Last night as I was playing Zeno Clash, I started to think about Mirror’s Edge for some strange reason.
Anyway, after finding out something, I decided to buy it. And I just beat it today.
Now here’s my review of what I saw. Warning, this contains spoilers. So if you haven’t played it yet, don’t read.
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You have been warned…
Mirror’s Edge is about these women that have been highly trained to jump from rooftop to rooftop, in a busy, thriving city. You play as Faith, one of the women known as ‘Runners’.
The side story starts about this big city inside of a bay. Everyone is happy. Until one day the Mayor decided to crack down on impure people(what I believe anyway). Some people retaliated to this, and where brutally beaten down.
This city I believe is based from Tokyo, about 2015 or so(the year was never mentioned, but there’s an elevator voice in the last chapter that tells you this huge building was completed in 2012), since there’s English and Chinese handwriting on billboards, doors, and stuff like that. Which would also make sense, seeing that the game is part amine, part FPS.
The cut scenes, are cartoon’ish. Looks something straight out from that amine thing they have on Cartoon Network. Forgot what it was called.
For the gameplay, I must say the physics engine is amazing as you attempt to defy the law of gravity. The fancy moves you can do as you jump your way higher and higher gets kinda confusing, especially a move that requires you to hit your spacebar, then a letter, then your spacebar again.. very quickly.
The game has weapons, that have non-reloadable clips. It has a pistol, submachine guns, shotguns, a sniper rifle, and an M249 Machinegun. Some weapons can be used in one hand, giving you the advantage of preforming acrobatic stunts while kicking ass. However the gameplay is against actually killing anyone, and more of running away from enemies.
You only get weapons from defeating an enemy that has a droppable weapon.
There’s another thing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I guess “Dude, it’s a game. Go with it!” is the only reason. You can break glass, with your fists or foot… and not have to see the hospital because you got glass stuck in your skin. Apparently you have cut-proof skin, yet you can barley handle gunfire.
The graphics. Well…I have to say it didn’t live up to the hype. Though the gameplay was nice, the graphics lack. Basically, they all look like you’re playing an ALPHA version of the game. The colors look basic and bland. If you ever played Garry’s Mod and tried one of those “Devworld” maps, that’s pretty much what it looks like for the most part, except without the Hammer textures.
There’s only like several colors, but mostly Orange, White, and Grey. And they seem to recycle these colors throughout the game.
The AI. Amazing, but annoying. Especially in Chapter 6, when you have fucking ninjas for cops, with short-range tazer guns. Cops are referred to as “Blues”, and the helicopters are referred to as “Birds”. Regular cops will attempt to flank you, and know their environment well.
They seem to also have this, shove away attack if you get too close, making it hard to use Melee attacks.
Lets see. What hasn’t been covered yet? .. Ohh yeah. The plot.
So, you work for this guy named Merc. And there’s also this guy named Drake who also works for them, but never shows up once in the entire game. However you see his face in Chapter 6(no he’s not a dragon).
Your first mission is to deliver a bag to another runner. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, that’s not even the first level.
The main plot first starts as your sister, named Kate, who is a cop for the city is being accused of killing Robert Pope, the CEO of some company. He was also running for Mayor, and you’re trying to clear her name. But the more I played, the more difficult it was to understand the plot.
First, one says “Yeah. I framed her! No I didn’t kill Pope. I hired a professional”, then another guy says “I killed Pope”, and then even another guy says “I killed Pope!”.. who fucking killed Pope??
Cheats… well, the cheats that say they work, don’t. So I had to go to cha-chinghappens.com(cheathappens.com), and I saw they have a trainer for the Steam version, but you have to be a Prem member to download the damn thing. As desperate as I was to play this without dieing every fucking time trying to get out of the building, I paid to upgrade my account, and was able to download it.
Now I have a ‘customized’ trainer. A trainer that has a special code that I believe will trigger a silent alarm to cheathappens.com if anyone BUT me uses it. Bastards…
When I had the trainer in hand, my controls where buggy, and I found out that the trainer was using this ‘Force Direction’ cheats, that where fucking up with my movement controls.
I used their Trainer Customizer and remapped the keys to other keys, allowing the trainer and my movement controls to work correctly.
So here we go. The big list of pros and cons;
Pros;
Gameplay
AI
Good, but hard to understand plot
Your player character never needs to rest
Neutral;
No reload option for weapons
Cons;
Dev’ish graphics
No cheat codes
No Save/Load Game
Overuse of bloom/HDR, and no way to switch it off
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And so you have it. My review of Mirror’s Edge.
I give this game, a 3.5 out of 5. Needs more toggable features.