I used to be excited whenever a free game showed up in the mail. That all changed when EA started assaulting me with their line of For Dummies crapware. At this point, getting a package from UPS is like playing Russian roulette with a fully-loaded Lancer…by myself. So, it was with great relief that I found Mirror’s Edge on my porch earlier this week, a game I have been eagerly awaiting since first playing it earlier this year.

Lara Who?
Mirror’s Edge is yet another addition to EA’s admittedly impressive attempt to undouche itself in the eyes of the public, along with Dead Space and Valve’s Left 4 Dead. Their quantity doesn’t seem to be dropping, but the quality is most definitely rising.

The game takes place in a near-future, conformist anti-utopia. Underneath the facade of the clinically-white metropolis, a totalitarian government has constricted the freedom of the inhabitants and heavily monitors the flow of public and private information. Because of this, a network of dissident runners are used to deliver messages which are prohibited by those in authority.

You play as Faith, a runner who has recently recovered from a near-fatal fall; a thinly veiled and unapologetic excuse for the tutorial mission. Faith and her colleagues use the art of parkour, or free-running, to quickly traverse the rooftops and environments of the city while evading the police. She has some martial arts tactics available to her in case things get rough, but more on that later.

As Meagan noted in her preview, the game looks quite stunning. The complete visual presence of your character and the lack of any sort of HUD make for a very engrossing experience. Swedish developer DICE has said that they plan to merge elements of Mirror’s Edge with their future games (namely Battlefield), and I hope that other developers follow in their footsteps. Imagine a first-person Assassin’s Creed or Tomb Raider, let alone application in less-obvious genres. Also, it is 2008, there is no damn reason not to see your characters’ feet in first-person shooters!

Faith has a suite of free-running techniques with which to interact and progress through the environments. These include wall-runs, speed vaults, wall-climbs, and skillrolling (to avoid taking damage when jumping from considerable heights), among others. Learning them is as simple as following the tutorial prologue, and most players should be stringing them all together competently within a very short amount of time. Ghosts of the world’s top speedrunners and time attackers can be downloaded and raced against, which is an excellent way to learn the tricks of the masters.

Generally the game plays very well, with only a few instances where I felt like I was robbed of a successful jump or maneuver. This is especially the case when swinging and jumping from bars, but for such an original control scheme on its first outing, it is surprisingly polished.

You Gotta Have Faith
Mirror’s Edge revolutionary platforming gameplay and avant-garde visuals are of undeniable quality, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how fracking awesome the soundtrack is. If you have ever liked a single electronica tune in your life, the Mirror’s Edge OST is just downright infectious. The game even provides a jukebox mode, so if you see me on Xbox Live set to Away in the Mirror’s Edge menus, I’m probably listening to the music while I wait for a proper soundtrack release.

For the first half of the game, I was indescribably enthralled by Mirror’s Edge. It was so refreshing and entertaining, I literally thought to myself that it would be strange to admit in the review how I thoroughly enjoyed the entire game. Seriously, think about how rare that actually is; Even those die-hard fans of games like Ocarina of Time and Gears of War can name bits and pieces that they simply did not enjoy (hint: it rhymes with “Water Temple”). But then the story went nowhere, and the frustrating enemy encounters gave me something to complain about.

Still, after so many overhyped, disappointing big-name games being released in the past couple months, Mirror’s Edge is a much-needed breath of fresh air. It’s just plain fun. The game feels like an edge-of-your-seat interactive action movie, and did I mention how great the music is? I commend DICE and EA for taking a leap of faith on an admittedly risky title, not only because it’s a new IP but because it may make some people prone to excessive vomiting. EA is planning Mirror’s Edge as a trilogy, and for once I don’t mind. I’m actually looking forward to the next one, and even the inevitable film that this game so obviously aspires to be. I’d like to play other tales of other runners as well, and with the many additions that can be made to the already-great gameplay, the sky is the limit.

Needs Improvement:

Story
Mirror’s Edge feels like the second and third act of a film, which would normally be a good thing, but this game has a truly interesting identity and world I wanted to know more about. Runners lead truly exciting lives and push the limits of human physicality on a moment-to-moment basis, yet the poor writing doesn’t flesh them out in any meaningful way. In such a short, cinematic game, Overlord and Heavenly Sword scribe Rhianna Pratchett had the opportunity to truly shine, and instead she provides little more than what might as well be the next mediocre Milla Jovovich vehicle.

The dialogue and opening narrative starts out superbly, and—like Dead Space—the beginning and end of the game show moments of absolute genius, but everything in-between is disappointingly subpar. Also, some of the characters refer to Faith as “Faithy”, which is like Trinity calling the Merovingian “Merv” at the pinnacle of their final confrontation, effectively diffusing what should otherwise have been one of the most memorable moments in the entire trilogy. It just sticks out like a sore thumb, as do a few other ho-hum scenes that I cannot divulge due to spoilers.

Audio
While the music in Mirror’s Edge is phenomenal, the sound effects are hit-and-miss. The sounds that are there are usually spot-on, but many effects are just completely missing. This noticeably reduces the immersive (which is apparently not a word, but it should be!) atmosphere that the visuals and responsive controls work so hard to build. And again, although Pratchett has not provided great material to start with, the voice acting descends from bad to worse. It was wise to choose unknowns, but talented unknowns would have been even wiser.

Strangely, for better or worse, Faith remains completely silently when she is falling to her death, which—if you’re anything like me—she will do often. Sort of takes the fun out of it considering how many times I’ve sent Lara Croft plunging into the abyss just to hear her sexy, British scream.

Combat
Direct confrontations are few and far between, with Faith actually being encouraged to quickly evade enemies altogether when possible. That being said, there are a few intentionally unavoidable encounters which, especially on the hardest difficulty, reveal the flaws inherent in the unrefined combat system. It’s ironic that combat in a game from DICE should be one of the weakest elements, but first-person hand-to-hand fighting is something developers have struggled with for years, as seen in other similar titles such as Namco’s Breakdown and Starbreeze’s Chronicles of Riddick.

The intention is for Faith to divide and conquer her enemies, because when facing large groups with automatic weapons, she doesn’t stand a chance. Faith can disarm enemies with the proper timing of a single button and then use their weapons against them, but while the AI seems to have unlimited ammo, Faith gets about a half a clip before whatever gun she has commandeered runs dry. Also, if you’re going for the Test of Faith Achievement which requires not a single enemy to be shot throughout the entire game, you don’t have a lot of options. Once I got that Achievement however, and especially on Hard and in the speedruns, I had no qualms about cappin’ fools left and right. I would even go so far as to say it’s almost necessary at one or two points towards the end of the game.

Otherwise, the jump-kick/sliding-kick/knee combo seems the quickest, easiest, and most repetitive way to down armed opponents. A much more robust combat system would do wonders, and should definitely be implemented in sequels. Faith is clearly a skilled martial artist, but her in-game moveset is frustratingly limited. Even in the loading screens she kicks ass in ways the player simply cannot.

The other side of combat is stealth, which a modern-day ninja like Faith should be perfect for. Unfortunately, the all-knowing AI will track you relentlessly no matter what you do, so there is no point in trying to sneak around and disarm them from behind. The very last non-scripted enemy you face is actually a stationary gunman blocking your path to the end of the game. You can stand directly beneath him, under the elevated platform where he is located, and his shadow glitches through the floor so you can literally watch him track your every move, despite the several feet of concrete and steel obscuring you from his view.

In the cutscenes, Faith is shown slinking around silently, appearing from and disappearing into the shadows, so it is curious that stealth basically serves no role whatsoever in the actual gameplay. I suppose the enemies could be considered dynamic puzzles in contrast to the static platforming challenges, and determined speedrunners will find ways to quickly dispatch or circumvent them, but I guarantee at least several frustrating cases of being helplessly gunned down because of poorly-designed encounters and an inadequate arsenal of attacks.

Visual Variety
There are only two times of day in Mirror’s Edge: Mid-day, which the majority of the chapters are set at, and nighttime, which is only applied to two chapters. It would have been nice to have a chapter set during the pre-dusk magic hour, with the city drenched in the golden glow of the sunset. Other effects, such as weather, could really help distinguish the course in each chapter. Mainly I think hearing Faith’s footsteps splash through drenched rooftops before making a death-defying leap as lightning explodes in the distance would have been extremely cool, but that is just one possibility.

This may be nitpicking—and perhaps more of a suggestion for future entries in the Mirror’s franchise to help differentiate themselves from each other—but something I feel the game could benefit from nonetheless. At only nine short chapters, a bunch of different weather effects may have derailed the overall atmosphere that DICE was aiming for, but there’s certainly no reason they couldn’t have been included in the time trials.

Recommendation:
EA was somewhat foolish to unload Mirror’s Edge during the already ridiculously over-saturated holiday season, especially up against all the high-profile multiplayer games. Mirror’s Edge would be the perfect title to release in March when everyone is usually scouring Amazon for cheap games with easy Achievements.

Despite the bad timing, Mirror’s Edge is definitely worth experiencing–for gamers of all kinds–and there is much longevity to be had with the speedruns and time trials. However you get your hands on a copy, don’t miss out on one of the least disappointing titles of the year!

Mirror’s Edge
Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
@Gamefly
@Amazon
Demo now available on Xbox Live!

Feel free to post your own thoughts on the game and your gamertag in the comments so your fellow GENers can compare your speedrun times on the leaderboards!

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