Mirror's Edge

Mirror’s Edge is a first-person parkour game developed for release in 2008 by EA Digital Illusions CE. The basis of the game is to free-run along the skyline of an unnamed city, avoiding armed authorities who want you for a reason not explained.

The visuals of this game compliment the gameplay’s flow. Clean, uncluttered colour schemes and colouring objects and routes to highlight the progression route ensures the game stays a running game rather than adding to the pile of frustrating games where you run around in circles pondering where the developers wanted you to go. Though mentioning colour, the main colour is red, which cannot be changed. This may be an issue if you suffer from a colour deficiency; an issue a lot of new games are considering for their HUDs. This game does feature something I like a lot, which draws immersion better than a lot of games and a reason why I really liked The Getaway: No HUD.

If I were to state a fun-factor, I would say the reminiscence of The Matrix that we fell in love with years ago. Jumping across roof-tops, and actually making it, bullet time weapon de-arm moves. Mirror’s edge gives us fans what Enter The Matrix couldn’t. This game will hold you on the edge of your seat but offer you little quiet spaces to overcome the last few moments of action before abseiling you down another skyscraper to embark on the adrenaline rush. The fact that this game is in first-person adds to that factor of speed and how much you are in control. This ‘perceived speed’ being down to the view is often well known by Sim-racers who understand the benefits of the correct Field-of-view. To compare: I felt barely in control during Splinter Cell: Black List as the character halted and span left while my view slowly followed. All these details make this game immersive and Edgy.

I am picky when it comes to continuity and open-word within games and this game will be treated no different. There are moments that I feel are scripted, where you jump further than usual, like the cast of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, just so the game continues on. Though this would normally bug me to disbelief, Mirror’s edge seemingly executes this to spice up the repetition and to avoid the old Tomb Raider issues where you swear you pressed jump but instead, she just plummeted to her death. Open world too has gone to the way of the “i”, where it is used so often that we don’t even know what it means anymore. This isn’t the game’s fault as it was never sold as open world, but when a game appears to be free-running and instead orders around in a ‘Crysis 3 corridor irony’, you start to wonder if you actually do play games anymore. Granted, the game would be painfully dull if all the roofs were barren and had no sense of direction and digital Illusions has pulled off a tricky seller very well.

This game delivers a concept very difficult to make, very well; pleasing an audience left abandoned since 2003. The visuals and feedback are done in the best of ways, although we now need Mirror’s Edge 2 with Oculus Rift support.

Very edgy with sky-high quality, shame about the lack of colour deficient support.

8.2