Mirror’s Edge
It’s been a while, but yes, I’m back and raging full of reviews. Anyway, aside from the formalities, of all the games I’ve played in my room while having nothing to do for the summer, one shines to the top of the list that only made me wanting more, Mirror’s Edge.
This game had come out quite a while ago but I haven’t gotten around to trying it out. One faithful day, however, while surfing the regular websites, I came across a forum for high resolution pictures and saw an image of a white city with random red or blue or orange objects scattered around. I thought this was a pretty nice Photoshop of a picture someone took only to realize that this had come from a video game.
And so I got ahold of Mirror’s Edge. I’ve played the PC version, and I truly believe that this is the way it is meant to be played. Of course you could play on the 360 or the PS3, but the game truly shines on the PC using nvidia’s new PhysX egine. What does this mean? Well I only noticed it after turning it off because at some point my computer could not handle it, but it adds objects with particular animations or interactions that cannot regularly be done without it. At this point, I was running from a helicopter along some construction rafters, the types you see on the sides of buildings. As I was running, I could see the large plastic coverings blowing along with the wind. What amazed me was that at one point the helicopters started shooting at me through them, leaving various holes, and where the holes were getting close together, it would create tears. I actually stopped to watch this amazement in technology and subsequently…died because of it.
The game has an above typical storyline, probably because it has a backstory that you’d have to absorb first. Mirror’s Edge takes place is a sort of dysotopia where everything is really clean for some reason and all the buildings are white, save for some colours of different organizations, as well as the colour red, which stands for objects which are useful to you along the game. I suppose if I were a literary critic I’d say that because the ‘runners’ (the good guys) are the only ones that can see this, it shows their liberal movement in a super-conservative environment; but that’s just me. Anyway the story revolves around your sister being framed for the murder of a politician who was planning to make a change and you using everything in your power to find out why and free her from her doomed fate.
The gameplay of Mirror’s Edge is unique enough to almost deserve it’s only branch of genre. It can best be described as an FPS game that a child with a Platformer, who donated blood to The Matrix. A lot of the time, I actually felt like this was the true version of what the perfect movie game of The Matrix would be. Your character spends her time running away from cops, running on walls, or jumping across buildings, kicking open doors to find a quick path, using bad ass kung fu moves and disarming them to use their own weapons against them, all while being talked through it by a sort of operator type, who tells you where to go on an earpiece. Not to mention that eventually in the game you will come across advanced police officers who usually end up moving faster than you…kind of like agents. Actually I would like to see DiCE make a Matrix version of this game.
What I really like about the fighting is the disarming, which is usually how you’d end up defeating your enemies. The way it works is that while facing an enemy, they will stop shooting you and try to attack you, and when this happens their weapon will turn red, giving you the opportunity to click a button and disarm them. And no, you’re not just grabbing their weapon, the animation that follows is usually some crazy ninja stuff. Once you obtain their weapon, you can fire it at the other opponents, making quick kills, but unforunately you can’t reload, or pick up weapons off the floor. You also can’t perform your acrobatics with weapon in hand and must drop it before continuing. I suppose it’s fair, but it would have been nice to be able to pick up weapons that are lying around the place or ammo even, and be able to play the game more FPS-oriented, or more platform-oriented, as your playstyle.
The game, in story mode, as fun as it is, is actually short. DiCE had probably made up for this by installing different time trial and race modes in the game. If this were open world or had a multiplayer capability, I picture that it would be as popular as Call of Duty 4 is right now.
As far as the game goes, Mirror’s Edge is a brand new playstyle that works seamlessly with the graphical accomplishments that it is capable of. The only problem with the game is that it is too short. It is a lot like Portal in that way now that I think about it. If DiCE and Valve were to get together to create a monster of a game, blending Mirror’s Edge and Portal, make it multiplayer, and make it customizable…well that would nearly be the end of the world in game development. But let us just pray that there will be a sequel to this game. In the meantime, definately buy it, but rent it, because the story will go fast, though it is fun to replay the same mission over and over, like a Mario game.
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Hey Lemonylol! Welcome back man.
I only ever played the demo on the PS3 for this game but from what I remember it was beautiful and everything you said was dead on. That ninja disarming is insane looking
Awesome review man!