Video Game Review: Mirror's Edge

[juushika]

Mirror's Edge
EA Digital Illusions CE, 2008
To be blunt: Mirror's Edge is the worst game that I have ever tried to play. To be more specific: Mirror's Edge is a brilliant concept with horrible execution, and more than bad it is simply disappointing.

In a conformist dystopia, where all communication is government-monitored, couriers called runners evade government security to pass messages via the city rooftops. When her sister is drawn into an assassination plot, a runner named Faith leaves the safety of the shadows to discover the heart of the conspiracy. The game is set in striking white landscapes with bold accent colors, and the soundtrack is incredible. The player runs walls, climbs buildings, and jumps stairs from Faith's first person point of view. Momentum and timing are key to building a free-flowing run across the rooftops.

Or at least, that's how it should work. But Mirror's Edge is flawed—consistently, frustratingly, inexcusably flawed. It's a good game gone bad, in just about every way that it could.

Forget couriering packages or peaceful runs across the rooftops. Faith forgoes couriering to save her sister, and with the plot comes interiors to traverse, police to evade, and a distinct lack of wind-in-the-hair free-running. Interiors generally have one correct route, and that route isn't always logical—finding it is a matter of trial and constant error. The combat is, for lack of a better word, horrible: it depend on clunky controls and annoying quick time events, and feels like an afterthought—which is ironic, considering there's at least one required fight in almost every level. Between the single route and the constant hail of bullets, Mirror's Edge becomes a panicked run followed by a hurried death, and then you get to try it again and over again. The plot destroys all the freedom that the game promises—and it's not even worth it. Told in poorly animated cut scenes at the end of each chapter, neither the writing nor the animation is enough to make the story compelling.

With a different plot Mirror's Edge might be a great game, but it's still full of inexcusable bugs. Forget well-timed, graceful jumps from catwalk to rooftop. The game's controls are simple and context-sensitive, but they're also horribly flawed. Almost everything is mapped to the shoulders (with no option to manually remap), a cumbersome choice. The context sensitivity isn't particularly sensitive, and intended wall runs often turn in to accidental jumps and plenty of falls. The game's tolerance is extremely low, and it can take a dozen runs with the exact same moves before Faith finally decides to put out a hand to grab that ledge. To top it off, infrequent checkpoints punish each death with plenty of material to replay. It's as if the game developers never played their own game. The finicky controls and constant dying is frustrating. A successful run isn't the product of smart jumps and careful timing, but rather pure luck and a dozen retries—and that's not how this game should go.

I keep coming back to Mirror's Edge because I want to love it. It is a beautiful game with a brilliant concept, both unique and ingenious. With a different plot and better controls, it could have been amazing. But as it is, Mirror's Edge is nigh unplayable. It's not hard, in the manner of challenging the player to better performance, but frustrating, in that it's too easy to die because the controls fail or a punch doesn't connect or one ledge is arbitrarily better than the other. I'm glad that we rented it rather than buying, and I don't know if I'll finish it. I find Mirror's Edge more frustrating than it is enjoyable. That's a pity, because a successful rooftop run is a liberating, beautiful experience—but the opportunity for one is all too rare.