Zardon

Read The Review Here
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Mirror's Edge is a daring release from Electronic Arts as there has been nothing quite like it before. You take control of an acrobatic runner called Faith and it is her job to deliver important snippets of information to an underground network fighting for freedom in an oppressive and sinister city.

Lelisevis

No comments from the Mouster (Mousey) yet? LOL. I thought this would one of your most eagerly anticipated games.
This review seems to reflect a lot of reviews. Innovative use of first person in a non fps game but with some niggling flaws. Hopefully takeup will be enough to justify a 2nd game with a bit more polish and some feedback took on board.

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Im not dead

Erroneus

Thanks for the review! This went from "buy soon" to "buy when effing cheap" :P

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Matth

Saw a review, and the same game footage, on BBC Click.

As they said, what do you get if you take a first person shooter, and take most of the shooting out?

If you do relieve a bad guy of their gun, then there is a time limit on using it.


This could be hitting the bargain bins in double-quick time, as it seems to be harking back to the bad old days of "Make pinpoint accurate jump" or "long fall to your doom" - a genre first seen in the days of the videodisk game.

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Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

Tipstaff

Personally I like the game. It has it's flaws, combat being the main one (it's not needed, and drags the game down), and yes the game is about trial and error, perfecting the run, but so is every fast paced, keep you on your toes, puzzle based game. Honestly, some of the same aspects in this game are in Portal, just that Portal was slower paced, and had no real enemies other than the environment, or the end boss, but never once have I heard complaints about Portal in regards to timed jumps, having to wait in the elevator for the next level to load, or having to play a level over and over again. This game? These are the things I read about it all the time. And frankly, you want to talk bland? Portal doesn't look half as good as this game does.

This game keeps you on your toes, literally, getting you to think of different ways to approach the end point. The game has "highlights" to show you a route, but it's just one of many, and oft times it's better not to use the suggested path. You can run and hit the switch to turn that electric fence off so you can climb it or bust through the gate, or you can save yourself time, use that air conditioner, and just jump over the mofo. And speaking of jumps, no, they don't have to be pin-point accurate as Faith can grab onto edges and ledges, however timing is critical. Time it right, and you land on the roof being able to keep your momentum, 2 seconds less and you grab the ledge, slowing you down as you pick yourself up (and giving the Blues a chance to catch up), and if you're late, well, you and the ground become intimate friends. Yes, it can be frustrating to have to do a section over and over again because you missed a jump, or got overwhelmed buy a bunch of Blues, but you don't have to do the whole thing over again thanks to what I call "critical point saves". Get passed a certain section, and if you die further along it brings you back to that point, not the beginning. If this weren't the case I'd have returned this game a long time ago. And fighting? You don't have to fight (unless it's part of the scripted scenes). In fact DICE made it perfectly clear that this is something you want to avoid. Your a runner, not a fighter, but if need be you can take care of yourself. The fact that if you do get a weapon you are limited on ammo makes sense since it's not your gun (on the 360 version one of the achievements is to complete the game without killing anyone, while another is to beat a level without doing the same). The fact that after a couple direct hits you're toast, or that the very "toughness" of mixing it up with the Blues, of easily being overwhelmed by them, this is DICE's way of telling you to keep your ass moving, cuz you'd be stupid to stop running. 1 or 2 Blues? No problem, but more than that and you will get your ass kicked. Even with more than 2 Blues you can still win, but it takes patience, and timing. However, getting the kill is not the point of the game. This isn't a shooter. Making it to the end as fast as you can without killing or without being killed, and doing so as fast as you can is. Remember, this is a game about momentum. Blues and obsticles are there in an attempt to slow you down. You are meant to avoid them, to get around them as fast as possible, or get through them just as fast.

Yes, it's a tough game, and it's faults make it even more so, but honestly, don't pass this game up because reviews for it are average. Some aren't. Any way you look at it, any game that's scores above 75% is still worthy of play time, but since it's from DICE, one of the best parts of EA, for me this makes this a more than worthy of my time game. It's not a great game, but it's far from bad. Would I have bought it? Maybe, but I got it free anyways. Used? $30-$40, yes, but not the $5-$10 less than full price EB Games or Gamestop is going to charge you. Rental? Yes. If in doubt, try the demo first so you know what you are getting into as the game is not for everyone. In this case the demo IS inidicitive of what the rest of the game is like. Only later on it looks better, runs are laid out to be longer, more trickier, and it does get a lot tougher. But hey, that's just as it should be.

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Zardon

Yeah its not bad as you say Tipstaff. I beat it a few days ago, but ill be honest in that I agree with John's review. I found it rather monotonous in the latter third of the levels. Its certainly worth looking at and I suggest that people who are even slightly interested pick up the free demo on both consoles stores. Its certainly not a bad game but for me I was rather disappointed. I much preferred Portal and as Tipstaff said there are some similarities so it might appeal to fans of that game. Im not so sure however that Mirrors Edge plays in the same manner.

Tipstaff

Yeah, I forgot to mention that I agree with Johns review. It's bang on with every aspect of the game, faults and pluses.

The AI, for instance, is unfair. Snipers know where you are, even behind a solid wall, or they can do direct hits with the shotgun from way too far away (something John touched on). One thing that drove me nuts, a few times I found that some levels don't load as they should from save points. Take the sewer section. You come up and out of the sewer on a rising catwalk of steel beams, but when the level loads that section the ends can be facing different directions each time. I had to reload that part 5 times just to get the ends facing in a direction close to an edge I could jump to away from the Blues. I also think they could have done a better job on textures, at least to the point that certain surfaces were distinguished from others, such as glass and steal surfaces.

Hopefully EA will let them do a sequel, but I have a feeling that they won't given the reviews so far, which frankly would be a shame as there is plenty of potential here.

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Tril

I tried the demo on the Xbox 360. For me, it's definitely a game to rent for a few days but I'm not sure I would like to buy it.

The first person certainly makes it more interesting than if it was third person.

On a side note, I found it difficult to aim the gun in the Xbox 360 demo while running or standing still.

EDIT :

I rented the game last week end. It was as I thought it would be. It was fun for a day but I got tired of the game after beating story mode. It took about two days to beat.

For the first hour of play, I found this game very stressful. That's a good thing. It does not happen often that a games keeps me on edge like this. It happened because I was feeling defenceless, my main weapon against all the bad being mostly running while they shoot at me. Parts having trains and subways also got me nervous.

I played the Xbox 360 version with a projector on a 60 inch screen. The first person view is very immersive. On a big screen, it can be a bit dizzying.

Savepoints were mostly close enough from each other, except in a few places where they were a bit far from the tricky places.

There's one thing I did not like. The sniper rifle does not have a crosshair when not zooming. That was very annoying. The zoom is very high so when you use it, you only see a small part of the scenery. If you enter the zoom while you are aiming far from an ennemy, you'll waste many precious seconds trying to find him. With a crosshair out of zoom mode, I would have aimed as close as possible to an ennemy before activating the zoom, then he would have been in my view right away with the zoom.

There's another thing that could have been better. While climbing up or down a pipe on a wall, the character automatically looks straigth ahead. You can't roate your head while climbing up or down. You have to stop moving up or down before moving your head. The gameplay would have been more fluid if I could have turned my head while moving on pipes, to look for the next place to jump.