Citizen Game

Mirrors Edge

Expectations can be a deadly thing; and the gaming industry is a place where products regularly fall prey to the unchecked expectations of the masses, with so many games failing to meet expectations it takes some real fortitude to walk into the unforgiving public eye – especially if your product is as unconventional as Mirror’s Edge. After a few words of encouragement from EA the well known Battlefield developer Digital Illusions dived head first into shark infested waters and set itself up for a potentially fatal fall by innovating a much loved but fatigued gaming genre.

Mirror’s Edge is a platforming game that takes place entirely from the first person perspective, veteran FPS developers DICE have opted to wholeheartedly embrace nonconformism for the development of Mirror’s Edge and also as a prevalent theme for the game. Mirror’s Edge is the antithesis of a game taking place in the first-person perspective; it casts aside the guns, bullets and explosions that now personify the genre and instead places the focus on fluid movement and locomotion.

The game is set in a dystopian future in a city where a totalitarian government is heavily monitoring all forms of communication, the days in which people fought for their freedoms are long gone and the people have become blind to the oppressive regime they live under. However those wishing to transmit messages without being detected by the government can utilise ‘runners’, a network of couriers who have rebelled against the government and use their speed and agility to negotiate rooftops and buildings to evade capture and deliver packages for their clients. The player takes control of Faith, a sprightly runner who must untangle a conspiracy to frame her sister for the assassination of a mayoral candidate who promised to bring change to the city.

The story in Mirror’s Edge is very simple and quite predictable but it remains interesting enough to keep you playing, this is mainly due to the setting and in particular the aesthetics of the city. Mirror’s Edge is a visually striking game, despite being built using the Unreal Engine 3 it manages to avoid the dreary muted palette and texture heavy style that many UE3 games tend to default to in favour of a vibrant and over-saturated art style, although the colour palette suggests the architects have a overzealous affinity for the colours red, white and blue the colours serve an important role in both aesthetics and gameplay. Aesthetically it gives the city a very sterile feel and further enhances the theme of an over imposing tyrannical government intent on controlling every aspect of the city and its inhabitants. In terms of gameplay the colour red is used to guide the player through the environments, Faith’s runner vision locks onto environmental features such as ramps or pipes which she can employ for progression, these are then colored red so the player can easily identify them as a viable route, more ambitious players can choose to ignore the visual prompts and look for an advanced route.

The gameplay in Mirror’s Edge is centered around Faith’s ability to use Parkour (Free running), this gives her a variety of athletic maneuvers to traverse the environments as well as escape from enemies, Faith is able to perform everything from small jumps to death defying leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and can also use her momentum to run along walls and slide under oncoming obstacles. These complex actions can be effortlessly pulled off thanks to an intuitive and responsive control system which takes into account both the momentum of Faith and the her context in relation to the environment. Faith’s abilities are split into two groups, upwards movements and downwards movements, pressing the corresponding buttons elicit different responses depending on what Faith is doing or where she is. The simplicity of the controls give the player just enough control over Faith to feel as if they are actively taking part in what she is doing.

The first-person perspective is paramount to making the moment to moment gameplay feel cinematic and immersive, since the game doesn’t feature any sort HUD the space is used to make the running feel visceral by giving the player a sense of self. The game uses a number of simple but effective audio visual cues to ensure the player feels as if they are Faith, her arms and legs regularly come into view as she runs, jumps and slides around the different environments, while this may seem like a throwaway visual quirk it actually helps to make the player feel more connected to both the character and the world, the transition from room to room just wouldn’t be as satisfying if Faith didn’t throw out her arms in front of her and lunge recklessly at the oncoming door or window.
The sound in the game also has a significant impact on the gameplay experience; everything from footsteps to increases in breathing rate can be heard, this firmly places Faith in the world and gives her weight within the environments, it’s these small touches that make the player as if they are an actual person bolting around the world as opposed to just a bobbing camera that everyone wants to capture or kill.

The gameplay experience overall is one of magnificent highs as well infuriating and almost unbearable lows, the game is at its best when the players priority is simply moving from point to point in the most efficient way possible, when he or she is left to lose themselves in the fluidity of the movement and rely on instinct and the occasional leap of faith to get them wherever they need to be.
The most exhilarating moments usually arise when the game breaks away from the routine gameplay scenarios and asks the player to do more outrageous things such as jumping hopping around on trains or running from enemies gifted with the same abilities as Faith, at these points the experience is almost euphoric, and there truly isn’t anything else like it.

Unfortunately these small moments of euphoria are buried under countless combat sequences, elevator rides, and platforming puzzles that stonewall the experience. DICE made it perfectly clear that combat wasn’t the focus of Mirror’s Edge, despite the presence of guns the player is encouraged to avoid them; to the extent that Faith becomes over-encumbered when holding a weapon and is unable to perform any of her usual tricks unless she ditches the extra weight. Moreover Faith as a character is not built for confrontation, her edge over her enemies comes from her speed and agility as opposed to her physical prowess, even in a fight her attacks are relatively weak, their usefulness lies in stunning and disorientating enemies as opposed outright defeating them, although she has a number of attacks that take advantage of her athleticism at her disposal they’re unusable outside of one-on-one battles, which usually end in Faith dying after taking no more than three bullets from another nearby guard.Bearing this in mind it is infuriating when you continuously find yourself in what are essentially battle arenas where the only means of progression is defeating the numerous enemies all of which are continuously shooting you, it’s even worse if you’re aiming for a no kill play through and can’t use guns to thin out the numbers.

The game also dilutes the core experience of running by placing armed enemies in areas which require precise jumps or along running routes, initially this makes the platforming much more exhilarating as it adds an element of danger, however in later chapters the number of enemies impeding your progression increases to the point that it becomes almost impossible to completely avoid combat, this effectively brings the game to a grinding halt at which point the failings of the combat gameplay come into effect.

Mirror’s Edge has much in common with classic platform games such as Mega Man in the sense that progression is subject to trial and error, however while in games such as Mega Man the trial and error is focused on timing of jumps and to a lesser extent combat strategies in Mirror’s Edge the opposite applies, while there is some element of trial and error in the platforming the majority of it is in figuring out the best way to avoid getting shot, In a game where forward momentum and constant progression is so vital to the enjoyment it can be infuriating to have to repeat sections over and over and it isn’t particularly fun watching Faith being shot to death repeatedly.
The experience is also adversely affected to a lesser extent by the rhythm disrupting elevator rides that show up a bit too frequently, but more by the puzzles rooms, the game feels the need to throw you into rooms consisting of long-winded platforming puzzles and always seems to do it just as you’re getting into the flow of running.

For some the trial and error may also affect their opinions of Faith as a character, personally I started off extremely excited at the prospect of having an iconic strong female character that’s more believable than Lara Croft but the frustration of constantly dying as a result of her inadequacies in combat severely impacted my opinions of Faith, the game forces Faith into combat scenarios she is clearly not equipped for and even manages to stifle her in the areas she is designed to excel at, after watching her die so many times my frustrations at the game started to be projected onto Faith as a character, it became harder and harder to connect with or care about Faith after watching her seemingly fall at every hurdle.

Ultimately Mirror’s Edge is a game that takes the concept of stylized movement with a focus on speed and locomotion and marries it with a perspective that initially seems like the worst possible choice these gameplay elements, it successfully implements the mechanics whilst challenging a number of genre conventions and even breaking a few. It’s encouraging to see that DICE are thinking so far outside the box and even more surprising to see that a publisher such as EA is willing to both support and encourage development of these ideas.
However it’s a shame that neither DICE nor EA had enough confidence in the core mechanic of the game to let it stand on its own two feet and instead opted to water down the experience by adding varied gameplay types that conflict with the very essence of the game and hinder the enjoyment. All is not lost though, for those willing to stick it out the time trial and race mode exist as the Mirror’s Edge experience in its purest form, unfettered by the frustrating combat or the perfunctory puzzle sequences.

Tamoor Hussein