Mirror's Edge Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

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A year or so ago, Mirror’s Edge used to rank highly with me, being one of my favorite games of all time, up there with the best of ‘em like Portal and Fallout. While it is still a rather fun and enjoyable experience, coming back to playing on PC, issues started to surface.

Before we get to that, I just want to toss a bit of praise toward the art design behind the game, with high contrast colors and sharp shadows. The Frostbite engine hasn't aged a day, making Mirrors Edge one of the best looking game out there, pleasantly blending a bright, anime-ish style and realistic models and lighting. You will often finding yourself looking around at the sprawling city around you, with light bending over windows, smoke stacks wafting through the air, and the city bustling beneath you.

It's a looker.

Besides that, the games primary mechanic, first person platforming or parkour, manages to give you sense of speed and fluidity. When it’s working correctly. You will in frustrating frequency that a path that you have taken is a dead end or not traversable. Forcing you to break game flow for a path that you can take, which you would've never known otherwise. Either that or dying because of shoddy collision detection will have you plummeting to your death more than once. Regardless, if everything works in your favor, good times are to be had, providing a real sense of achievement when you pull off a course nearly flawlessly.

Where I wished Mirror’s Edge would have bared its teeth a bit more was with its story, which becomes rather forgettable and generic. What works for the story are the cartoon animated cutscenes that tell it, all being a nice little treat visually between levels. The animations are fluid and organic, forms flexing and relaxing in a realistic manner, all tied in with its anime influenced art style. I found myself racing through courses to get to the next animation.

Just plain awesome art direction.

Another thing that works for the game’s detriment in the gameplay department, is the combat system. While it has a fast and simple melee system which is quite good, disarming opposition of their firearms and using them is another story. You will occasionally find yourself getting slapped with the butt of a gun due to, once again, shoddy collision detection. Especially in particular sections where you NEED to get a gun to progress. It’s fucking infuriating and hurts the entire game.

Other than what was covered, there’s a few nitpicky things like a minor lack of level variety late game, level padding, and some hyper accurate enemies in various instances. These issues don’t occur often, but enough to annoy if they arise.

With the samey, generic military shooter released year after year, Mirrors Edge was a refreshing take on a wholly new concept that accomplishes it with mixed results. While the art design is stellar, gameplay fun and animations interesting, the ever present shadow of bipolar collision detection, generic story, and pissy combat takes a huge toll on the game’s enjoyability. Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

Verdict

6.75/10

Enjoyable