Run Faith, Run

Mirror's Edge is played completely from first-person perspective and the feeling of "being there" is exceptional. Some have yapped about the fact that first-person perspective and death-defying jumps generally don't mix, but I must say - in Mirror's Edge, on the PC, they do just fine. I couldn't see myself playing this with a pad but with a mouse it's possible to accurately time critical actions by, you know, looking at your feet as you leap. Sure, early on you end up getting killed in numerous and unpleasant ways, missing ledges, mis-timing leaps and getting plain owned by the security guards. Yet the game grows on you if you give it time and once you start to figure out the gameplay, it all becomes a fun and challenging experience.

First person platforming that actually works!

Wide open city - shame that most of it is just a set piece that you can't reach.

You are commonly only inches away from a 100 feet drop to the pavement below, yet you almost never end up dead unfairly. The controls are polished, consistent, predictable and fair, a critical aspect in a game like this. The difficulty level feels hard at first, probably frustrating a number of gamers (and reviewers) who have gotten used to games where you can casually stroll onwards with little challenge, only partially concentrating on the task at hand. Try that in Mirror's Edge and you are in for a surprise - it grabs you and punches you in the face with no mercy. Running is serious business.

Level design starts out great as you run on the rooftops. Then you end up indoors start cursing the restrictive paths. In a way these sections help the pacing and variety a lot and eventually when you learn these maps they flow just as gracefully as any outdoor area - alternate tricks become apparent in places where there were no obvious alternate routes and you can again get to optimizing your route just like on the rooftops. Outdoor sections look much better and feel more open so they are easier to learn, but I learned to like the indoor bits as well - much to my surprise, really.

Harsh, But Fair

Larger indoor areas have some room to improvise.

Outdoors or indoors, the only way forward is to learn the routes and, if necessary, keep practicing until you stop sucking. Slowly, as your skill with the controls increases, all the running and jumping becomes immensely rewarding. Yet it also unearths a paradox with Mirror's Edge. It's a non-storyline game with a storyline. It rewards repetition and practice, yet the story is pretty much one-shot deal - you don't care about it once you have completed it once. In fact, the gameplay only becomes truly rewarding after multiple runs when you know the route and can concentrate on the execution of all those jumps and tricks instead of fumbling in panic looking where to go next.

"Runner's Vision" indicating the safe landing area in red.

The "Runners Vision", Mercury's verbal instructions and the "hint key" that turns you to face your next objective on the path all help even on the first go and it is possible to figure out the optimal move barely in time to execute it on the first attempt - and when you do, it feels incredible. Rest of the time you end up getting killed just a second before your clumsy brain figures out how to survive the situation and you have to try again - often multiple times.

This means that your first dash trough the game can take 5-6 hours as you are constantly getting killed. At times, it feels very frustrating but you have nobody else to blame than your own lack of skill - every bit is theoretically survivable if you are just fast enough and think quick enough. Some may hate the game for this. I did at first too - on my first run the first four or five stages felt a bit too hard, but after those first hours of pain the finer points of the gameplay slowly dawned on me and suddenly levels started to fly by as I kept pulling off moves that would've ended badly earlier. I can't praise DICE enough for setting the bar high, yet never quite venturing to the land of constant unfair instagibs. Even if the story itself is not offering replayability, the challenging action gives the game replay value where there would otherwise be none.