If EA excelled in any field last year, it was in releasing as many brand new IPs as humanly possible. At the beginning of the year we received Army of Two followed by Battlefield: Bad Company, and then later on in the year Dead Space was launched closely followed by Mirror’s Edge. All are stellar titles but the one everyone seemed to have their eye on most was the “promised-to-be” innovative Mirror’s Edge, the first ever free-running game to be presented in first person. It sounded crazy, but everyone was left in awe after the release of the first few trailers, which displayed its fluid gameplay and an excellent remix of Still Alive to bolster the futuristic tech-like theme of the game.

          Mirror’s Edge takes place in a world similar to ours, but just a few years ahead, in the sterile and silent Edge

City. The police force has the entire area in a chokehold, all residents are isolated and there is no means of contact. You assume the role of Faith, who is in league with a group called the Runners, they are the fastest and most efficient way of getting messages across Edge city without detection from the authorities. It’s only when Faith pays a visit to the city’s mayor that her troubles begin, as she enters his office, she finds him dead and beside him is a police officer, Kate, Faith’s younger sister. Before they can escape the scene, the police force take Kate into custody, who is entirely innocent, but without proof she could face a prison sentence, something Faith won’t allow as she plummets through the corrupt city in search of answers to the mayor’s death and secret behind Edge city.

          Faith is a convenient enough protagonist, one of the only memorable female characters to be introduced in 2008. Support roles include the group of runners who make frequent appearances between and in missions; Merc in particular, playing the role as the mission control, who monitors the city, navigating the runners to avoid detection from his base. The plot on the whole isn’t bad, but lacks enough depth to become as superbly crazy as Metal Gear Solid, which could be seen as either good or bad. However, the story mode of the game is somewhat short, players can even hammer through it in less than a few hours which is disappointing, but the Speed Run and Time Trial modes try to extend the game, but don’t reward players with near enough satisfaction as some other mini games do in other popular titles.

          The game is split into several missions including the tutorial which guides you through all the basics. You are first taught how to jump, wall-run, and slide which are assigned to the trigger buttons, creating a very unique and sometimes uncomfortable way to free-run but no doubt players will get used to it by the end of the tutorial. Combat is also aligned to the trigger buttons as well; you can deliver either ground or aerial melee attacks, or even use the guns found on enemies. Guns can be acquired simply by picking them up off of knocked out enemies or using the disarm system, a quick time reaction which will disable the target in one feral swoop. However, the downside of carrying a gun is that it can slow you down, and carrying big guns will disable you from performing any acrobatic moves.

          It seems to be a nice blend after a while, other features like being able to use slow motion and the environment are neat little perks but the bulk of the game is orientating around navigating the many obstacles the game has to throw at you.

          This is where I load my critic pistol and let full fire on the game. When faced with an object there tends to be a few ways to pass it, but sometimes the game will misread you and make some stupid mistakes. For example, if I try to leap over a knee high wall, I can end up flying over it, stop completely in front of it, or even bound off sideward whilst using the same control input. Also, you would assume such a skilled free-runner like Faith would be able to mount corners of building. Nope. Instead of bounding over them smoothly like most obstacles in the game, you just simply freeze in front of it. This complaint may not seem much, but if you have ever attempted the Time Trial races, even the smallest degree of error in your movement can send you plummeting, ruining your chances of achieving perfect times, something strictly impossible to do even without any mistakes, guiding thousands of players to Youtube video guides.

          The graphics in Mirror’s Edge are great, character design may be a little lacklustre, but the view of Edge City from the rooftops is amazing and surprisingly, there is a lot more variation in location than I initially thought, with vast sewers, train tunnels, and warehouses filling the gaps between legging it through the cityscape. However, one thing to point out here is that surely cramped sewers and tunnels kind of defy the free and spacious persona of free running.

         

Mirror’s Edge is innovative, I give it that much, the first few levels are a blast, but as soon as you realise how unreceptive the obstacles can be, the game becomes more of a mindless struggle of button bashing than the elegant traversing of the city as depicted in trailers. The Speed Runs and Time Trials try to add a little more to the game, but are boring due to the fact that you are basically exploring segments of levels you have already completed in the story mode. If EA are to make a sequel to this, they will need to make the controls more receptive, and the obstacles more interactive, but Mirror’s Edge is definitely worth a rent for players looking for something a little different.