The View from the Edge is Spectacular... Until You Fall

jr.gameon | 11/19/2008 7:45 am | Game On

I had the chance to play and complete "Mirror's Edge" this past weekend. Never have I been so split on what I've thought about a game. I loved it and I hated it, which I'm sure the rest of the Game On crew could attest to. The hate was evident by the large number of frustration-fueled curses coming from me as I sat with my PS3 in one corner of the room. The love was clear in that I never left the game, save for one 15 minute period where I just needed to get away from a particularly challenging part.

Let's focus on the good first. I love what they've done with the first-person genre. What I have to say about it was already explained quite wonderful by John Davison on last week's 1Up Yours podcast. The camera is mostly positioned up in Faith's (the protagonist's) eyes instead of in her chest, which is where it usually is in most first person shooters in order to see and aim the gun. Shooting is such a minor part of "Mirror's Edge", so that lower vantage point is not necessary. On the rare occasion that Faith has to carry a gun, the camera stays up in her eyes and it feels as if she's raising the gun up into her field of vision.

The feeling of speed is incredible. Running and jumping from building to building, grasping for ledges or pipes at amazing speeds is just exhilarating and fun. Missing your target and falling, while not recommended, is a memorable and intense occurrence. The rush of air coming up at you is brilliantly depicted by the audio, as is the sense of blacking out during the long falls. The game is simply stunning and quite an experience.

Now the bad. The combat falls short. The developers are generally trying to steer you away from altercations with enemies. Many of the enemies can and should be avoided. However, there are several sequences in the game where the path to go forward does not become available to you until after you take out a room full of enemies. Faith doesn't carry a weapon, but she can shoot a gun that is taken from an enemy. The game also encourages you to disable enemies, not kill them. You can do this by executing fluid attacks out of runs, or by stealing an enemy's weapon and then clubbing them with it. The problem with the former move is that it generally takes quite a few punches and/or kicks to take out an enemy, giving the rest of the enemies enough time to swarm you. The problem with the latter move is that stealing the gun requires you to press the correct button at just the right time, but the window in which you need to make this button press is frustratingly small.

As I mentioned, the game really wants you to disable, not kill, the enemies. Combined with a trophy for completing the game without shooting anyone, the message is pretty clear. As such, that's how I played the game. As soon as I disabled an enemy and stole their weapon, I pushed the button to pop out the clip and throw the weapon away. Unfortunately, playing the game this way is very difficult because of the small window of time in which you need to press the button to strip away a weapon. Yes, you can slow down time, but how often you can do that is based off your momentum, which is not being built up when you are in a room trying to strategically disable enemies. I think I could have saved myself several frustrating hours if I just would have taken the weapon I liberated from the first enemy in a room and shot the other enemies. For a game that stresses one way to play, it shouldn't be considerably easier to play the game the opposite way.

John Davidson also went on to say that the hand-to-hand combat was easier if you could combine the punches and kicks with some of Faith's more acrobatic moves. I discovered on my own that sliding or jumping into an enemy yielded a more powerful kick. Apparently, running along a wall, rotating 180 degrees, jumping off, and extending your arm into a powerful face-punch will one-shot disable an enemy. Amazing, but also difficult to pull off. Messing up the maneuver leaves you quite vulnerable for a few seconds, a few fatal seconds when your enemy has a machine gun and you have no armor whatsoever.

When it's all said and done, I'm in a very strange place with my opinion regarding "Mirror's Edge". I absolutely loved the first-person platforming and the amazing jumps and grabs that can be done. On the other hand, I absolutely despised the combat. Every review I've read says that the main campaign is okay, but the real fun of the game opens up when you finish the story and then go back through the levels trying to perfect your moves in an effort to complete the level in the fastest time possible. I'm undecided if I'm going to go back and do this. I want to find the best way to do some of these levels, as I know I was far from perfect or graceful the first time I played them, but I'm scared of the combat. Having earned my trophy for not shooting anyone, I could use guns with my next run through the game, but shouldn't I concentrate on the more acrobatic, non-deadly offensive moves? Certainly wall-jumping into an enemy and taking him out with one punch will be much more efficient time-wise than peeking out from cover and shooting him three or four times.

I know there are things that I can do much better, not only in the platforming elements, but especially in the combat elements. The question is whether or not I'm too frustrated with the combat to even want to attempt to make these improvements. If I had nothing else to play, I'd probably jump back into the game, but that's not the case. I have plenty of other games to play and that will lead to me setting "Mirror's Edge" aside and moving on until some other time. But will my subconscious allow me to move on? It's been 3 days since I've finished the game and I'm still having amazing dreams centered around the platforming elements. When I sleep at night, I am in Faith's eyes, jumping gracefully from wall to wall and rooftop to rooftop. If that's still happening next week, I might not have a choice.

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culture | gaming

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