Faith Lost
So, I finally got around to Mirror's Edge. Only like five or six years late... not bad. Amazingly, it still looks great, due to its distinctive artistic style and scalable effects; the city is suitably imposing and awe-inspiring, and even character models are pretty well-detailed. Unfortunately, the game itself doesn't really hold up.
Ideally, Mirror's Edge functions like a first-person Prince of Persia -- running, jumping, climbing, clambering, and generally parkouring through intricately-designed obstacles and platforms. When the game can fulfill this promise, it's great fun. It proves the concept excellently.
But it all too frequently brings itself down with a few fundamental design faults:
- You're often being chased by dudes with guns. If you don't move fast enough, you die. This high-speed motivation would be great! except that there are points in a level where you'll need to choose a route to follow, and at least one of them is wrong. Choosing poorly will lead to your death. There's no way to avoid this except by chance, or by dying and trying it again.
- The first-person perspective sometimes hides vital route elements from you. There is a magic compass-key for pointing you in the right direction, but even this is sometimes not specific enough to tell the difference between feasible falls and fatal precipices. Again, the only way through this is to guess correctly, or die and retry.
- The guys with the guns sometimes stand in your way. Three shots and you're dead. Even in the first level, there are some encounters that will murdelate you, while others are perfectly survivable. Are you supposed to fight them, or avoid them? Once more... hard to tell which, until you're already dead.
The game is usually (but not always) generous with checkpoints, so it's not a totally masochistic affair. Still, it's mystifying to me how Mirror's Edge seems suited for a Sands of Time-style rewind mechanic, and instead forces you to die and try again. I would be 100% more into the game if it outright stole the rewind idea.
Also, the story and voice acting are pretty terrible. But that's hardly the point, here.
Mirror's Edge is a great idea, great enough that I can admire it even though I've only played a fraction of it. Maybe I would have been more tolerant of its bullshit back in 2009 -- it's hard to say for sure. As for 2014, well, I think I've had enough.
Better than: Tron: Evolution (PC, PS3, X360)
Not as good as: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (NGC, PC, PS2, PS3, XBOX)
Now that I've seen the hand-drawn cutscenes in motion: I don't hate them as much as the static stills led me to believe that I would. I still hate them, though. They just look bad, like a cheap cop-out. Why even bother?
Progress: Almost finished Chapter 2