Mirror's Edge

Hi!

It's slower than slow on the video game front right now, I guess it's the time of the year. You're supposed to be outside and play in the sun, not be indoors and play vidya gaems. The next game I'm interested in won't be out until September, and that's Dead Island (talk about an unfortunate title considering the terrible recent events that took place in Norway). Gotta keep busy somehow though, so I downloaded Mirror's Edge from Steam. I've always been hesitant about getting this game from the reviews and what I've heard about Mirror's Edge, but it was cheap and like I said I have no other game right now to play.

When playing the game it becomes clear that it was advertised completely wrong (I believe most of the reviews touched upon this as well). If you've seen the movie Fight Club, it was advertised as an action film in the trailers, even though it's more of a psychological thriller/drama with a very small numbers of action scenes in it. In a similar fashion, Mirror's Edge was wrongly portrayed as an FPS, when it's really Le Parkour-the game. If you're not familiar with Le Parkour, it's a kind of urban "sport", where the participant jumps from buildings to buildings and do flips and other crazy stunts, originating from France. And that's what you do in this game, as a "runner" -- a sort of unlawful Robin Hoodesque character, although you are gathering information instead of riches.

In the game you are Faith, who lives in a 1984-inspired heavily controlled world, a sort of police state. Most buildings and surfaces in the city are white - supposedly heightening the feeling that everything is ordered and under control - although the feeling it creates to me is more that it feels like you are in a hospital or a big playground with bright colors (not just the whites). In fact I think that if the city was more gritty and grey, it would feel more realistic and heighten the tension because as it is now you never really take the game seriously since the world it takes place in feels so plastascene.

Personally I really liked the game, it was a pleasant surprise. As mentioned I was very hesitant after having read the reviews for the game, but I don't really agree with the points that seemed to be the consensus of the reviews. That's a first right, me not agreeing with professional reviews of computer games? First of all, this game never claims to be an FPS, it just so happens there are guards that try to stop you and sometimes you have no other choice than to unarm them and use their gun against them. Faith is not supposed to be professional at handling weapons, so it's only natural you can't aim down the sights, that the accuracy of the weapons is not perfect and so on. The game was made by DICE after all, the creators of the Battlefield franchise, so if they wanted perfect weapon handling they would have no problem implementing it, that's for certain.

Another common critisism was that the game is too short, and while it's certainly not Heroes of Might and Magic-length, eight hours is fine. Most games today are a lot shorter - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, CoD: Black Ops and Portal are all much shorter and they have never gotten much of any critisism for that. And speaking of Portal, that's one game this one really reminds me of which makes Mirror's Edge flopping even more confounding. Portal has absolutely zero gunplay, but still was a huge success and has a big following on the Internet. DICE probably almost literally shot themselves in the foot by including guns in ME at all, if they wouldn't have, maybe the puzzle fanatics would've found this gem instead of being turned off by the huge FPS-stamp on its figurative forehead. Because to me ME is everything Portal ever wanted to be and then some.

When playing Mirror's Edge it felt like a breath of fresh air in a more and more homogenic video game market, which is probably one of the reasons why it supposedly didn't sell that well. It was just too different in a way that its supposed target audience (FPS-fans), did not know what to make of. I also think that it lies in the nature of people who like this genre that running away is not what you want to do, you want to have a weapon and confront every danger with your own lethal force. Oh well, I sure hope they make a sequel. And now I'm going back to thinking what the hell I'm going to spend my spare time with until September. Emulators I guess?

Until next time, signing off.