Mirror's Edge Review
This past Christmas' rush of hot game releases saw many quality games swept under the rug as blockbuster games with the advertising budgets to back them up claimed the spotlight. One game in particular that was missed and overlooked by many was EA's Mirror's Edge.
Mirror's Edge is both a tranquil and intense game about a runner named Faith in a totalitarian city where lines of communication are watched as frequently as communications are made. Early on Faith plays the roll of a modern urban roof-top courier. She makes her way over, between, through and beneath buildings, often all the while being chased by trigger happy police.
Mirror's Edge is not primarily a first-person shooter, but a first-person action game that at times has guns at your disposal, provided you can get them out of the hands of a policeman. Called "free running" Faith is highly athletic and the game's city is her jungle gym. As such, to traverse roof-tops, Faith employs wall running, vaulting, sliding and a lot of running among many other combinations of means to scale literally deathly heights.
After a brief tutorial level for some roof top obstacle course stumbles and falls to teach players the flow of gameplay in Mirror's Edge, the game kicks right into an immersive and intense first level. Unlike typical first-person games, in Mirror's Edge when faced with a helicopter raining down fire on you, you have no choice but to run. Further unlike other first person games, this is exhilarating while not being particularly frustrating thanks to the attention to detail in Mirror's Edge's gameplay mechanics.
Running from helicopter fire across several precarious roof-tops and air-duct-lined alleyways to finally bust through a door to periodic safety has a great sense of achievement, not only because it's pulse pounding, but the fact you made it without plummeted 20 stories to the ground. That's the thing about Mirror's Edge, you fall to your death nearly as often as you attempt jumping to a yet-undiscovered ledge.
Although, as the game places Faith in many different puzzle-like environments to climb-up and weave through, when you do die it's not overly frustrating, but many times funny, bring solace to your inevitable pitfalls. Players aren't punished much for dying, as Faith, after plunging to the bottom an elevator and hearing the ever-encouraging sounds of hitting the ground at high velocity for example, respawns usually where she fell from. The exception to this is during action packed sequences under gun fire where Faith respawns back at the start.
