It seems that about every month or two, there comes a game that has so mixed reviews that you can’t even trust your friend’s to convince you to buy it. That’s probably why it took me so long to get Mirror’s Edge. I’ve heard a whole lot of different views of this game, from “Innovative and Exciting” to “Repetitive and Uninteresting”. Well I’m here to find that out, despite the fact that it’s been out for a while.

Mirror’s Edge is a free running based game where you play Faith Connors, a runner. Runners are a group of people in the game that transmit secrets behind the eyes of a Fascist government. All’s fine until the government (referred to as Blues) start killing Runners, and the murder of a candidate that could change the city is blamed on your sister, who happens to be a Blue. Now it’s up to you (and your wonderful red sneakers and fingerless gloves) to find out who’s setting her up and why.

I love the free running aspect of this game. Unlike some first-person games where if you look down and you can’t see your feet, this game actually shows not only your feet, but your arms as you sprint faster and faster. The game takes into account momentum and inertia, so you start running slow and speed up to a limit, instead of just hitting forward and going at a constant speed. When you fall, you get hurt, your player doesn’t just suck it up and keep going, but it takes Faith some time to recover. Because of this, try not to fall when you’re being shot at, it doesn’t work, trust me.

I probably shouldn't have tried to jump this...

I’ve heard the controls on the console version of this game are not very good, which doesn’t really matter seeing as I’m reviewing it for PC. The mouse controls are more manageable in a fast-paced game such as this. Even then however, you’re bound to run into some problems. If you’re running towards an object trying to do a wall jump, which is jump, reverse, jump, you may accidentally jump and hit reverse too soon, and just fall to the ground. I mainly do this because I think I’m going faster than I actually am, and I judge my time wrong. This especially sucks when you’re being shot at by the Blues because if you fall down, it takes a second for Faith to stand back up. Other than that, the controls are pretty easy to master.

Story mode in this game is hard to explain. I have mixed feelings, just as people on the Internet have. The story makes sense, and you kind of get into it, but at some point, you feel as though if you’ve done something once, you’ve done it a thousand times. I guess you could say that it gets a little repetitive, but there are also parts that set themselves apart from other sections of the game. Secondly for story mode is the ending. I’m not going to spoil anything, but it doesn’t really feel as though you’ve beaten the game. I’m not saying that as in they’re setting it up for a sequel, but there’s no coup de grâce to finish the game. Just a note.

Mirror’s Edge has a time trial mode in which you can replay through concentrated and revised areas of the story mode to try and get the fastest time. This is great practice when trying to increase your running efficiency for story mode, and is also a great way to brag to your friends.

The combat in this game is not necessarily plentiful, but it is realistic where it happens. You can either fight Blues with your bare hands and feet, or you can find a gun and pick them off like that. The hand to hand combat is actually quite fun. I tend to slid in from underneath, kick them in balls (Mean, I know), kick them in the head, and then deliver one final punch to the stomach. After that, I can steal their gun and shoot people. However, that point brings me to this one: you pick up a gun, and it has a limited amount of ammo. Instead of keeping the gun and replacing the ammunition from other guns along the way, you have to switch them out. If you really get technical, I guess that’s how it would be in real life if you were running for your life. You wouldn’t have time to take magazines out of dropped guns and put them in yours; it would just be faster to take the other one. I applaud EA for making it real, but it’s a very slow process when you’re fighting the government.

Mirror’s Edge comes equipped with a physics engine somewhat familiar to the gaming community, called PhysX. This hardware acceleration engine makes glass break like glass and paper shred like paper. The incredible graphics combined with this engine creates one hell of a gaming experience. If Faith runs up against a wall, her hands go up, and you can stare at the amount of detail EA put into human skin and building textures. And if you ever get a chance to look at some of the other characters if they’re not shooting you, take some time. My only disapprovement of the graphics is the brightness. Just about everything in the game is too bright, and even if you turn the brightness down and contrast up, it still looks crazy. Nonetheless, here's some footage with PhysX enabled in HD:

Despite it’s somewhat repetitiveness, Mirror’s Edge is a replacement from the norm of what we see in video games: less emphasis on shooting, more on planning and thinking.

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