Mirror’s Edge Ranking: B
A background note before we begin: the first game I wrote a review for on this site was the first Half-Life. I gave it a D in large part because of its jumping/platforming focus. I noted that jumping puzzles in an FPS don’t work – you can’t see your body and you don’t have things like proprioception that would help you make jumps in real life.
Mirror’s Edge is specifically designed with jumping puzzles in mind. It might seem strange that a guy who hated an FPS for heavily emphasizing jumping puzzles chose to play another FPS specifically designed around jumping puzzles, much less give it a good rating. Well, Mirror’s Edge isn’t a standard FPS – in designing a game focused on jumping puzzles, the developers added a few features geared toward making the gameplay much better in that regard. For one, you can see your body when you look down, just like you can in real life, giving the player more visual cues when moving about the stage. Two, much of Mirror’s Edge isn’t about platforming – jumping from point A to land on point B. Instead, the in-game character (Faith Connors) is supposed to reach out and grab onto ledges or pipes or whatnot, meaning Faith herself is using her skills to make up for the player not having those senses I mentioned above.
That said, the gameplay isn’t perfect – Faith will often not grab onto something even when she can, leading to a swift fall to death. It’s a fine balance between what the game does – rely on Faith to perform the parkour moves at the right times as the player jumps toward something grabbable – or add a bunch of button prompts or controls to have the player do it. The latter gives the player more control, but would make the gameplay more cluttered. But even imperfect, the jumping in Mirror’s Edge is a far cry from the fuckery I had to endure in Half-Life and I could tell the developers actually put thought and effort into making first-person jumping mechanics work.
Moving on, I had several people compare Mirror’s Edge to Portal in that you’re meant to look at your surroundings and figure out how to use the terrain, in conjunction with Faith’s parkour skills, to get from one place to another. You’ll climb up pipes, swing from horizontal bars, shimmy along ledges, etc. There’s one glaring problem with this, however, and that’s the FUCKING COPS. Many stages in Mirror’s Edge have policemen/SWAT teams/special security shooting at you. A first-time player doesn’t know the map and needs time to look around and figure out where to go and how to get there, which means the gameplay loop in Mirror’s Edge generally looks like this:
It’s. Incredibly. Frustrating. In Portal, you’re expected to and allowed to think and explore. In Mirror’s Edge, you’re expected to think and explore, but are prevented from doing so. The game also actively advises you to avoid hostiles, yet spawns them all over the game (and includes 2 forced combat boss fights). Much of the time I resigned myself to sneaking around a level, melee disarming a lone enemy, taking his gun, and sneaking around some more to kill the others with the gun just so I can explore the level and figure things out in peace – something the game, again, actively advises you not to do as that’s not the ostensible point.
One segment that was very frustrating for me was this level where you’re on the ground floor of an atrium and you need to get to the top, way high up. To do so, you really need to employ all the moves Faith can do, such as wall-running or wall-jumping. I’m not good at the game, so I died so many times. That said, I like this level, because there’s nobody shooting at me. It’s just a straight-up test of my ability to execute parkour moves, which is the whole point of the game.
So in short: Portal is a game about mental problem-solving. Mirror’s Edge is a game about memorization and physical reflexes. And Half-Life is ass.
A short note on the story: Mirror’s Edge has a pretty bare-bones story that has a few plot holes and a rather predictable mystery – I predicted the identity of the mystery assassin about 5-6 chapters before the reveal. That said, the story isn’t bad, it’s presented well, and it’s interesting enough that I felt invested in Faith’s motivations and quest. This is similar to Portal, which has…very little story to speak of (and in the sequel, most of the story concerns Cave Johnson’s and Caroline’s backstories, which don’t have much direct relation to Chell), but what’s there is interesting and fun enough that I enjoyed it.
A background note before we begin: the first game I wrote a review for on this site was the first Half-Life. I gave it a D in large part because of its jumping/platforming focus. I noted that jumping puzzles in an FPS don’t work – you can’t see your body and you don’t have things like proprioception that would help you make jumps in real life.
Mirror’s Edge is specifically designed with jumping puzzles in mind. It might seem strange that a guy who hated an FPS for heavily emphasizing jumping puzzles chose to play another FPS specifically designed around jumping puzzles, much less give it a good rating. Well, Mirror’s Edge isn’t a standard FPS – in designing a game focused on jumping puzzles, the developers added a few features geared toward making the gameplay much better in that regard. For one, you can see your body when you look down, just like you can in real life, giving the player more visual cues when moving about the stage. Two, much of Mirror’s Edge isn’t about platforming – jumping from point A to land on point B. Instead, the in-game character (Faith Connors) is supposed to reach out and grab onto ledges or pipes or whatnot, meaning Faith herself is using her skills to make up for the player not having those senses I mentioned above.
That said, the gameplay isn’t perfect – Faith will often not grab onto something even when she can, leading to a swift fall to death. It’s a fine balance between what the game does – rely on Faith to perform the parkour moves at the right times as the player jumps toward something grabbable – or add a bunch of button prompts or controls to have the player do it. The latter gives the player more control, but would make the gameplay more cluttered. But even imperfect, the jumping in Mirror’s Edge is a far cry from the fuckery I had to endure in Half-Life and I could tell the developers actually put thought and effort into making first-person jumping mechanics work.
Moving on, I had several people compare Mirror’s Edge to Portal in that you’re meant to look at your surroundings and figure out how to use the terrain, in conjunction with Faith’s parkour skills, to get from one place to another. You’ll climb up pipes, swing from horizontal bars, shimmy along ledges, etc. There’s one glaring problem with this, however, and that’s the FUCKING COPS. Many stages in Mirror’s Edge have policemen/SWAT teams/special security shooting at you. A first-time player doesn’t know the map and needs time to look around and figure out where to go and how to get there, which means the gameplay loop in Mirror’s Edge generally looks like this:
- Enter a stage where cops are running around shooting at you.
- Look around, trying to get your bearings, trying to figure out where your destination is.
- Die because, well, there are multiple guys shooting you.
- Reload a checkpoint.
- Repeat steps 1-4, gaining a bit more information each time in the few seconds between entering the stage and getting shot, until you manage to figure out what to do and do it (without getting shot).
It’s. Incredibly. Frustrating. In Portal, you’re expected to and allowed to think and explore. In Mirror’s Edge, you’re expected to think and explore, but are prevented from doing so. The game also actively advises you to avoid hostiles, yet spawns them all over the game (and includes 2 forced combat boss fights). Much of the time I resigned myself to sneaking around a level, melee disarming a lone enemy, taking his gun, and sneaking around some more to kill the others with the gun just so I can explore the level and figure things out in peace – something the game, again, actively advises you not to do as that’s not the ostensible point.
One segment that was very frustrating for me was this level where you’re on the ground floor of an atrium and you need to get to the top, way high up. To do so, you really need to employ all the moves Faith can do, such as wall-running or wall-jumping. I’m not good at the game, so I died so many times. That said, I like this level, because there’s nobody shooting at me. It’s just a straight-up test of my ability to execute parkour moves, which is the whole point of the game.
So in short: Portal is a game about mental problem-solving. Mirror’s Edge is a game about memorization and physical reflexes. And Half-Life is ass.
A short note on the story: Mirror’s Edge has a pretty bare-bones story that has a few plot holes and a rather predictable mystery – I predicted the identity of the mystery assassin about 5-6 chapters before the reveal. That said, the story isn’t bad, it’s presented well, and it’s interesting enough that I felt invested in Faith’s motivations and quest. This is similar to Portal, which has…very little story to speak of (and in the sequel, most of the story concerns Cave Johnson’s and Caroline’s backstories, which don’t have much direct relation to Chell), but what’s there is interesting and fun enough that I enjoyed it.