Mirrors Edge Review
BY Ali Malik | POSTED: 05 December 2008
Take a leap of faith and try it out.
Mirror's Edge, produced by 'DICE studios' which is well-known for its franchise Battalion, gives a new definition to the genre FPS. Rather than the usual stereotype of running and gunning, Mirror's Edge emphasises on running and well... jumping off high buildings, with the occasional firefights to keep the violent type happy. But in today's world where FPSs are defined by the size and power of guns and enemies, does Mirror's Edge fail miserably? Does DICE fall off that high building above you and become street pizza? Lets find out.
As you can tell by the cover (no, its not about tatooing your eyes in weird ways) the game's main character is a girl, called Faith. In an era of totalitarian rule she is one of the few which rebel against this oppression. Those few are called runners, they race across the city delivering vital information to resistance members scattered everywhere, they do all this while evading the 'blues'(cops) using their almost superhuman acrobatic skills to out-manouever them. All is well, relatively speaking, until Faith's sister, a cop, gets framed for a murder, and therefore she sets out on a mission to clear her sister's name.
The story itself may not seem very exciting on paper as we've all heard it a million times before, but this game transforms a bland plot into a gripping one which, thanks to some great cinematics and voice-acting, keeps you glued to the tv till the very end. There are 9 chapters each of which is a vital gear in a beautifully manufactured machine. Each ends with a gripping cinematic, and each one restores your interest and curiosity at regular and much-needed intervals.
I mentioned that it showed-off some great voice acting but there are still some shortfalls in the sound department. Despite the professional voice-acting, the lip-syncing was awful at times and the dialogue isn't much better either. The musical score was well-composed however it did begin to get repetitive after hearing it the first hundred times. The SFX were excellent, with screeches, footsteps, gunshots and door-bashes sounding incredibly realistic.
The visuals pop out at you in symphony with the music. Each building is magnifecently rendered in shades of white and grey. Light reflects off surfaces realistically creating a fitting background to such an amazing title. But like every other department, this also has a flaw which is that the character models aren't very impressive.
Now onto the gameplay itself. The game is, most of the time, very smooth and fluid with you swinging, leaping, running and sliding from one area to another. Adrenaline rushes accompany you whenever you take a vertigo-enticing jump off a skyscraper. The intuitive controls will aid you in stringing together massive and smoothly exectuted chains of fluid leaps and ground-scraping slides across this skyscraper jungle. But everything is going fine and your having a wonderful time free-running until you...face combat.
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