Mirror's Edge Review: Playstation 3
EA DICE Delivers a fresh Experience in this first-person Platformer.
Nov 19, 2008
Taking a break from developing the games of the Battlefield franchise, Electronic Arts DICE has developed a first person game where players flee instead of fight. The result is a parkour-inspired platformer where players take the role of an underground courier running from the law through the rooftops and innards of a totalitarian city-state.
Mirror’s Edge: Parkour for A more serious Platformer
Mirror’s Edge essentially does for Prince of Persia what EA’s own skate did for the Tony Hawk games – it takes gameplay that was once yielding and arcade-like, and puts players through a more serious, somewhat more realistic interpretation of it.
Where another platformer might simply have a player press a single button to run up a wall and then another button to jump again to grab a ledge, Mirror’s Edge would require that player to hold down the jump button to run up the wall, then quickly press two buttons in sequence to turn around and jump to grab the ledge.
It sounds needlessly complicated but Mirror’s Edge’s controls are actually quite intuitive. In the end playing it feels almost like what someone really doing this might go through.
Getting through Mirror’s Edge requires players – not unlike parkour practitioners, to be able to constantly adapt to the environment as it comes to them which gives off an exhilarating sense of accomplishment when runs are perfected. That accomplishment however is also gained through much trial and hardship.
Little Help to Players from DICE
The main polarizing element of Mirror’s Edge is its somewhat extreme difficulty. Unlike most of today’s first person games, Mirror’s Edge does almost nothing to hold the player’s hand. Conquering the game will involve many deaths and many retries which will frustrate some.
DICE does help players out with a “runner’s vision” representing the player character’s sense of the environment which highlights useful platforms in red. Even this feature however is quite vague in its execution, leaving players to spend a lot of time finding the path themselves.
Combat, while as intuitive as the rest of Mirror’s Edge’s controls, presents a brick wall almost every time it’s put in front of the player. The game’s simple control scheme contains a nice variety of attacks and players can even quickly disarm enemies, but the timing for these attacks is extremely strict. Even when players’ pick up a gun their use of it is quite limited.
It isn’t until after Mirror’s Edge has been finished once and players start repeating levels that it becomes an addictive, lasting experience, especially with time trails and leaderboards for the more dedicated.
The Style of the Mirror’s Edge
Mirror’s Edge makes a point of the clean, uncluttered use of color in its graphics. It looks somewhat like a cheesy contemporary sci-fi movie (Ultraviolet, The Fifth Element, etc.), but wears it well and makes beautiful use of the Unreal 3 Engine.
The pseudo-anime-style cut scenes that intersect Mirror’s Edge’s narrative look good enough and help tell a story examining themes of order versus the quality of life. This story is at the very least interesting for its subject matter but doesn’t really add or take away from the overall experience.
Bottom Line
Mirror’s Edge is an experience that manages at once to be fresh, intuitive, and ultimately addictive. Even if it’s harder than most games it still deserves to be one of the standout titles of this fall season.
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