Mirror's Edge: Min Wage Review

Mirror’s Edge’s best quality is its ambition. Its worst quality is not being ambitious enough.

DICE is one of the most impressive developers around so it’s no surprise that they’d be bringing something huge to the table. Up until then DICE was, and still is, known for the Battlefield series which is the most successful antithesis to Call of Duty. What I’m saying is that DICE isn’t known for building single player experiences that isn’t a series of training courses for a multiplayer game.

Mirror’s Edge takes a lot of risks but not nearly enough. The game focuses on parkour as a means of navigating an urban environment mostly consisting of rooftops, underground tunnels and office buildings. The game is a lot like Portal and with any luck a honed sequel to Mirror’s Edge can into as satisfying an experience as Portal 2 became. The interior levels are reminiscent of Portal or even Half-Life 2’s stylized, lab rat in a dark, lonely world with a pristine façade deteriorating the further you venture. The game is played in first person perspective but you rarely use guns at all and are never required to use them at all. The protagonist is a female without over sexualized composition or a generic personality. She, Faith, is a perfect complement to strong, independent female characters like Samus Aran , Alyx Vance and Elena Fisher. The game, like Portal, is more of a puzzle/platformer than a straight action title where figuring out how to escape a room and pushing forward is half the fun.

Unfortunately, like Portal, Mirror’s Edge feels more like a concept than a finished product. However, unlike Portal, this feeling comes from the game’s shortcomings in length, design and price. Portal was a polished concept, a sophisticated demo that was priced at $20 or available in a bundle with TF2, also $20, and the entire Half-Life 2 saga up to that point for $50. Portal was a hell of a game for its price. Mirror’s Edge is a $60 game and lasts maybe two or three times as long as Portal. It also comes with a lot of problems making the game sometimes fun rather than always fun. It can’t fall back on bundled titles if it fails to deliver either. Let’s get into the meat of the issues.

The combat sucks. Fairly often you’ll be confronted with a room full of soldiers with guns which will probably kill you in one or two shots. You have to defend yourself with your wits, speed and a couple of melee strikes. It’s practically impossible to deal with enemies unless you can get them isolated and even then making one wrong move ends in your death. Batman: Arkham Asylum is miles ahead of Mirror’s Edge in terms of combat being fun, fluid and practical, and Arkham Asylum’s combat wasn’t even that creative or even that good. That’s how bad Mirror’s Edge’s combat is and there happens to be a lot of it in the game. Overhaul it or get rid of it entirely. Another issue is the perspective. First person is great for some games but Mirror’s Edge is mostly a platformer. Generally first person perspective doesn’t work with platforming and this game doesn’t make a strong counterargument. Now, in most cases it’s quite exhilarating but more often than not the slightest mistimed jump will kill you. It doesn’t have to be a total change, keep the first person but add the third person to a button like Fallout 3 does for instance.

The levels occasionally present you with a variety of options but 90% of the time you’re going to be traveling down a very linear path the entire game. Portal was linear and I won’t argue against it but more choices would be a boost to Mirror’s Edge overall feel. There’s also not a lot to do while going down these linear paths. They put packages in the game but they have no use whatsoever besides being worthless collectibles. I’d prefer if the game didn’t turn into a full open world experience but the illusion of an open world game with a lot of pre-made missions and courses aside from the main story would work well here.

Finally, the storyline is terrible. Instead of animating cut-scenes using the fantastic engine Mirror’s Edge runs on they decided to use cinematic animations reminiscent of graphic novels. I could forgive that design choice and call it a missed opportunity to make great scenes even better if the scenes had anything to say at all. I won’t spoil the story but it’s aimless and forgettable. Instead of playing up the mysterious world the story is like a rejected Law and Order script or something along those lines. A lot of the characters are great but none of them have anything to say or do worthy of their badassery (it’s a word) and only Faith gets significant fleshing out. Plus, by the time the story ends nothing has been resolved and the situation is exactly the same as from the beginning except a lot more people are dead. Seriously, contract someone from Valve, Bioware or Naughty Dog because DICE isn’t coming up with a decent storyline anytime soon on their own. I played Bad Company 2, I know what I’m talking about.

So let’s recap. The game is combat heavy but the combat is terrible and needs to be removed entirely or overhauled. The first person perspective needs to go or at least be compromised. The game is too short to be this linear and needs either variety in the design or an open world approach. The game should add a lot of challenge courses to showcase the solid gameplay while having enough content to warrant the full price. The story sucks and needs to be completely reworked to compliment the characters and the city in an engrossing way. If DICE and EA can address all of these problems with Mirror’s Edge 2 then you’re looking at the next Half-Life 2 or Portal 2. Otherwise I highly recommend everyone trying Mirror’s Edge at least once. It’s cheap and unless a sequel is forthcoming then you may never see gameplay like it again for a long time.