With but a small look around at the games on the shelves today, it's clear we're living in the age of the first person shooter. Left, right and centre we're blasting bad guys through the eyes of our protagonist but, enjoyable as they can be, it's hard to find games of the genre which actually push the boundaries, and give us more on the visual aspect than looking down your sights. That's where DICE's Mirror's Edge comes in.
It's interesting that a game which revolves around freerunning and parkour works in first person. To see exactly where your feet are going, what you're grabbing onto, it would be expected that it would be from a third person perspective, to give a whole view of your body. However, in a HUD-less first person view, with the ability to look down and see not just your feet but your whole torso and arms moving incredibly realistically, this is an immersing experience beyond the norm. I say this first and foremost because this will be the first thing that hits you, the player, as soon as you are put in the running shoes of Faith, a 'runner', tasked with delivering messages and information in an unnamed dystopian city. After a short introduction this is the environment you are thrown right into and shown the ropes of running, but it is perhaps not what you'd expect from a city under the grip of a police regime. Warm blue sky, gleaming white buildings with occasional drips of orange and yellow dotted around the concrete jungle; more a place of silenced resistance and forced smiles than one of gang violence and public execution. The visuals are really nothing short of stunning, with the Unreal Engine 3's lighting effects being pushed to their limit; white buildings with the sun shining directly on them will look dazzling, and when bursting outside from a shadowy building you will be momentarily blinded by the glare. My only real issue I had with the aesthetics would be the cutscenes, which were a halfway point between anime and later Disney cartoons like Mulan. These tend to take Faith out of her stern character, and are more often than not quite boring. It perhaps would have been a better idea to have made these cutscenes fully in first person and in real time.
With the gameplay, just like the lack of HUD, simplicity is key. Except for the odd occasion of flicking a switch or disarming an enemy, you will be using all four shoulder buttons. These, combined with each other or with forwards movement will perform downwards moves like crouching or sliding, jumps and vaults, punches or kicks, and a quick 180 degree spin. Chain these together in the right way and, as an example, you could pull off a wallrun, followed by a jump to an adjacent wall, a climb then a final jump to grab the edge. The potential for variety in this is huge and when you're not given the goal to freerun to a certain place, it will usually be to use your skills to solve a puzzle of reaching a high-up point in a large room or a tall roof. In this way, players may find a few similarities to Portal, not least because of the clinical and clean environment.
I think what players would ask for in this area is simply more. The campaign isn't long by any means and most players will be done within 4 or 5 hours, and throughout you don't learn any more skills. It feels great to link together a long set of moves and nail a very smooth trick, but there could perhaps have been some more high intensity moves for when the chases really get going. There could also have been a lot more freerunning sections in general, as about 50% of the campaign will, quite unfortunately, be spent indoors infiltrating buildings. Of course, these sections won't be walking around and there is some parkour to be done inside, but being indoors - and in particular the elevators - tends to kill the pace a little. The combat could also have done with a polish. Kicks, punches, and the incredibly cinematic disarm moves all look great and there are a few combos available, but there is still a lot of room here too for improvement. By the end of the game you'll probably have worked out a specific move chain which will beat any enemy and you might just rinse and repeat.
Once the campaign is done, you are given the options of two more game types: Time Trial and Speed Run. The latter is very simple and not exactly mindblowingly fun either, the task is literally to run through a campaign mission as quickly as possible. Time Trial, however, is another moment where Mirror's Edge shines. You are given a series of objectives to reach and a time to beat. Taking the most obvious choice would be to freerun to each as quickly as you can, but smart players will try to find shortcuts and faster moves to use. Your results are put on the online leaderboards and this can become very addictive and satisfying. Expect this to be a true freerunning experience.
Mirror's Edge is an incredibly original game and one which is perhaps underrated because of its brevity, but I can see that any FPS fan looking for something different will probably warm to it. With DICE's passion for improvement I can see Mirror's Edge 2 being even more spectacular than this little gem. 8/10.
