Exuse me, waiter? There’s some Prince of Persia floating in my First Person Shooter. What, this isn’t a First Person Shooter, it’s an Action Adventure? But it’s got guns! Wait, so the guns actually slow me down and impair my movement? Okay, if you insist: I’ll try to pretend this isn’t a
First Person Shooter, but I’m telling you the guns are going to confuse people.
When you have a first-person view in a game, and a gun, people do the math, y’know… They start falling prey to genre conventions and gaming tropes, whatever those are.
Wait, there’s an achievement for beating the game without having shot anyone with a gun?
Sure, let’s give that a try…
FIRST PERSON ACTION ADVENTURE PANTS
So, what we’ve got here is a shiny (and clean!) conformist dystopia where everyone’s happy and nobody gets hurt. But, as tends to happen when everyone is happily conforming, some kids just don’t jive with the overbearing government control. You play Faith, a Eurasian-looking “Runner” who certainly doesn’t care for overbearing government control. The Runner raison d’être is to carry secret messages (probably porno magazines) while evading the totalitarian government surveillance.
Faith certainly isn’t going to admit her personal hero is the Persian prince with the baggy pants, even though she borrows most of her moves from him. It’s a good thing she knows how to wall-run, speed vault and wall-jump too, because when you’re being chased by a helicopter across the metropolitan rooftops it’s only one misstep that stands between you and a mushy fluid bag death on the pavement sixty floors down.
Runners are gifted with a special “vision” that colour-codes objects in the world. This helps you pick out a good path from point A to B, showing you where you can vault, leap, balance and zip line. The Runner Vision doesn’t show you the optimal path however, that’s up to you to discover (and half the fun of Mirror’s Edge). On hard diffi culty (unlocked by beating the game on Normal), the Runner Vision is enforced into the off position.
MOMENTUM MANIA
Not to make too fine a point of it, but Mirror’s Edge really is not a First Person Shooter. It’s all about momentum, see. The longer you keep running, the more momentum you build up. This not only helps you move faster, but it lets you jump further, vault higher and recharges your Bullet-Time button for those tricky ass-clenching jumps across skyscrapers.
It’s all very exciting, different and the “presence of body” is undeniably cool. There is no HUD other than a reticle, there to help people stop puking all over their screens since there has never quite been a game with quite so much firstperson motion in it before. While running, you can see Faith’s arms, legs and feet.
Climbing over things, ducking into a roll during a Heavy Landing and wall-running all show you the various body parts you would expect to see during such actions. It works incredibly well, though people prone to motion-sickness may want to try the demo first, just in case.
RUNNING FOR FUN AND PLOT
The main storyline is presented in-game via some rather creative first-person cut scenes, as well as animated segments that give the experience a “graphic novel” feel.
The plot itself, while certainly not Emmy Award winning material, does enough to keep you interested for the duration.
In-between cut-scenes, the game presents the action across a variety of flavours. Certain segments are straightforward A-to-B running, which may or may not involve something shooting at you.
Other segments involve trying to find a good way to get through a bunch of Blues (Cops), either by avoiding them entirely, dispatching them with hand-to-hand combat or (gasp) by shooting them with their own weapons.
Faith is a very capable combatant, especially when you mix movement and momentum into the attacks.
Certain parts of a level are as simple as trying to ascend the inside of a stunningly beautiful and authentic-looking half-built skyscraper, picking the best route up. Finding the fastest route through all of these situations is really what Mirror’s Edge is about once you unlock Speed Run upon
completion of the game.
SPORTY SPRINTING
Mirror’s Edge is really about “gaming athleticism”. Once you’re done with the storyline (which will feel short since it’s obviously the setup for a series, thus basically an extended training session akin to Portal), it’s time to beat your personal best in terms of Time Trial or Speed Run (or the best of those on the high score list, either global or your friends). While the kind of score-attack self-competitive nature of games like Mirror’s Edge certainly won’t appeal to everyone, there remains a true joy to finding an optimal, fast, graceful route through a section of a level in the Speed Run mode which times you on segments of the single-player campaign.
Time Trial has a list of pre-built courses (usually based on the single-player levels), with additional courses unlocking as you rank either one, two or three stars on a level by beating a par time. You can compete directly against other players by downloading their “ghosts” from the high score list. Their ghosts are ethereal red-tinted runners that leave a trail of footprints that you can follow, either to try to beat their time, or to learn a new route through a course.
HAVE FAITH
Is it experimental and perhaps a touch niche as a result? Yes. There’s no way around it: Mirror’s Edge is something different and different doesn’t always jive with the larger gaming group mind.
There are going to be people who kvetch about it not having enough shooting bits. Others will complain about the length of the storyline, ignoring
the Time Trial mode entirely since they care not for the competitive high-score attack thing. You can go hunting for Runner Bags in the levels, if you like your completion-ism with a touch of scavenger hunting, but that’s not for everyone either.
Mirror’s Edge is not for everyone, which is its greatest strength and it’s most pronounced weakness.
What did you think of Mirrors Edge?
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