Every once in a while you find a game that feels like it was directly catered to your interests, almost as if the developers had peered into your brain and found the exact switches to trigger the anticipation. While I am still awaiting the release of Alan Wake, another one of those seemingly enigmatic games, Mirror’s Edge, was recently released for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

When looking at a game like this from a critical standpoint and not from my seven-year-old self, there can be some discrepancies from my expectations and the final release, however, in the case of Mirror’s Edge, my expectations remained shattered. While fault can be found in certain gameplay quirks and the occasional and often frustrating combat sequences, Mirror’s Edge remains one of the most brilliant games I have played in the last year.

The simple mechanic of running is so polished I kept feeling that the game wouldn’t allow me to pull certain moves, only to find that I could let my imagination run wild and for the most part the game would comply. With the basic controls of jump and duck mapped to the left trigger and bumper respectively, Mirror’s Edge makes platforming in a 3D environment in a first person perspective seem to work. While you will find yourself dying quite often, bountiful checkpoints are used throughout making it a less frustrating experience. Ultimately after finding yourself accustomed to the controls it becomes easier to simply sense the edges of buildings and to build an intuition as to when to make the leap to the next rooftop.

Looking back at the original trailer the visual style still remains one of the most unique looking of any video game this console generation. In the retail version the colors and environments all seem different and beautiful in their own right, while still allowing the core parkour mechanics to shine. Everything that this game does simply from a visual standpoint is gorgeous, from certain blurring effects to the “runner vision” (the highlighting in red of certain items in the environment that can be used by Faith to continue through the level) all help in the immersion of you as a runner. While some might nit pick at the sterility of the levels I think that there is something to be said of feeling alone and having a “you against the world” mentality to the gameplay.

With Mirror’s Edge, a game developed by the makers of the popular Battlefield franchise, DICE tried to make a combat scenario that was ultimately unfamiliar to many players of first person games. When viewing from a first person perspective you traditionally have found yourself charging forward and hiding when health runs low, unlike Mirror’s Edge where it is often more beneficial to just keep running. I feel that some of the criticisms that have been aimed at the game cite this one of the games primary faults, which is missing the point completely. With their experience making the Battlefield games, DICE knows how to make a first person shooter, but in Mirror’s Edge they didn’t want to just make another first person shooter with an interesting way of traversing the environment.

With the story following the exploits of Faith, a runner, with the goal of saving her Sister from being set up for murder, Mirror’s Edge is not a game that you will get into because of the narrative. Playing out through animated cut scenes between the individual chapters, the story is a little light on substance and merely sets a stepping-stone for your entry into different environments.

To me gaming is all about the visceral experience, truly being immersed in a world that I have no experience with, and Mirror’s Edge simply provides that experience with such confidence it is kind of scary to think of how it could be improved in the future. For as broken as many people say the combat is, I still think it works well within the context of the world. Much like Portal was a re-imagining of a puzzle game through a first person perspective, Mirror’s Edge is truly a genre bending game with bits of puzzle, fighting, platforming and racing all thrown together in a formula that makes for an exceptional game.

-Eric Wall

Tags: DICE, FPS, Game Design, Mirror's Edge, PS3, review, Xbox 360

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