. One slip up and you're back to the checkpoint. It relies heavily on timing and sometimes runner vision makes things harder than easier. Sometimes you'll have huge amounts of speed and momentum and you'll be cut off with a sort of puzzle, which is a real buzz-kill.
However, there are some great set piece cinematic moments, like jumping from train to train whilst avoiding signs, then jumping off and narrowly avoiding an incoming train or one where you're sliding down the side of a building whilst being shot at from a chopper, then make this huge leap onto a building. However, this is also subjected to trial and error, and whether or not you can figure out where to go in time. At the end of the game, you feel more relived than satisfied with yourself.
Combat is basically a mix of martial arts and gunplay. You can kick, punch and drop-kick you're enemies, as well as disarming them. When you do get a gun, it really slows you down and most of the time you can't jump with one. there's a standard selection of sniper rifle's, assault rifles, shotguns, sub machine guns and pistols. faith can't carry ammo on her, so you have to ditch a gun once the magazine is spent.
The online consists of speed runs, which takes levels and challenges you to beat them in a certain time or time trial, where you're gives stretches to run around and get a certain star rating in. You can follow player's ghosts to a quick victory, or just challenge yourself. This is a good addition, but one downside is that it makes you realise you can beat the story mode in less than say, 3 hours.
To add, I found there too be little load times, and the installation takes less than 5 minutes. There's an autosave feature, so you're never left hanging.
Overall, it's a fairly solid game, the idea of running around buildings in the first person is pretty neat, and if they make it more speed orientated, then the game is bound to be a success. I would say rent it, it's not worth full retail price, and is fairly short at the end of the day.
