Gotta be a bit of a hater on this one.
By no means is Mirror's Edge a failure. I must say that glowing reviews seem a bit extreme, but there's something infectious offered here that almost makes you WANT to love it, even if you can't. I'll detail my own discoveries with the title, and maybe postulate a reason for the generally high scores I've seen.
Downloaded the demo of LIVE, and the first thing I thought was Holy S*#$ is this game fascinating. The videos don't do it justice - in fact, I find watching somebody play this game to be a bit dull. Once the controller's in your hand and you're zipping Faith around her little rooftop jungle your brain starts crackling in a new way. It truly is enjoyable to effortlessly plow through the levels once you know their nooks and crannies, and the mostly frenetic pace of the game demands thinking two and three steps ahead at a constant clip.
The frequent deaths (and they will be frequent) are not a deal breaker to me (I have a soft-spot for the old-school trial-and-error aspect when it's done well); I don't mind repeating a level, polishing my chops and sweating new techniques. And the other constant bit of criticism I've read - angled at the action segments - I think is complete hogwash. Yes, you don't aim steady and true like a Duke Nukem LAN deathmatch team, but Faith is obviously not a space marine and the gunplay is fitting to the character. In fact, I found the action portions to be wholly enjoyable for this reason - it's entertaining to bring sneakers to a gun fight, and the few segments in the game when you have to run, disarm/smack around a few guys and keep going were some of the most original moments it brings to the table. There's no thoughtful cover mechanic or anything, it's kind of throwback FPS stuff mixed into the bread-and-butter gymnastics of the game. The melee moves are repetitive but also rather visceral and rewarding. I absolutely love the fact that the smaller weapons (pistol, uzi) don't hamper your free-running, and you can kind of bop around with them, picking off enemies from the locations they don't have access to. Also, the parkour enemies you run into - though very rare - are some of the big money moments in this game for me.
I found the story mostly bleh...big brother is watching the city, keeping us down, yadda yadda yadda. The animated story bits are awkward looking and unworthy of this hardware - you guys have a great engine on display here, so USE IT! The gameplay graphics are simplistic but sensible, and look beautiful and uncluttered in motion. Human movement is represented rather accurately, and I like that you see Faith's body when you look down; not enough first person games these days offer this little perk and I've always been fond of it. The voice acting is mostly of higher caliber, and I found Merc's play-by-play through most of the game to blend masterfully with the action.
I think i grasp the time trial mode's genius but I also find it hard to care. The game's largest mistake is articulated best by this mode's attempts to remedy it: choosing your own path. Parkour's leading concept is it's philosophy of blazing your own trail through the urban landscape, yet Mirror's Edge is constantly needling you through the only path to successfully traversing the terrain. Yeah, you come across a few moments where it's "jump on the box on the left or the box on the right," but give me a break - the freedom the game tries to sell ends up a dud. How time trial mode succeeds is by taxing you - just a little bit - with finding the quickest path, and there are often two or more options. For example, one of the earlier time trial stages positions two checkpoint markers close to one another, yet one is on a lower plane. You can figure out a way down to tag the checkpoint and move on, but a better idea is to jump over the checkpoint (which still activates it), and tumble to a landing ahead. Why this mode still fails is that instead of rewarding creativity you usually find yourself bottlenecked into finding the one path the level design decides to be the fastest one that nets the most points.
While not a failure by a long shot, the best moments of the game are fleeting. The highest scores this game received are probably an overreaction to it's compelling new ideas; though not unwarranted, these scores seem like a knee-jerk response to the praiseworthy boldness of the developers.
I rented this, as I hesitated to put 60+ dollars down solely based on the game's potential. This was an EXCELLENT choice on my part, as I just don't see this game as a worthwhile purchase until it goes into the discounted bargain bin, which I imagine won't be too long. The gameplay is so left-of-center, it's gonna leave the Gearheads (Warheads?) scratching their heads in boredom and disbelief.
