This time I'll be talking about Mirror's Edge. I have played a bit of this on the console as well as the PC so I will be able to share with you my feelings of the game on an overall scale.
Concept: 4/5
Parkour! That is the concept behind this game. It's a nice and simple concept. Let's take parkour which has been exploding in popularity on the internet and make a game about it. Better yet! Instead of making it a third person camera viewed game so that we can see the person doing all the parkour stuff let's put the camera in the person's head, aka First Person view, so that the player feels like they're the ones doing all these amazing awesome things.
I expect that's how the concept was made. If it wasn't that energy driven then I don't know how they made such an energetic game.
Graphics: 4/5
The graphics are great. I'm a huge fan of the graphics in this game. Basically what they did was made everything very minimalistic and simplistic. In fact everything is pretty much white washed and kind of blends into each other a little bit. UNTIL you add "runner vision." This is a special game mechanic that lets players see what things on the screen are possible for use in jumps, wall runs, climbing, sliding, etc. And when the "runner vision" notifies you of these special environmental objects they turn into a bright primary color, usually red or orange all though not always. This allows you to see a bit of where you're supposed to go and if you get used to the different types of moves you can pull off you can even figure out where that environmental parkour piece is going to send you and look for the next one.
Sound: 2/5
The sound is sound in this game. It does its job. I really have nothing memorable good or bad about the sound in this game except for one thing.
And unfortunately it's a bad thing but I'm also pretty sure that's because I died so much. When you fall from a great height you hear the air rushing passed your head. Which is cool. Except that it's incredibly loud and when you keep dying attempting the same jump over and over again you keep hearing the wind blasting passed your head at an incredibly high volume over and over again. If this sound effect wasn't so loud and obnoxious I probably would have gotten a lot farther in the game a lot faster but it just wore on my nerves when I was stuck on certain parts so I said "Enough!" and turned the game off for a while.
So a sound effect that can get so annoying it makes you want to stop playing the game? BAD!
Playability: 2/5
The game has some great playability to it. Not only can you beat the game but after you beat a level you can go back into the game and play through it again to try and beat a timed score. Basically racing through the game.
There are a couple problems though. For one, there were times when the cops started chasing me and I just died over and over again. Not because the cops were all that hard to avoid but because I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go and I couldn't take the time to look for the exit with the cops shooting at me. This forced me to fight them... which wouldn't be that bad except the controls are made for running not fighting.
In fact in the 360 version of the game there's an achievement for never shooting a cop in the whole game. So if you can get away with only disarming and avoiding the cops you're rewarded. But the thing is, it was hard to tell where I was supposed to go at times and I found it really hard to disarm in the game. You can disarm when a cop moves to pistol whip you with whatever firearm he has. His firearm will flash red for a moment right when it's time to press the disarm button. But the thing is that I could never time it properly for some reason. Maybe my reflexes aren't sharp enough? Or perhaps it's that I was able to get away with just about everything I had to do in the game by spamming the "jump" button so when I tried to disarm if you spam the button it breaks it and I didn't know and couldn't stop myself.
Another problem I had with the playability of the game is that you have to line up perfectly. If you're jumping from one roof to a pipe on the side of a building next to you, you have to hit the pipe so that it's in the dead center of your screen. If it's just to the left or just to the right, in the real world I'm pretty sure people could grab onto them anyway. So on the 360 I played this game and died over and over again on one section of the game near the very beginning. It may have even been the first level and I just couldn't do it so I gave up on the game. Then when Steam was having a sale I bought the game for the PC for I think $2.50 or $5 something like that. With the keyboard and mouse I had a lot more control and only died twice before making that jump. But it was still a pain.
There is also the added benefit and detriment of checkpoints in the game. I say benefit because you will die often so the game having checkpoints throughout the level is very helpful and keeps you from losing too much progress in the game when you die. I say detriment because the game doesn't just quick save from where you are when you hit the check point. The game loads you back into the game from where it knows the check point to be. So if you were on a wall when you hit the check point you might be loaded back in after you die in the middle of a hallway. It's weird and disorienting when you don't realize you've been in that place before.
Entertainment: 3/5
The game has some good entertainment points. For one the main character is a nice strong woman and the person feeding her intel through a radio is a guy. It's a nice reversal of roles that have come to be expected from video games. I really applaud Mirror's Edge on this.
The story is a bit poor however. The game starts off talking about some riots and protesting and then how the city is completely controlled by the dictatorial mayor's office now... but I have no proof of this actually being the case except for what the main character told me. Seriously, the player never gets a chance to see how the average people are suffering under this dictatorial dystopia.
It's kind of like in the movie "Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" when you never see the Naboobian people dying or suffering from this trade blockade. When the main characters land on the planet everything seems nice and idyllic, nice lush forests, beautiful cities... No over population... Seriously except for the end sequence during the parade, all the people you see in the Naboobian cities are volunteer guards for the Queen and diplomats! As far as I could tell when the blockade began everyone on Naboo decided to go on vacation and left the planet.
It's the same thing in Mirror's Edge. I saw some civilians walking around street level... once. Otherwise the only people I've seen in this city are runners like me and cops/private military cops people... Where are the suffering masses? Where are the people that need the services the runners provide outside of the system because the government is going to look through their stuff that their shipping? I have no feel for the dystopia. Especially seeing as everything is so nice and brightly light and clean. Except for the occasional rat I see running away.
X-Factor: 4/5
With all my complains about the gameplay and story and sound... There's something that captures you in this game. It's a challenge, like the older games on the NES and such. You may be hitting your head against the wall but you want to. You want to hit your head against the wall until you break it down with your skull. The game makes you want to do this. And for that it has a great X-Factor.
Overall: 19/30 Average
This is an average game through and through. It has some great originality to it and an interesting art style. But the gameplay is lack luster and the story is a bit cliché and contrived. If you can pick this game up cheap do it. But if someone wants you to pay $20 or more I'd say don't bother.
