Video game fans always claim they want something new, yet games based on established franchises and popular licenses are always the ones that dominate the charts. For many years, Electronic Arts led the licensed IP charge, and grew very large as a result. With some major changes in market conditions this year, Electronic Arts has changed their tune, and has pushed out a number of games based on original properties. The last of their original creations to hit the shelves this year is the beautiful, high flying first person platformer Mirror’s Edge.

Mirror’s Edge is set in a not too distant dystopian future where oppressive corporations rule; the average people lack many of the freedoms that we take for granted. With all digital communications monitored by the authorities in this Orwellian world, young athletic renegades called runners serve as the carriers of illegal/sensitive information. You play as Faith, one of these runners who gets caught up in a plot involving the framing of her sister for the murder of a prominent mayoral candidate, who promised to bring rapid change to the way the city is governed, and give freedom back to the people. The story seems like it’s full of wasted opportunities, though. Character development is extremely limited among the main cast – little is ever revealed about the motivations and goals of the runners. You don’t exactly spend much time running packages either – after the first mission, the rest of the game is spent uncovering the plot behind the Pope murder and freeing Faith’s sister. Story is always made to feel secondary in Mirror’s Edge – it’s never given the time it demands, and seems overly simplified even though there are some neat animated sequences between chapters to push things along.


With the use of bright, colourful and clean environments, Mirror’s Edge does well to distinguish itself from the hordes of grey and brown action games while giving players the feeling that they’re in a nightmarish future. The colouring of the game is simple, yet really effective. EA DICE does go overboard with the bloom lighting in the game however, which in turn cheapens the otherwise lovely aesthetic. Being a runner, Faith is fast and agile, and the game does its best to convey the feeling of running around on rooftops and being chased by the authorities. Faith is a rather gifted parkour artist, so you can run along walls, scurry up fences, slide under pipes and make all sorts of seemingly impossible leaps. Mirror’s Edge is dedicated to giving players a strong feeling of immersion through the use of the first person perspective, so when you combine that with all matter of fast platforming and gymnastics, the game seems rather unique.

Stylish visuals are seemingly worthless without solid gameplay to back it up, and that’s an area where Mirror’s Edge doesn’t quite deliver as well as expected. Tearing across the rooftops at great speed, jumping over fences and running up walls is a great deal of fun and very easy to control. It looks fantastic when you get it right, almost like a ballet performance. The reality is that most of the time you’re not going to be running at great speed – any mistakes you make will slow you down, and trust me, you will make a lot of mistakes. Runner vision, activated by the B button, points you in the direction you need to go, while the objects you can utilise to get that point will be automatically highlighted in red as you approach them. It can be tricky negotiating many of the jumps – Mirror’s Edge is a game that’s really heavy on trial and error. The red path indicated by runner vision tends to serve as a crutch to the player, eliminating an element of discovery in your progression, and making the game seem all the more linear. The runner vision path is not necessarily the fastest or most efficient path through a level, but there’s little opportunity to improvise your own paths, and alternate routes seem to be too few.


Running can only take you so far in Mirror’s Edge; no matter how much you try to avoid it, fighting is sometimes unavoidable. Forcing combat on players removes the opportunity to run through the game without killing anyone – I think that some players would have enjoyed such a challenge (though there is a reward for not using guns). It feels almost inappropriate to be fighting the authorities given the way the game is presented. Faith’s combat abilities are somewhat limited but it can be pretty cool to experiment to figure out the best way of taking a guy down. Punches, slide kicks, running wall kicks, jump kicks and even a Super Mario Bros.-inspired head stomp are at your disposal.

Combat is fine if a little unwieldy when you’re taking on a single opponent; in situations where you are outnumbered, it is bound to frustrate, since their bullets tend to be a lot quicker than you are. Disarm moves can help you relieve your enemies of their weapons and fight back, but the gun combat is hollow and unsatisfying. In some situations it’s a necessary evil, particularly when the guards with the heavy machine guns and full armour suits show up. Getting the gun out of the enemies’ hands is a matter of timing, but you can briefly slow down time to extend the window of opportunity and make the process easier.


The nine story chapters of Mirror’s Edge are likely to run a maximum of six hours on the default difficulty. There is some minor incentive to run through the story again, with rewards given for playing through without using a gun or getting through levels without being shot, but the short length is going to seem unacceptable to many gamers. Once you’re through with the story, Mirror’s Edge’s main appeal is the time trial mode, where you attempt to traverse a number of small courses from select parts of the game in the shortest and most efficient manner. The scores posted on the leaderboards will seem pretty ridiculous at first, but once you figure out that you need to find your own path through the level rather than following the bright red one, you’ll start to understand how those scores are possible. It can be pretty addictive, provided you’re fond of the game’s mechanics to start with. EA DICE have already released a new, time trial-only downloadable map pack, with the promise of more to come.

A lot of folks had very high expectations for Mirror’s Edge, and although it is a good game, I have no doubt that many players will find it disappointing. The game has an amazing aesthetic, even if it is a bit heavy on the bloom lighting, and running across rooftops doing all sorts of fancy moves is actually a lot of fun. Mirror’s Edge wastes a few opportunities though; the main game is very short, the story is underdeveloped and mostly ignored, the combat feels unnecessary, and it holds players’ hands a little too much, leading to an overblown sense of trial and error gameplay. Mirror’s Edge is a fun game and certainly worth playing, but a rental may be more than enough to satisfy most gamers’ curiosities.