Mirror's Edge. A creative title for an equally creative game centered around Traceurs - a.k.a. building runners - who secretly and illegally pass information on by hand in a world where movement and information are heavily guarded by authorities and the ever-present eye of Big Brother.
It's a game about betrayal, conspiracy, heroism, and overall first-person action.
That said, I am not without my beefs on this game.
First of all:
WHAT MIRRORS?! You run around on rooftops, and maybe the ground (once) and maybe a boat (again: once). That's all you ever do. Even the "combat" is fairly limited, as I really didn't have the patience to kill every bad guy I could see. You know - since this game was about fluid motion and unpredictability and how well you can use your environment, not "let's see how hard I can Bruce Lee this guy's face into the dirt".
To address my second argument against this game, let's talk about gun physics. Okay, sure, I can see where carrying a big ol' LMG would make free running fairly difficult. Those are heavy guns. And yeah, I can see why it's not so great to jump around on buildings with a shotgun - which is a fairly fragile weapon, despite its power - and roof-jumping with a sniper rifle is rather difficult when the thing's twice as long as you are.
But, a PISTOL?
I can't free-run with a pistol?
Well, I take that back, I can - just not as well as if I were unarmed. See, this is why you should do what Lieutenant Miller did, Faith, and invest in dual shoulder holsters. I mean, pistols are pretty durable. If you drop one, then kick it, it's still going to work, with minor flaws because, well, you just kicked an already highly unstable weapon of killing power. And I say "highly unstable" because those things are like a ball balanced on a pin, one wrong move can completely ruin the thing. But sans the obvious damage, pistols are durable weapons, and they're light, so a measly four or five pounds of gun in your pocket shouldn't add up to so much failure when you're going full speed across a rooftop. And yet I can't jump the building like, three feet in front of me.
Why?
I dunno, ask the implacable game physics.
Now, to address my third point: Reaction times. This game is all about picture-perfect precision and timing. One slip, and it's fifty stories of pure pelvic-region-shattering death for you. But, this same timing is apparently even worse when trying to disarm enemies. Like, before the gun even turns red, you have to hit the action button, otherwise, the guy pummels you, then adds insult to injury by shooting you point-blank to finish you off. Or, that's what he did to me. I dunno, I think it might have been because of my lack of melee.
You decide.
Next: The free running in general. Movement is kinda' touchy and hard to get used to. If Faith fails to react to the jump button, buh-bye. If Faith reacts too slowly to the melee button, buh-bye. If Faith jumps instead of wall running?
Say it with me now,
BUH-BYE.
Needless to say, there's very little room for screw-ups in this game. As in, the window of opportunity closes a split second after it opens, so you'd best be quick on the draw, or you'd best have been saving your Reaction Time up to whatever point you're at that requires mashing of buttons in order to complete a vital-to-one's-health task, because otherwise, put quite simply mate, you're screwed.
By the way, did I happen to mention Traceur in there?
Well, a lot of people get this idea that this game is based on free running, which is basically a flashy form of Parkour not really used for escape methods. Basically, it's just there for fun. Parkour is the "modern-day martial arts" discipline which states that the quickest route from point A to point B is in a straight line, and in order to get to that point B in a straight line, you must learn to go over, under, around or through any obstacles in your way. Faith is a Parkour practitioner in every sense of the word, from escaping the authorities with her free-running capabilities to tracking down baddies with said capabilities. In every notion of the term, Faith is a Traceuse. End of story there.
But, this poses a problem, for me especially:
That means she's really freaking hard to control.
As in, if you're not so fluid in your motions that when you roll from that fall, you're already going into that step jump onto that red pole right in front of you, you can just forget about making that jump without dying. I've tried several times. You have to be perfect with your movements in this game.
And perfection is something I've yet to achieve in any video game.
I'm eagerly awaiting news on if they're going to make a new Mirror's Edge game, because despite my complaints, there are many things good to be said for a game that does first person Parkour so well. Needless to say, even though I had a lot to rant about in this game, it was quite possibly one of my absolute favorites.
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