Hands on With Mirror’s Edge

Seems that the hype for Mirror’s Edge was very short lived after its offical release.  All the commercials said random game magazines voted 10/10 and that it was such a grandly unique gritty game about youths breaking free… rubbish I say….

But, to not spoil anyone’s fun over the actual game and its required hair-pin accuracy needed in order to not die All The Time, I’ll say that Yes, it does deserve to be rated among the great games of 2008 as it does bring a truly unique feel to an otherwise boring holiday shopping list.

Lets start with the story: Top notch casting and even better execusion. I could really feel like i was in the world of Mirror’s Edge, running to save my life from the evil that we know as Law Enforcement.  Maybe it was the fact that when you run, your screen moves with the leaps, bounds, and paced steps. Maybe it was the sound of Faith’s out-of-breath lungs when you jump from rooftop to rooftop. Maybe it was the gorgeous graphics that never seem to get dull no matter how many hours of play time are put into the game. Well, whatever it was, I couldnt help but put myself in the place of the main character and experience everthing the virtual world had to offer….. Wait, forgot to talk about the story…. Oh right, Because I SKIPPED IT ALL!

I had no want or need to keep up with the game’s story line. Probably because the only selling point of the game was the Running.  Which, again, never gets old. I could do that till the disk burns up, but thats not the point. I could tell DICE had put a decent amount of effort in the story. What, with all the animation and voice acting, but at the end of the day, I didnt at all want to sit through it. All the fun was in the gameplay.

And that leads me into the next section. The Gameplay:  This is where i get angry and return the game to Walmart.  After experiencing constant death with games like Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider, I had all but loathed the “Leap of Faith” (get it? Faith?) genre where you constantly have to do the same jump in the same spot for something like seven times before you manage to hit the sweet spot and move on to the next jump, where you get to do that for another seven times. This games almost goes out of the way to make sure you feel that same furious hatred toward every wall and pipe you see. I’m sure some people out there like this kind of stuff, but I don’t….

Something else that ties this game to the newer Tomb Raiders is its use of the R2 button to fire a weapon. Now, this wouldnt seem like much of a problem, but in heated combat with mutliple enemies, having R2 as Fire and R1 as the “Hey! Lets turn around and see what’s over there!” button makes for a very, Very long hate trip.  Also, why give us the all-too-generic Time Altering feature in a game that is all about adrenaline and action? I, for one, still don’t know how it affects gameplay as I tend to be running for my life every other minute.

Let me rap this up with a final thoughts before i make my trip back to walmart.  I give this game a 7 out of 10.  You can oogle the graphic all you want, but in the end, you’re playing a repetative, leap-of-faith game that will be forgotten very quickly with the push of modern FPS games. Not only does it end quickly, but you aren’t left with any really great feelings other than a raised blood pressure and want to run around your block.

Next time: Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe.

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