Mirror’s Edge proves to be unpolished
As much as I’d love to go ahead and join the raging masses in railing on Mirror’s Edge for being not nearly as epic as portrayed in the commercials, I honestly can’t. It’s not the big, steaming heap of crap that many reviewers I know have made it out to be, but Mirror’s Edge is hardly the bright, shining gift from God that the commercials have portrayed it to be.
First-person gaming is something I am fairly familiar with, if only in the sacriligious console format. Platforming is a genre that I play if I really feel the desire to raise my blood pressure; leaping from surface to surface and collecting a dozen or so odd baubles to move on aren’t really things I’m particularly good at. Combining the two? For anyone not me, it’s a decent enough idea given the proper testing and tweaking, I imagine. However, like Frankenstein’s monster, the end result was a sad amalgamation of two genres that only brought on the angry, pitch-fork-and-torch-wielding townsfolk of the gaming community.
Here’s what EA did right with Mirror’s Edge:
The overall idea of leaping rooftop-to-rooftop, carrying around packages of God-knows-what to other runners for whatever purpose is interesting. The idea of doing so while utilizing an array of acrobatic moves, thus turning the city into your own shiny, mostly-glassy playground is positively terrific. The overall story of Faith, one of many runners, and how she somehow ends up entangled in some major conspiracy/cover-up/some big, dark dirty secret. I haven’t played the whole game, as the price of 360 controllers combined with the odds of me lodging one in the television screen have prevented that to this point. The story isn’t exactly what I’d call gripping and mind-blowingly innovative, but it’s certainly quite a few steps up from the likes of Resident Evil and, say, Mortal Kombat. The absence of a focus on guns–and, really, the fact that the game rewards players for avoiding using them–is a nice change of pace from seeing a protagonist with fifteen different automatic weapons strapped to, tied to, or hidden in their body. And, honestly, anything even remotely different certainly is nice…
The problem is, it’s only really nice when it works out. I am by no means an expert gamer. However, after getting used to the controls, for the most part, there’s nothing as gratifying as doing a complex series of acrobatic moves over, under, and around obstacles on a rooftop, arriving at a ramp, and then sliding off the roof like a suicidal baseball player. Jumping from surface to surface isn’t made easier by the first-person view, but it certainly will give plenty of exercise to your camera-controlling thumb.
I go, again, back to the mediocre storyline. You start off learning how the controls work, how to go through the game, and then you end up, by the second or third mission, entangled in some deep, dark secret. The story could be worse, but it certainly could be better for all the hype it received.
Then, there’s the graphics. For those of you who own a PS3, it’s not necessary to really read this paragraph. The graphics aren’t so great on the 360. They’re good enough, but the mix of okay graphics, amazing graphics, and…what looks like cel-shading? What the hell? It just doesn’t work. The pure, unsoiled city in which you are leaping roof-to-roof in is very bright and shiny. I can feel the protagonist’s pain when I step outside on a nice, sunny day when there’s a good foot or so of snow on the ground and immediately feel my eyes erupt. The lighting effects caused by all of the reflective surfaces aren’t exactly ideal for any game, much less one that depends upon your ability to launch yourself from skyscraper top to skyscraper top.
Now, as stated before, I can’t completely damn Mirror’s Edge as a mistake but I can’t agree that it’s the flawless 10/10 it’s been getting. Clearly, this was going somewhere; I just hope that, should it see a sequel, there will be a great deal of improvement. If you’re in the market for something different, give it a try.
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