When perusing news and reviews of Mirror’s Edge, one very often sees the phrase “Leap of Faith” invoked. It’s an easy joke to make, of course: The game’s protagonist is the slender, athletic Faith, and as the star of EA’s new parkour-based rooftop romp, she frequently is called upon to make improbable jumps — hence the amusing phrase. Myself, I prefer to utilize a lesser-used pun whenever I can help it, and while I doubt I’m the first person to think of this particular quip, I’m proud to share it with the discerning, erudite readers of GameCyte, who will undoubtedly appreciate the chance for more delightful wordplay. You see, given the alarming frequency with which the heroine of Mirror’s Edge is repeatedly killed, thanks to an unforgiving environment and an unpleasant yet unavoidable combat system, perhaps the game should have been called Faith No More. Or perhaps, Shattered Faith!
Get it? I’m such a kidder.
Unfortunately, on the subject of Faith’s worrisome mortality rate, I’m afraid I’m not joking. When playing Mirror’s Edge, you are going to die, over and over again. This should come as no surprise to anybody who is familiar with the game’s premise: Mirror’s Edge, developed by EA DICE, takes place in a near-future utopia/dystopia in which all communication is strictly monitored. The only way to pass along messages that might not be government-approved is by hand, using “Runners” such as Faith, who must necessarily carry their contraband communiqués along unconventional routes, including sewer canals, subway tunnels, and most often, skyscraper rooftops. Thus, in order to evade the authorities, Faith spends her time running full-tilt and performing various acrobatic feats while hundreds of feet in the air — an activity with potentially fatal consequences. One logically expects that a single mistake can result in Faith’s demise. However, one is significantly less prepared to be mortally punished for having the audacity to play the game as suggested.
The engine and gameplay behind Mirror’s Edge, to its credit, are stunning. Faith’s repertoire of moves, from jumps, vaults, and rolls, to wallruns, slides, and ziplines, are all managed with deceptively simple controls. A player can simply press the L1 button for upward movements, and the L2 button for downward ones, and Faith will handle the rest based on the immediate context of her gorgeous environment, navigating the game world at a rapid clip, and allowing the player to feel like a pretty slick athlete. There are a few missteps along the way — occasionally, Faith will vault when she should leap, clear a crossbar when she should grab it, and so on, but for the most part, controlling Faith is a joy; when you spot a path through the world and successfully fling yourself through the required moves, the feeling of speed and mobility is remarkable. It’s the kind of feeling that gives one a sense of empowerment, and a desire to really let loose on the world of Mirror’s Edge, to explore new pathways and experience total freedom. Unfortunately, the game seems to hate it when you do this.
One of the game’s features is a visual cue called “Runner Vision,” a distinct red color that appears on certain obstacles and environmental features to indicate they will help you progress through the level. The various environments of Mirror’s Edge can be large and mazelike, and this feature can aid players who are less prone to spatial exploration, allowing them to simply plot a course from one red item to the next. Of course, this turns the game from a sensation of freedom to one of enforced linearity, but one is given the option to disable Runner Vision if one is so inclined, in an effort to stay in control. Unfortunately, thanks to some extremely rigid design decisions and increasingly clear boundaries, most of the time one’s path will ultimately wind up being the same as the Runner Vision selection, through sheer necessity.
It’s an enormous disappointment when you come to this realization, and as the game’s core “story” mode progresses further, one starts to get the distinct feeling that Mirror’s Edge was designed by people who were constantly forgetting what game they were making. Imagine the following conversation:
“So, you can see here, we’ve designed an extremely versatile engine and character, allowing you to tackle the stages in any way you see fit. You can use this world as a wide-open urban playground, and find your own way through, experiencing total freedom of movement.”
“Wow, that’s really cool! It looks like I need to get onto that roof, maybe I can try going up over — ”
“No! Don’t go that way, stupid!”
“But I thought — ”
“You have to go this way! Jeez, let me just do it for you.”
For every time Mirror’s Edge presents you with a multi-faceted urban playground and lets you approach it in your own way, there are three times when you are forced to play “Let’s Guess What the Level Designer Intended.” I’m not criticizing the game for railroading you into some of the more memorable stunts or story-critical moments; there are times when you obviously have to leap off the roof onto the helicopter, or where running across the narrow crane is the only way to cross the gap. Sometimes a vital stunt needs to happen, and there’s no way around it. However, there are far too many occasions when the game swats your hand and scolds you just for regular exploration and experimentation — in areas and circumstances that would seem to suggest otherwise.
It’s not simply the Runner Vision that’s the problem. It’s one thing to paint an arrow on the wall, it’s quite another to install a flashing neon sign that reads “GO THIS WAY OR WE WILL KILL YOU.” And, kill you it will, again and again — in ways that are blatantly a result of you stepping “out of bounds.” Faith is a fairly impressive athlete: During the course of the game, one watches her climb up walls, leap over fences, and more. Faith can sustain roughly a 15ft drop without permanent injury — heck, if she tucks and rolls on impact, she won’t even break stride. So, when one decides to try going a different direction, only to suffer instant death after a 7ft drop, the message is pretty obvious: We don’t want you to go that way, even if it looks perfectly viable. The game uses the enemies this way, as well, when not subjecting you to strangely fatal jumps: Under normal circumstances, Faith can take 3-5 shots in rapid succession before succumbing to her injuries, and usually it’s up to her to disarm or incapacitate her foes before this happens. However, sometimes the game does not intend for you to go where the enemies are, and it lets you know this in no uncertain terms: Bang, you’re dead. Go the other way, idiot.
This brings me to my top complaint about Mirror’s Edge: The combat. I have absolutely nothing redeeming to say about how combat is managed in this game, and I honestly believe Mirror’s Edge would be far more enjoyable if it had been completely removed. Let me walk you through another imaginary conversation:
“What we’ve done here, is really break the mold — Faith is a very unconventional character, who’s all about running and movement. As such, she’s definitely not a run-and-gun one-woman army; her strengths lie in escaping, and running from hostiles. You’ll want to run away rather than fight.”
“Wow, that is different. Uh oh, here come some enemies now — I think I’d better get away.”
“No! Fight them! You have to fight them!”
“But you just said — ”
“Go over there and fight them or I will kill you!”
When I previewed Mirror’s Edge a month ago, EA and DICE representatives stressed to me the importance of movement over combat in Mirror’s Edge. Time and again, I was told that Faith definitely trended towards the latter option of Fight or Flight. Even the game itself tells you this: During the very first level, before you have encountered a single enemy, you are presented with a hint that reads, “You should always try to get away from hostiles.” Faith definitely reflects this design philosophy — as mentioned, she can only take a few shots before expiring, and while she has a handful of martial arts moves, every one of her enemies comes armed with a gun. Faith can duck and weave long enough to get in close to a single enemy, if she’s lucky, but if you put her in the middle of a group of machine gun-toting thugs, she’s done for.
Knowing all of this, what would you suggest is something the player should never be forced to do? If you answered “Fight a large group of inescapable machine gun-toting thugs,” I’m guessing you don’t work for EA. Mirror’s Edge contains several situations where Faith, a character who is specifically designed to be inferior to her enemies in combat, is forced to fight large groups. These fights are not optional — following the aforementioned pattern of “Play the game our way or else,” the levels are designed so as to kill you if you have not dealt with your enemies before attempting to proceed. For example, you may find yourself in an area whose only exit is a tall drainpipe. Faith can scale this easily, but it happens to be one of the slowest moves in her arsenal. Needless to say, if you follow the game’s advice to “always try to get away,” you will be shot to pieces while very slowly making your way up the pipe.
Faith is not completely helpless, of course. The lithe runner has some fairly hard-hitting punches, and combined with her leaps and slides, she can deliver a fairly harsh kick if her timing is right. Or, most impressively of all, Faith can disarm her opponents with a well-timed grab move, simultaneously relieving an enemy of his weapon and incapacitating him in a pre-set animation of impressive martial arts. From there, Faith can even use the enemy’s guns against them, making her much more effective in combat — an interesting notion for a game which was specifically hyped as “based around movement, not shooting,” and “not a first-person shooter.”
Unfortunately, though, these moves also stop becoming terribly effective as the story progresses. Enemies start carrying bigger weapons and stop falling down after just a few punches, and the disarming maneuver grows less forgiving. A few levels in, the window to successfuly disarm an opponent is only a split-second, and a failed attempt usually results in a harsh blow to the face, followed by several point-blank bullets for instant death. To top it all off, the enemies start appearing in larger groups, making the disarm move completely inadvisable: If you manage to grab an opponent, you’ll be caught in an unbreakable 4-second martial arts animation, stylishly and elaborately subduing your foe while his comrades all pump ammunition into you from six feet away — often causing you to die mid-disarm, collapsing to the floor even as your opponent continues to twist and flinch as if still being grappled.
Every time my support character came on the radio and said, “Looks like you’re going to have to fight, Faith,” I wanted to strangle him. Furthermore, the fact that Mirror’s Edge offers a trophy/achievement for completing the game without firing a shot is really just insulting. If you want to finish the game without putting your controller through the television, you will swiftly learn the key to survival: Take down the nearest enemy with repeated punches, claim his gun, and shoot everyone else. It’s nice that DICE made a game that’s really different from the normal fare, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t seem like they completely shook free of their FPS roots.
With such glaring flaws detracting from the overall enjoyment of the game, it seems as though we’re ready to give up on Mirror’s Edge. Yet, if you skipped ahead to the end of the review, you’ll see that I gave this game 3.5 stars — a score rating it as above average on the GameCyte scale. Why the apparent change of heart? The answer comes from the most unlikely of places: The post-game “extra” modes; specifically, the Mirror’s Edge Time Trials. Where the main game’s Story mode is rigid and controlling, and full of frustrating combat and arbitrary boundaries, the Time Trials are the complete opposite: open, liberating, enemy-free and, most importantly of all, rewarding towards a player’s exploration and creativity.
It seemed odd, at the time, that EA would dedicate an entire invitational preview event specifically to a Time Trial mode, but in retrospect, I’ve come to realize what a strong and important feature it is. As we explained during our initial preview, the basis of the Time Trials in Mirror’s Edge is simple as can be: Start at point A, and reach point B as quickly as you can, passing through a series of checkpoints in between. It seems like a simple and bland task, but when combined with the creative movement mechanics that Mirror’s Edge makes possible, one begins to realize just how versatile Faith truly is. Depending on the specific area through which you are racing, there is no longer simply one “correct” path — there may be three or four, or there may be hundreds. Without the story-based level constraints, and without being hassled by lethal enemies every 20 seconds, players are free to really explore the environment, playing with Faith’s various moves to decide which ones are better suited to their skills. Should Faith climb the ladder, or vault the nearby scaffolding? Should she leap the gap or wallrun on the nearby billboard? Some moves will work faster than others, but fomr a change, they’re all viable, and it’s here that Mirror’s Edge truly shines.
I confess that I’m something of a puzzle fanatic; I truly relish the sensation of accomplishment in a game when I’m made to feel that I’ve deduced a clever solution to a problem. The Time Trials in Mirror’s Edge are akin to using the levels as puzzles of optimization, rewarding players for coming up with unexpected methods that work better than traditional decisions. To wit, the first Time Trial one can play tasks you with clearing one of Faith’s early stomping grounds in under two minutes. It’s a bit of a race, but with a hop, skip, and a jump through a relatively straight path, I was able to clear it in 1:55. Then, of course, you’re shown the worldwide leaderboard, with a top time of 45 seconds.
How can such a thing be possible? Even pulling off my last path with utter precision, Faith would never be able to shave off an entire minute from her run. It’s then and there that the real fun begins: My current path obviously isn’t the fastest one, so what other paths are there? The leaderboards, if you wish, will let you download a ghost image of any posted score, allowing you to study and mimic their techniques, but for me, the real fun is in the discovery. The Time Trials have no upper limit, so one can simply spend a trial climbing about and exploring, looking for new possible moves, and practicing them.
Beyond allowing you the opportunity to simply muck about with the Mirror’s Edge engine — which really is genuinely fun when you’re not under pressure — this can lead to some immensely satisfying moments. Sure, one can climb up on top of the utility shed, double back, and vault the fence, but what if I were to scramble up the air duct, spring backwards onto the scaffolding, and leap from that crate right onto the roof? It’s when you discover a move like this, and put it into practice, and see an entire 30 seconds disappear from your total score, that the hype of Mirror’s Edge, as an interactive Parkour videogame, is truly realized.
The entire game ought to have been this way. Mirror’s Edge is clearly a game with the potential to revolutionize first-person platforming, and bring Parkour into the digital realm. In the Time Trials, there is at least some execution on these possibilities, and the game is worth experiencing just for these new elements it has brought to the table. Unfortunately, it also comes with a fairly frustrating and punishing core experience, showing just what can go wrong when a premise of freedom is carried out in an overbearing fashion.
Still, for the beautiful world, the exhilarating movement, and the exploration granted by the Time Trials, Mirror’s Edge is worth a look. The solution seems obvious — get the game, and just go straight for the Time Trials, no? Unfortunately, since the Time Trials are playing second fiddle to the story, you have to play through the latter in order to unlock most levels of the former. I hope your life insurance is paid up, Faith.
Mirror’s Edge is available now on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and comes out in January for the PC.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I would have to totally agree with the fact that the fight mechanics are broken. I found having to repeat sections due to me jumping off a building in the wrong spot hardly frustrating but having to redo sections where a group of enemies blasted me to death very frustrating. Which makes the Time Trials as fun as they are due to the lack of enemies and ability to find alternate paths. Overall I had a great time with this game but if I ever play the game on hard all bets are off and I will totally be using a gun to mow down some enemies.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I like it. This story line reminds me of “The Matrix.” Sure, it gets aggravating sometimes, but overall, I really like the game. Everyone has different taste though. Aside from having to fight the enemies: I like to avoid them as much as possible and just watch the bullets fly past me as I run.