Mirror’s Edge Review

Every once in awhile, a game comes along that is so fresh in ideas, you perk up and follow it through almost its entire development cycle. Mirror’s Edge was like that for us, as it not only centered on locales not usually featured in games (a starkly white, clean environment versus the traditional dirty, bombed out city,) but it also was built around parkour or free running. Originally released on consoles before the holidays, the PC version recently hit store shelves from publisher EA, who is not exactly known for their originality. Mirror’s Edge was on the receiving end of lukewarm reviews then, mostly due to the difficulty in controlling the player with a gamepad. Does the keyboard and mouse makes up for the lackluster reception it received on the 360 and PS3 or are there other problems keeping this game from shining to its fullest?

Story

In Mirror’s Edge, you play a runner by the name of Faith (ugh) who, along with companions Celeste and Mercury, traverses the many rooftops of their unnamed city delivering mysterious packages. Mayor Callaghan has set into place very tight controls on what is and is not acceptable for the human populace. As such, your band of merry men and women find ways to circumvent his system of controls, delivering never identified objects and messages across the cityscape. When you walk in on your sister Kate standing next to the body of Callaghan’s main rival for mayor, it’s up to you to prove her innocence and free the system from his dictatorial rule.

Our heroine, silhoutted across the sky.

The tutorial level gives you the run down.

The story in Mirror’s Edge is not exactly a nail biter, but it has enough twists and turns to keep you interested throughout. Unfortunately, there really is no back story given for how the city ended up where it is. Instead, you are thrust into the world and pretty much told that the government is bad and your raver buddies are good, with no context provided in-game. Thankfully, the game focuses heavily on the gameplay aspect of first-person parkour, so you never really care too much about why things are the way they are.

Erin ESurance, AWAY!

This is why you don't look down...

Cut scenes are rendered in 2D animations that were probably meant to be somewhat artistic, but end up looking like an art school flash cartoon. Since levels load while the cut scenes play, it was probably more of a technical decision than an artistic one. However, just because you have technical limitations doesn’t mean you have to hire the same animators who did the Esurance commercials.