NIDZUMI+

If past attempts are anything to go by, when a developer decides to put freerunning or parkour in a game it tends to outshine the rest of the experience. Last year we saw Assassin’s Creed and that was a good freerunning simulation but everything else didn’t really live up to the hype. This year EA are taking a crack at this relatively new sport of freerunning with Mirror’s Edge. With a heavy heart, it has the same problems that Assassin’s Creed had, with the freerunning segments by far out weighing the rest of the game.

You play as Faith in an unnamed totalitarian futuristic city as a courier of information for those who refuse to conform. After a quick prologue you soon get framed along with your sister for a murder you didn’t commit. For all intents and purposes the story is interesting but starts to feel a bit rushed towards the end. The truth is that story kind of takes a backfoot to the real action.

The core gameplay of Mirror’s Edge has you running, jumping and climbing over the rooftops of the city at tremendous speeds. The simply great controls of one button for jumping and climbing over and another for crouching and sliding under, work great if a bit fiddly. The game then throws all kinds of obstacles at you and it’s your job to traverse these to get to your next objective. It’s pretty simple stuff but the complex parkour motions you take along the way are really exhilarating. If you’ve been stringing together wallruns, jump turns and all the other advanced moves the game allows you to chain up, you really feel out of breath.

The game does have multiple paths for you to take but it indicates the main route with a thing called runner vision which simply turns certain obstacles that can help you on your way, a strong red colour. In a world filled with overbearing HUDS and directional arrows it’s really refreshing to see different and original ways of indicating directional objectives. The game has a very original feel that carries on through the graphics.

Most games today are moody, grungy and dark but Mirror’s Edge is bright, refreshing and colourful. The main colour in this game is white and that is normally next to a bright and vibrant green or blue. The games uniqueness is then followed through with the brilliant first person perspective the game uses. Instead of being a traditional action adventure, Mirror’s Edge is played from a first person point of view that works surprisingly well. Granted sometimes you get disoriented when your scaling walls but mainly the camera is solid and gives a great sense of speed.

The game then gets broken up with some platforming puzzles that at sometimes can be frustrating when the simple controls let it down but mainly these are solid. The other area’s the game uses to break up the freerunning segments are combat scenes and unfortunately this is where the game starts to fall apart. The combat is also simple with one attack button and one disarm button which you can combine with speed and freerunning techniques for more effect. The thing is that the simple controls sometimes don’t work so well and you’ll die a lot due to the two hits and your dead rule. It means that you’ll have to take out one guy, hide for 15 seconds, try to take out someone else, die then repeat until you seemingly get lucky.

Mirror’s Edge does feature gun combat but you are encouraged not to use the guns at all but if you don’t you’ll be stuck in the loading screen for reasons unknown to you, all too often. The idea of Mirror’s Edge is that you don’t use weapons and kill people because for once you aren’t a space marine or a solider in a war. It’s just a shame that one of the most interesting aspects of the game also becomes the games biggest flaw.

You will spend a lot of time getting frustrated at these and a few platform areas throughout the game. Nevertheless the freerunning areas of the game are such a high that the fairly major and irritating flaws the game suffers from don’t really matter so much. Sure the game would be brilliant if it didn’t have these elements holding it back. Especially when it simply seems like a lack of playtesting but if you’re willing to triumph over these elements, it’s indefinitely worth it.

When it’s great it’s brilliantly exhilarating and refreshing but when it’s bad it’s terribly frustrating and repetitive. But I guess you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to original IPs.