It’s finally time for…
Review: Mirror’s Edge (Xbox 360)
I was really excited to try Mirror?s Edge from EA based on a few things: the badass female protagonist (Faith), the beautiful graphics, and a story that initially reminded me of Aeon Flux. The demo had me hooked, but I knew the game wouldn?t be perfect based on the telling facts that Faith?s personality was cardboard, and that it took me ten minutes to figure out how to complete the objective once the training session was over. But I still had hope, so I played through Mirror?s Edge, wincing most of the time, but overall having at least an interesting experience.
The story of Mirror?s Edge is on par with a shitty (read: any) webcomic, which is especially sad because a professional scriptwriter wrote it. Faith?s world, what was once a ?dirty and dangerous, but alive and wonderful? city, has been slowly overtaken by a sixth grade social studies understanding of fascism. Which means police are around a lot. And people can?t get ?information.? So it?s up to a team of plucky runners to get the facts to the people by handing off lots and lots of yellow suitcases. But unfortunately, the only time you get to actually be a runner and deliver information in this game is in the demo- you spend the rest of your time following a truly retarded tale of betrayal and stuff. The cheap looking 2D animated cut scenes where most of the plot is hastily explained only complement the lameness of the story.
Lame story aside though, the game play is pretty fun if you don?t mind investing a good deal of time in trial and error. Faith ascends buildings with ease and is able to use the rooftops environments around her to access just about any place. But while the possibilities of movement are vast, it takes time to perfect your moves and you?ll end up splattered on concrete far too many times before you figure out what you?re supposed to do. More ordinary runner missions would have been helpful in the very beginning of this game to understand the controls, and could have perhaps better explained the otherwise hurried and silly plot. Combat in Mirror?s Edge is especially frustrating. Although Faith claims that cops don?t bother runners in the beginning of the game, and you?re taught in training to avoid combat, there come levels where you are forced to take on a ton of cops at once, which are frustrating as hell due to Faith?s strangely slow reaction time. It becomes fairly obvious that she?s been designed to move, not fight, and sometimes it?s easiest just to run away from cops rather than isolate and pick each one off as the game suggests.
The game play doesn?t vary much aside from one sniper mission and hiding inside a truck for a little a while at one point. The rest of the time you?re running, jumping, taking elevators, latching on to ledges or falling to your death. If you enjoyed all of these things in story mode, you?ll love time trial mode, where you can race against yourself to complete short races laid out in previous stages. But be warned: making even the easiest qualifiying times in this mode is insanely difficult and leaves you zero room for error. The same goes for the speed run mode, in which you complete each level from story mode over, including fighting the cops over again (argh).
All in all, Mirror?s Edge is a great looking game (when it?s not in a cut scene) with a stupid story and I?m not too sure how a rumored future trilogy would work out. But it?s worth trying because there?s nothing else like it out there, at least for now.
