Trial and Error
Mirror's Edge could have been a great and exciting platformer, but instead stumbles constantly, just keeping it from reaching its obvious potential.
At its best, this game is rush, a wild ride of running, jumping, and doing batman and spiderman style tricks accross rooftops, and inside buildings. The way you can interact with the environment is often very smart, and satisfying. There will be moments where you'll forget you'll playing a game. It really gets your adrenaline pumping. But then, it happens, the game trips on its own shoe laces. For no reason, you'll miss a jump, not because it's your fault. You'll try it again, and fail again. On a later try, you'll make the jump, even though you did the exact same thing the first few times. Frustrating situations like this, are, unfortunately, not few, and not far inbetween. Action constantly comes to a halt because of this. Combat is also an issue (more on that later). It's really sad that this game trips up constantly, because when this game works, it really works. If this game was all around bad, this wouldn't be a problem, I'd just burn it, and laugh. Unfortunately, since the game has such good aspects, you'll feel the need the play through. Because of this, you're forced to deal with some very, very frustrating gameplay. This game will make you happy, frustrate the hell out of, and test you.
The art style of Mirror's Edge is spectacular. The overexposed, saturated, and washed out style of the graphics perfectly goes with the story. In the story, the future is uncertain one, one where rules and morality have lost their way. The art style, pushing the boundries of what we normally see and perceive as realistic, perfectly reflect that. The art style is probably one of the only aspects of this game, that isn't severly messed up in some sort of way. The excellent sound design, and the even better beautifully crafted, memorable, and sometimes haunting soundtrack, also takes home this honor.
The combat in Mirror's Edge takes a huge back seat to the platforming. The very nature of the game wants you to avoid combat. The main character is a noble girl, taking a human life would cheapen her character. Avoiding combat altogether is also a fun and exciting aspects of the game. The problem? Sometimes you HAVE to fight. Not because the game wants you to, but because of poorly designed mechanics. The artifical "intelligence," and I use the term loosly, is both a curse and blessing, because the enemies are so stupid. There are points in the game where if you can find an object (a car for instance) to stand in the way of you, and someone who's job it is to end your life, you'll be safe, for eternity. That shows me that this game was rushed to release, poorly tested, or both.
The bullet time feature is a feature that let's you slow the action down. This is often fun, as it lets you easily disarm enemies. You'll often have a great time doing so. Disarming an officer and kicking him in the head in slow motion, is a good laugh. However, there are problems with the way this is implemented. The bullet time is something that takes a few minutes to refresh, before you can use it again. Obviously this is to keep the game from being too easy. If you're planning on going through the game without shooting anyone for a trophy/achievement, you'll probably find yourself hiding and waiting for bullet time to refresh. This slows the action down considerably. The game backed itself into a corner with this. Either the game is too easy with bullet time, or it's too frustrating. The concept should have completely redone, or scrapped altogether.
Mirror's Edge is a game that has both good times and bad. During the good times, you'll be running through, jumping, climbing, and having an absolute blast. During the bad times, you'll be frustrated, and angry, because constantly, poorly designed mechanics in this game keep you from doing what I think the game truly wants you to do. It wants to be an exciting and fast platformer, but so many aspects slow it down, and keep it from doing so, in often frustrating ways. You may spend hours performing Trial and Error. You may even feel like a game tester. Not a good thing.
Test it please, then release it again.
