Mirror's Edge™

Being relatively new to 'new' gaming, I decided to give Mirror's Edge a try after seeing some gameplay of it a while back. I did not know that it was released back in 2009, because it does feel and look more recent. However the music, which moves between dance and ambient, makes it feel like an early 2000 game, not to mention the theme of parkour. It's a game that embodies the era in which it was made, but also transcends it. The story follows a runner called Faith Conners, who has to take down some evil such and such, because they framed her sister for murder. To be honest, the story feels more like an action movie from early 2000, which is why I like it a lot. In my opinion the story drives the game. It allows the player to jump and cling onto helicopters, jump onto moving trains, fight parkour ninjas, and generally perform awe inspiring feats that captures the imagination. Gameplay wise, I found the first person mechanics really fun to play. Essentially you need to utilise your parkour skills to find solutions in order to progress in the game. Mistakes can often set you back, or even lead to death. But you'll respawn to the nearest section that you've reached in the game, allowing you to find a solution to progress via trial and error. The game play is brash and keeps you on your toes, in which chasing is often a common theme - whether it's being chased by the police, or whether you have to chase after some anonymous parkour assailant through rooftops. Very exciting stuff. My only criticism of the game is that there are some 2 or 3 moments within the game that are poorly optimised. For the most part, the game and the way it is designed, makes it run fluidly. However there are drastic drops in frame rate when, for example, you reach a mall that is fully rendered containing some 5 swat team members gunning at you. This can test the performance of your PC. Overall a real pleasure to play. I highly recommend it.

Mirror's Edge is really good. It is pretty short, but this, in addition to an excellent level design, makes the game extremely replayable. The music, graphics and specially the gameplay are top tier, by far the best aspects of the game. You truly feel the weight and speed of Faith's movements, and the "flow" mechanic (the longer you run/jump uninterrupted, the faster you go) is very rewarding. The story, although kind of interesting and not bad overall, is not great by any means, and character development is basically non existent. This is not really a problem, though: similar to a DOOM game, no one plays it for the story or the compelling characters. However, the reason I'm not giving this a 5 star rating is the mouse controls (if you are going to use a controller you can skip this paragraph). The only way to fine tune sensitivity is by going to the game files and setting a keybind to change mouse sensitivity to a specific value manually every time you load a level. Turning off mouse acceleration is a bit easier since it only requires to change one line of code from "true" to "false" in the same file, but it's still far from ideal. That being said, I understand this is a very old game, so it doesn't bother me that much, but it can be a bit annoying for today standards. I just want to let new players know that this is not a simple "install and play" experience, but it requires some not so user friendly adjustments to enjoy to the fullest. Once you get past all of that, it is an underrated classic.

This is a classic. I love most of the mechanics and the atmosphere and the look of the city are absolutely fantastic. However... there are some issues. Like it feels quite scripted. For instance there are parts that you could easily do in 2 ways, but the developers hadn't discovered 'the other way' so they didn't script that as a possibility. So you might run towards a specific ledge wondering why you just fall through it and then you realize there is a less obvious way of doing it that the developers intended. Just kind of messes with the whole flow and can easily get you stuck for a little while for a very stupid reason. And it's actually a lot worse on modern hardware. There is 1 container that I can't jump on to anymore, despite that being the ónly way the developer wants you to go. So I can't finish the game despite there being a very easy way to get past it. I could just run to a nearby wall and then jump from that wall onto the side of the container, but if you try that you just fall through because the side-ledge of the container is not grabbable as far as the game is concerned. I am not the only one who has this problem. I have friends who can't finish the game either. So keep in mind when you buy this game that it feels slightly unfinished at some points and if you're unlucky it's quite broken. Oh yeah and don't even get me started on the combat system. It is by far the most shitty melee combat system I have seen in any game ever. Not exaggerating.

I really want to love this game, and because of that I kindof hate it. The make or break part of this game for me is whether I can get into a good groove, and I keep running into things that break my zen. To sum up the problems I'll say that so many things feel undependable. Sometimes you don't grab a ledge right in front of you. Sometimes you try wallrunning and just don't. Often you get lost, and press the button to point your character to where you're supposed to go and sometimes that doesn't help. So it's impossible for me to get comfortable with this game, which is a shame because I love the asthetic and the big idea of the game, but I can't get immersed because the mechanics are unreliable.

Mirror's Edge is a beautiful and stylish parkour game that gives you mostly well designed linear levels and a small set of moves that you need to master in order to progress through these levels. The game delivers a solid 4-5 hour long campaign and a super a addictive "race mode" (a.k.a the real game). on top of that, it also has a really good soundtrack and overall good sound design. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you though. This game has it's problems. Combat feels like an afterthought. It's mostly avoidable, but there are some sections in the campaign where you are required to engage in it. The campaign is also plagued by inconsistent logic. The same enemy types will react differently during some events because it's scripted. Only problem is, the game doesn't tell you when it's scripted. This is a problem you'll only experience in your first playthrough. For me personally, Mirror's Edge is still a 10/10 even with these problems. It's a beautiful and well crafted game.