TGWTG User Blogs

11.12.08

Yo,




Name:Mirror's Edge

Genre:First-Person Action-Adventure

Developer:Dice (EA Digital Illusions CE)

Publisher:Electronic Arts

Rating:T for Teen

Release Date:November 12th, 2008

Platforms:Playstation 3,Xbox 360,Microsoft Windows




In a future straight out of Orwell's '1984,' where all actions of daily life are regulated and monitored by the government, you take control of Faith, a woman struggling to retrieve her sister from the clutches of the omniscient government regime. Our protagonist is a runner, a member of an elite group of citizens living on the outskirts of the city, in the corner of the security camera's rotation. They are the last denizens of free thought, carriers of information and objects their owners don't want to go through stiff government legislation. In constant battle with local police forces, dubbed 'blues' in runner slang, wanting to shut down their operation, Faith and her company free-run across town, using the city's angular building design against it.

The plot is mainly told through 2-D animated cutscenes, with a few moments playing out in-game. Its a common setup with a bit of character motive through in to individualize it, but here's hoping the narrative pulls away from cliche long enough to make us happy we just parkour-ed our way through dystopian downtown.




As we all have heard from the title song played over nearly every released gameplay video (named 'Still Alive', a bit awkwardly in a post-Portal world), the soundtrack takes a bit of a techno-hinged ambiance to it, reflecting the rigid design and bright color palette of most of the city's buildings while tossing a bit of a electric heartbeat to add to the main running mechanic of the IP's gameplay. The symmetrical, and almost boring, landscape design looks uninviting from afar, but acts as simple way to create easily recognizable patterns of platforms for Faith to free-run to and from. The way the level design is built around preserving our lead runner's momentum is its true draw, where a sort of poetry of motion arises out of the convenience Dice has given to the layout, placing two ascending rooftops beneath a ripe-line that leads to a series of grabbable pipes should give the player a sense of fluidity and rhythm.

Character designs not cloaked in SWAT gear look a bit behind the design timeline, but considering how little they appear in 3-D, it shouldn't be too much of a bother. In-level, we see Faith sometimes reflected in the windows of more decorated buildings, but otherwise we only glimpse her arms and hands, again giving the majority of focus on the organization of usable objects in each level. The whole game has a sense of a brightly colored take on the German film 'Run Lola Run,' which is not a bad thing.




Mirror's Edge takes place entirely in first-person, save for the non-interactive animated cutscenes. The player controls only Faith, guiding her sliding, jumping, climbing, and rolling along the various branching paths within each level to her destination. Gunplay is involved at times, but Dice has come out and readily acknowledged that the shooting mechanics were where the least amount of time was devoted, as the focus of the game revolves much more on the disarming of guns rather than their use (the most famous Mirror's Edge trophy/achievement is given when the player never shots a gun.) The player enters a sort of quicktime event whenever attempting a disarm, where the accuracy and speed of the controller input dictates how well and quickly Faith gets the gun out of the officer's hand.

The most toted ideal of Mirror's Edge is the preservation of momentum. The player is encouraged to swiftly move from one interactive element of the level to another (leaping off a rootop to slide under a railing, etc.) in order to achieve a sense of speed and athletic power that comes with parkour, Faith will miss jumps if lacking sufficient momentum to do so. Although speed is encouraged, the levels do also feature several hidden messenger bags the player could collect for special in-game bonuses (and trophy score) and several paths the player could choose in order to get to the end of a level. One stage has both a rooftop path, complete with ropelines and pipe-climbing, and a ground path with a couple wall-scaling moments.

It seems highly possible that, once exploring or looking for collectibles, the game could take a less entertaining turn from when the player gets a handle on the free-running aspects, but hopefully Dice has created enough levels where the player feels like a free-runner, with the reticule in the center of the screen preventing any causes of vertigo.




Mirror's Edge runs off of the Unreal Engine 3 with a newly designed lighting structure (designed by Illuminate Labs,) in order to achieve their bright and contrasting color design. Like most major releases of this year, the Heads Up Display (H.U.D.) has been taken away in order to maximize the sense of immersion. Damage is shown by the edges of the screen slowly reddening, the colors of the world fading to muddled grey as more damage is absorbed. The game is broken up into 10 chapters, with a total runtime of around 7-9 hours, depending on play style. Parts of some levels will also be available in a Time Attack mode, where the player attempts to run to a endpoint against their own times, online leaderboards, or downloaded 'ghosts' of other player's times. There are no other multiplayer functions in the game.



- Wikipedia Page

- Official Site



- Mirror's Edge went gold as of November 6, 2008

- There was some speculation about Mirror's Edge being a timed PS3 exclusive, based on a mis-quote by Mike Reeves, the CEO of Sony Europe.

- Eurogamer reports that Mirror's Edge will receive exclusive downloadable content only on the Playstation 3 version, available via the Playstation Network. No further details or release date have been announced.

- The Playstation 3 release has been reported to have slightly better graphics than its Xbox 360 and PC counterparts, in addition to the promise of DLC.




This is a really unique game that hopes to create a bigger sense of satisfaction and awesomeness that we felt in Assassin's Creed, guiding Altair across rooftops. If more games like this receive decent sales, we can hope to weed out the abundance of brainless shooters the market is saturated with and give a renewed focus to games with a personal sense of style and function.