Mirror's Edge

It seems the market is of the opinion that all we need are first person shooters. It's hard to get more than two feet without seeing one. Even if the genre is elsewhere, the FPS element somehow seeks in.

Mirror's Edge is a very welcome breath of fresh air. While in the first person, the game actually plays as a platformer. In essence, the game is a hybrid of Super Mario Bros. and Tomb Raider. This is rather saddening as while the concept is fresh, the underlying level design and the game as a whole let the concept down.

Overview

The game is set in a futuristic city where the government monitors all communication and movement of its citizens. The player plays as the main character, Faith, who is a runner, a form of courier. As all communication in the city is monitored, the only means of communication privacy is to hire a runner to transport sensitive documents or other items which are of the same size. Faith's sister, Kate, has been framed for the murder of a lawyer and politician and it is up to Faith to find clues as to why her sister has been framed.

Game Play

At its core, Mirror's Edge is an interactive form of parkour, the art of running and performing various acrobatic tasks in as few fluid movements as possible. This is very interesting and gives some interesting challenges to players. As well as looking at the screen, the player has to quickly take in the surroundings and judge for him- or her-self what to do next.

The game plays in the first person, thus adding to the emersion and makes the player feel as though he or she is the runner and not just someone holding a controller and pressing buttons. Also, to help ease new players, a feature in the game called ‘Runner Vision’ is used. Runner Vision causes some objects which can help the player progress be coloured red. If the player ever gets stuck, the idea is to look for red objects to help hint at what the player needs to do next.

There are also times when the player has to engage adversaries. Throughout the game various law and security forces will attempt to take out Faith. This can be problematic at times as Faith can only with stand a few light hits before dying and she some sometimes die faster as some adversaries carry shotguns and even machine guns. In keeping with the parkour concept, the player is able to run about and take out opponents using acrobatics or, if the level allows, sneak up and quietly disarm the opponent.

While Faith is able to engage opponents, the major flaw with the combat is Faith is only able to withstand two or three hits before being knocked out, forcing the player to restart transparent check points. There is no indication when one has been triggered, with adds to the frustration when the player finds him- or her-self back before a previously cumbersome puzzle that must now be solved again. Also, while Faith is able to use guns, she is unable to run even if she so much as holds a pistol. To make matters worse, the bigger the gun, the slow Faith moves.

While the combat feels weak, the issue is nowhere near as large as that of the level design. While promising in concept and possibilities, the game is heavily let down by its level design. While parkour is about moving quickly and fluidly through the environment, the design of the levels is lineal and offers little to no room for experimentation. While playing this game, I felt as though I had been penalised for not following the path chosen by the designers. While there is some room for deviance (like I could choose to run along an alternative wall or take and alternative nearby route to an obstacle) the breadth of this deviance is very minimal.

Even the Runner Vision feature soon turns out to be broken. While the intention of Runner Vision was to help give the player hints on what to do next, this feature doesn't always work as some objects will highlight but their actual function and role in completing the level is often ambiguous.

In the end, I feel that the level structure fails to make the best use of the parkour concept. Parkour would be more suited to designs such as that of Far Cry 2 or Fallout 3. Mirror’s Edge feels more suited towards mission based, free world game play. The player should have been given a mission and be free to use any building or roof top of the city to reach the goal.

Story

It has been advertised that Rhianna Pratchett, the duaghter of Terry Pratchett, helped to pen the story behind Mirror's Edge. I have heard of the Discworld books and given their popularity had high expectations of the story to the game. While playing this game, it felt as though Rhianna Pratchett was not used to the best of her abilities.

The overview of the story is Faith's sister has been framed and Faith runs about the roof tops looking for clues as to who framed her and why. This is the story to the game in a nut shell, and there is nothing more explained in the game.

The story itself lacks heavily in character development and the weakness of the story is made worse by parts of the story being separate to the game itself. Leading up to the release of the game, EA released some promotional videos, each presumably to detail a small part of the story. Firstly, I feel that if they were intended to describe the game, they should have been incorporated into the game itself. This is the same has having some chapters to a murder mystery novel kept separate from the book. Also, even with the videos there are only subtle hints and still nothing is seriously explained such as why Faith is against the city itself.

The biggest flaw of the story is the absence of motivation. It is unclear as to why the runners are so troublesome to the government. It is unclear as to why people would want to use them in the first place. It is even unclear as to why the government is even hiring runners to work for the government itself.

Graphics and Sound

The game itself makes use of the UT3 engine, thus it is safe to say the graphics are very detailed. The game environment is expansive, even though the player has no option to explore, and there is a good attention to detail even to the distant buildings. The only critics I have is the lack of reflections in the game. While there are plenty of windows in the game, the windows themselves are often polarised and only emit a low detailed reflection of the surroundings. While cosmetic, better reflections would have added more feel to the game.

Sound is very well made. The ambiance actually give the person a feeling of being in a real city when on closes his or her eyes. The player is able to hear the wind, the occasion commuter and the traffic. All the sounds in the game blend in and I feel they make the best of the environment.

Finally, the music. In as few words possible: perfect. The soundtrack added rich mood to the levels and really added to the impact whenever combat takes place. If anything, this game is worth getting if only to hear the soundtrack.

Summary

While plagued by faults, the game itself was still worth the time and effort it took to complete. The concept alone is very unique, especially for this season where it has been dominated by first person shooters. The environment is still atmospheric, and soundtrack is enjoyable. Graphics wise, Mirror's Edge is very different in that it's bright and colourful. This is another welcome change as mose high definition games are almost grey- or brown-scale in colour. I hope at some point us as players will be given the option to roam the city itself and not be constrained by the design of the levels.