Right from the start I had my doubts about this game. It's a console port of a first person platforming game where when faced with enemies you are advised to run as opposed to fight. To some people, the previous sentence is enough reason to avoid Mirror's Edge, but because I'm so dedicated to my blog I won't just call it a day here.
You play as Faith, a Runner who transports information and goods via parkour while dodging armed guards. You have a large repertoire of skills to cross the rooftops and navigate the environment such as wall running, sliding, climbing, vaulting and much much more.
While the levels are linear, often the exact path you take is up to you. Runner vision frequently helps by making possible options turn red, and when you get some momentum going and you are chaining together acrobatic feats across a roof top you can really see what the developers were aiming for. Too bad this euphoria gets periodically punched in the gut as though the developers also wanted to make sure that you didn't enjoy yourself completely. General gameplay and the underlying physics are the main (but not the only) gut-punches present.
Despite saying it already, it needs repeating: it's a platforming game....in first person. The inability to see your feet without looking down is frustrating when you plummet to your death because you jumped too soon and missed the ledge, or waited too long and just ran straight off the edge.
The standard response to this is that you can't see your feet without looking down in real life as well, but unlike Mirror's Edge in real life you can feel your feet so you have some indication of where you are standing.
To help with this issue as well as others, some of the moves Faith can do are automatic. How well this work varies.
Wall running starts off as terrifying as Faith will briefly run across any walls you leap into at a shallow angle; once you get the feel for it it actually works rather well.
Faith will automatically grab onto pipes should you jump directly at them, but if you have done a more general leap and come across one whilst falling you better remember to melee the pipe on the way past. Sounds simple, but this is not the sort of thing you want to have to work out via repeated deaths. Which is what I did.
There's more that could be said about this mechanic and the associated deaths of mine but I've got more ground to cover.
Ground such as the level design. For some reason the developers decided to make a considerable amount of the game (ie any) set inside. Some of these areas are spacious like the mall but others like the ship are narrow and confining. Is there a law or something that says that a video game has to have parts where you crawl through a vent?
I'll move on past gameplay after this last paragraph because while I have much more to say, most of the complaints are anecdotal. The gameplay isn't actually bad, just flawed, and these flaws kill you in ways that make you scream at the monitor. Two memorable instances was when a swat guy shoved me away from him as I was jump kicking him in the face, and the time when Runner vision highlighted an elevator's button to show me the right direction, which I interpreted as me being supposed to use the lift (bear in mind I had a dozen armed police behind me).
Mirror's Edge uses a minimalist colouring style. Most of the world is white and full of bloom. Various objects are coloured blue, orange and yellow (plus red with Runner vision). I'm not sure whether the colours are associated with anything in particular or if it is just random. I like that the stylised look but I don't think it fits with the tone as everything else is realistic.
And this just leaves the plot, setting and characters. We are told that the government monitors basically everything and that the Runners are a means to avoid this. I have two problems with this premise. For starters we see things through the view point of the Runners who of course are going to see themselves as just rebels against an evil government. And then there's the issue that anyone who feels they need to use an illegal courier service probably don't have the best of intentions.
The game sidesteps these grey areas by having you only ever deliver something in the first level and then your sister Kate gets framed and the rest of the game is of Faith trying to get her cleared and all the resulting misadventures. The plot differs from most games with a similar context; when you are given an oppressive government and a group of outcasts it generally ends with the government's HQ in flames, possibly with said outcasts standing over the rubble looking down at the city/country/whatever.
But Mirror's Edge presents something much more small scale. You move around meeting with various contacts who direct you to new ones. The new contacts tend to end up betraying you or dying (often both) so you go back to the originals only to have them betray/die/both as well. By the end you have uncovered a conspiracy but it's fairly minor given that there already is an all seeing government.
I'm not sure what I think of the plot but I'm not fond of the characters. Mostly this is because none save Faith get any real screen time and even she doesn't get that much. So when someone from the less-than-a-dozen cast betrays you or gets killed, you the player don't care that nuch because they were just 'suspicious guy', 'dumb muscle' etc.
Faith annoys me more though. She's a badass action girl, which of course translates into remorseless, self centred bitch. The whole evil oppressors/good underground thing wouldn't bother me nearly as much if it wasn't for Faith's attitude. Sure, constant surveillance is unpleasant but don't believe you have such a moral high ground after you wilfully break the law and punch cops who are only doing their job off ledges to their doom. The scene that cemented my dislike for the protagonist is when you meet Kate at the murder scene. They both know Kate's been framed and time is limited, but this doesn't deter Faith from still correcting Kate about her politics.
Wow what a class act.
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