Developed/Published by: DICE / EA
Released: November 12th, 2008
Completed: 23rd February, 2014
Completion: Completed the main game without shooting anyone. (I felt zero urge to mop up any other achievements.)
Trophies / Achievements: 410/1250
Mirror’s Edge is one of those games I was sure I had to play. I definitely felt that peers had recommended it, and was certainly aware that some folks were super disappointed that it never got a sequel (only there is one promised now, so it’s ok.) Except now I’ve played it and… hmm.
It’s been five years since Mirror’s Edge came out, and playing it now is probably the first time I’ve been aware of just how long the “last” generation was. Because it feels dated. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the fondness people feel (or felt) for Mirror’s Edge feels more like the way you might be fond of a cheap, scrappy sci-fi movie that sounds great, but really isn’t (at all.) You know, a Robot Jox or something. Something that’s super hard to get through without chewing your own face off, but you sort of want to like it anyway?
Actually: that’s not how I feel about Mirror’s Edge. Because it’s just so bloody boring. The core seems like a decent idea! A parkour FPS! And it almost sort of works—when you are under pressure to jump and run, and the level design supports that, there’s a kind of pace that keeps it interesting. The problem is that pace isn’t maintained—I’m not clear if that it could be, admittedly—with frequent moments when the entire game slows down and you’re expected to carefully puzzle out how to climb up (or get down from) somewhere high.
It doesn’t feel right. Parkour, every time you see it happen in one of them there action movies, always seems to be about characters being in the moment. They scan the rooftops while running, they see the next thing they need to jump off or over, and they do it. They don’t stop, walk around a bit, try jumping off a thing, realise the next thing isn’t quite close enough, die, and then repeat the whole thing about sixty more times till they get it. They just go for it.
Now, I’m not sure how much EA got involved—I could believe this had a turbulent development, but have no idea and can’t be bothered to do any research—but the cynic in me tells me that Mirror’s Edge coming out a year after Portal might have influenced the decision to make it all a lot more puzzley. (People probably are more intent to blame the gunplay on EA, but it’s crap, obviously not how you’re meant to play the game, and likely not an arm grafted on but a vestigial one that you couldn’t snip off for fear all the patient’s guts would fall out on the floor.)
So what Mirror’s Edge is supposed to be it is occasionally and it therefore works infrequently. Maybe that would be ok, but there are so many aspects that I’m pretty sure games are long beyond by this point: levels full of painted-on doors, guidance systems that are either spotty or unhelpful (this is the first game in years I’ve been lost in a small room in, and “runner vision” is bizarrely neutered) and challenge replaced with a determination to kill you over and over till you grind out a success by jumping just right or surviving being shot from every angle at once.
Oh, and I lied about not doing any research: I checked out if the generally lauded game writer Rhianna Pratchett was ashamed of having worked on this, because the story is absolute pish. She is. Pratchett claims her work was butchered by EA, but I’m struggling to see even a glimmer something better in it: there’s four characters in the entire thing, one goodie protagonist, one doomed goodie mentor, one a goodie who is obviously going to turn out to be a baddie (literally the second you see them, you’ll think “well they’re going to double-cross me”) and one is a possible baddie who turns out to be a goodie. You could write the entire thing on a back of a fag packet, crumple it up and throw it in my face and I’d have a deeper emotional experience.
The stark white cityscape looks quite nice though.
Will I ever play it again? No.
Final Thought: Mirror’s Edge will have been deep in development by the time Portal came out but going on to make the credits song of your puzzley FPS with a female protagonist caterwaul “STILL ALIVE, I’M STILL ALIVE” over and over again is just asking for trouble, EA.
