run, jump, run
No introduction, (because I can’t think of one) lets get straight into it.
The story follows Faith, a young free runner who uses her skills to travel important secret information ehich van not be monitored by the big brother style setting of the world. Faith wants to save her sister who’s been framed for a murder she did not commit. Faith will be helped by her fellow runners in order to solve the mystery. You are constantly told how many runners there are, so why does game only show us four? I would have loved Faith to go into an underground Runner base where there were loads of the adrenaline junkies. Then story is told through radio chatter and cartoon cutscenes which really break away from the realistic tones the game is trying to take. The story defiantly isn’t the concentration here. It’s not the best. There is no real character development and most characters are dull and not well developed.
The game has an 8 hour campaign and a multiplayer mode which is very limited. Basically you run a course and try to beat other people’s time by racing their ghosts, which is fun, trying and beat other player’s times and help you perfect your parkour skills and it can get addictive. But surely it couldn’t have been that hard to do a true race. The campaign is at its best when you are outside running on the rooftops. Mirrors edge spends a little too much time inside corridors. I wish the game was open world. The city seems like an amazing place to explore and it set up like that. We are told there is a poor and rich area of the city but we only ever see the rich area. Seems odd how a game based on freedom of movement put you in a linear style.
The idea to the gameplay is great. It’s nice to see something new in a very over crowded genre. For this I applaud the game, it’s defiantly the most ambitious game of 2008. For most of the game you’ll be running around on rooftops doing very cool looking parkour moves. You can jump, roll, slide, climb and wall run. The only problem I have with this is that you never learn new moves. I understand the problem here, parkour has no flips or tricks, it is basically “run, jump, run.” And lets be honest here, a forward flip in a first person would look silly and confusing. The game does, though up the challenge in the platforming as the game goes by. Also, there seems to be perfectly shaped ramps and boxes for faith to vault over. Faith is a lucky girl. Another form of gameplay…. “Sigh….” Is combat. Combat is poor, especially in the hand to hand combat, you’re basically forced to do a counter move when an enemy attacks. But it’s so hard to this without having the slow time down move. Without that you’re screwed. You can also try to punch them until they fall down which is very hard because you always seem to miss because you slip past by accident during a combo. The developers should have put the lock on system here. Another form of combat is shooting. After you counter and enemy you immediately get their weapon. The aiming can be a bit loose and the enemy AI is poor and you can’t reload. I would have preferred the game to have had no combat at all. But the excitement you get when you run across the rooftops in fluid motion is incredible helping you forget the lows and enjoy the highs, (literally.) This has to be experienced by all.
Graphics are pretty good but the best part of the presentation is the plain basic colours which add to the clean over secured city environment. But the cutscenes contrast with this bringing a comic book cartoon like look which feels out of place. The musical score is amazing; every situation you find yourself in the music is on point with the right tune.
Overall Mirrors Edge is an ambitious original title but fails to master the basics like combat. It seems as if the developers felt they could get by on a good idea alone and while they manage it to some degree they could have done more. However, you should play it because everyone deserve to experience something new in an over crowed genre.
