Panned by many for being too short (it's not) and a "failed experiment" (nope), Mirror's Edge is primarily a first person freerunning game with an emphasis on flow. The game boasts a slick art style with by making interactive bright red interactable objects stand out against a bloomy white city and it looks gorgeous. A common complaint with first person platforming is that precision is impossible because you're unable to see your feet while jumping, well to paraphrase GB "Doc" Burford "Why do you need to see your feet? Can't you just know your feet are under you?" This is a problem for a lot of people as many first person shooters make you feel like you're controlling a floating camera rather than an actual person. Mirror's Edge combats this by incorporating realistic lighting effects and motion wobble, and having the main character Faith move with a sense of momentum with appropriately weighty jumps. You know where your feet are, and you when you get the feel for Mirror's Edge (which will be after about 10 minutes if you're cool) you know when to tuck your legs in while jumping over a fence, you know how far away from the ground you are and when you need to hit the roll button to break your fall.
One of the challenges of discussing Mirror's Edge's freerunning critically is it's one of those games that's wonderful when it works and completely miserable when it doesn't. Sure, I can go through how much I mostly had a good time with it, I could also easily go through points of the level design that push the player towards a certain path and generally having a good time. It would largely be for naught, if you're one of those people who simply cannot get your head around platforming from a first person perspective spatially then I can't help you, you're going to hate the game. Then again, there are some people out there who can't get their head around holding B to run in Mario games, that's not an argument for Mario not working conceptually. It's rough around the edges in places, but Mirror's Edge does prove first person freerunning as a concept and I'm excited to see if they work out the kinks in the sequel.
Of course, all of that above only applies to the parts where you actually are freerunning. Mirror's Edge of course does have combat in it. Terrible, awful, trashy combat.
Let's get it out of the way first why the combat is so bad mechanically. A lot of the time you'll be able to run away or through dudes, but there are times were combat is forced upon you. Running head first into a bunch of dudes unarmed goes about as well as you'd expect, so your first priority is takedown one dude to take his gun. In some situations you'll be able to run up to a dude and bash his brains in, but that takes far too long if there's other dudes in the same vicinity already shooting at you. As a solution to this, Mirror's Edge has a counter manoeuvre where getting close to a dude will cause them to attempt to melee you, and if you tap a button at the right time you'll instantly knock out the dude and automatically equip their weapon. Nice idea, but the timing on this is not nearly generous enough, for a game that focuses on flow it was a pretty bad decision to make a counter move that essentially gets you killed if you fail it so unforgiving. There is an ability to slow down time to make the counter easier, but the problem with that is it slows down time too much and I end up screwing it up half the time anyway...then I have to get dude-punched in the face in slow motion instead which makes me feel like garbage.
When you actually have a gun there's no indicator of how many bullets are in it, and there's usually not many. So in hectic moments which turn into full on shootouts (which is most of the final hour of the game) Mirror's Edge turns into a tedious daisy chain of shooting a dude, replacing your gun with his gun then shooting the next dude. Long story short, the combat in Mirror's Edge isn't very good, and not many people seem to disagree with this sentiment. The argument isn't so much whether the combat is good or not, but more whether they should try to improve it in the next game or simply remove in entirely.
I'm all for Mirror's Edge having combat, as good as the game is when it's flowing beautifully scuttling over walls and jumping from pipe to pipe is going to get dull eventually without something to spice it up. I like the idea of physical combat, a focus on one hit environmental takedowns (note: not QTEs) using the space and the layout of walls and rooftops. I also like the idea of having usable items like bricks or trashcan lids that can be thrown to distract dudes or knock something over to change the environment and potential scenarios around you. What I don't like however, is the inclusion of guns.
Shooting in games (when done right) is not boring, and I'm not about to make an argument to the contrary, but considering how grounded Mirror's Edge gets and how the flow comes crashing to a halt every time you pick up a weapon I can't consider the inclusion of guns as anything other than a cop-out. Not only does this defy their own concept mechanically, there's something psychologically wrong with it that undermines the cool parts of Mirror's Edge for me as well.
There's a section in the second chapter where Faith is supposed to meet up with another one of the "runners" to get some intel, so you end up chasing after a guy who has the same freerunning abilities as you. I like this section quite a bit, it's like a nice little challenge mode woven smoothly into the narrative as you're forced to react as fast as possible to keep up with this guy. Near the end of the chase there's a part where he runs towards an elevator, and by the time Faith gets there the doors are already closing on the elevator and you see the guy waving cockily at you as he gets away. When I'm on the run from the cops, snipers and superdudes trained to chase after me on the rooftops (they're like the Shadow Marios from Sunshine) I want to be like that guy! I want to escape from all these oppressive forces in the coolest way possible, I want to imagine Inspector Zenigata lost in my dust behind me stomping on his hat. If Faith had tried to do what that guy did in that sequence, she would have faceplanted into the elevator doors, turned around and stabbed the guy chasing her, then grumbled to herself as she took the stairs.
Another analogy is the appeal of stealth games, the cathartic nature of overcoming tension and being able to enter and exit an area without being spotted. Many stealth games will instafail you or leave you helpless if you do get caught, but others will give you the option to murder your way out of any dire situation. Okay sure, you can murder a bunch of guys and still achieve the objective, maybe in some games it's even fun to do that, but you seriously don't feel like a good thief/assassin/ninja when you do that. Even through winning it's hard to not feel like kind of a loser. Mirror's Edge is probably actually worse than that example because it forces you to murder dozens of dudes regardless of how good you are at the game. No matter how free you feel when you're moving, no matter how good you are at traversing the environment around you, Faith is a horrible murderer and a mediocre escape artist. It's impossible to run away from that.
Sure, shooting could be better in Mirror's Edge, maybe it will be better in the next game, but I can't get the idea out of my mind that not only does the game not need shooting, having shooting at all is actively hurting it. It lowers my sympathy for Faith as a character story wise, it undermines the sense of freedom and catharsis of escaping narrative wise, and it's pretty boring mechanics wise. If we must see it return in the next game I sincerely hoped it's at least toned down or balanced with other far more interesting elements.
As Gamasutra said in their review of the game; Mirror's Edge is a "shooter that makes you hate to shoot".
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