Final Thoughts

We like Mirror’s Edge. A lot. It’s smooth, quick, simple and well designed. It tries to do something interesting and it does it well. The kinetic feel to the gameplay is addictive and new, handling far better on a PC with a keyboard and mouse than it ever could on a console.

The game as a whole feels well designed, expertly crafted and perfectly presented. The combination of (skippable!) animated cutscenes both contrasts and compliments the frighteningly colourful playable segments. The controls are tight and accessible, making the game less of a platformer and more of a puzzler where the only conundrum is ‘How do I get over there?’

Really; we can’t stress enough how good the game is and how much we adore it. We love it enough to go and buy our own copies as soon as we get the chance, put it that way.

Objectively though, the game does have some fairly fundamental flaws and we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention them in between our bursts of worshipping hyperbole.


The first thing to know is that Mirror’s Edge isn’t very long at all. With only a handful of levels, the singleplayer game can be finished in between six or seven hours, easily. It’s all gripping and overwhelmingly exciting stuff, but there just isn’t enough of it in our opinions.

When you’re done with the singleplayer game then there’s the time trial and race modes to get stuck into admittedly, but replacing the ever-chasing cops with a stopwatch counter is like replacing a beautiful woman with a shop mannequin; not quite the same, even if it does have all the same...assets. The fact that most of the race levels are just slightly reworked versions of the singleplayer greatly lessens their impact too. They're still fun, but not nearly as engaging as the story-led experience.

The singleplayer also suffers from what we call the F.E.A.R factor as well, which is a pretentious way of saying that it fluctuates noticeably between two gameplay styles. While F.E.A.R switched between scary and action-based levels like a broken tap going hot and cold, so too does Mirror’s Edge flip between chase and combat sequences. The latter sections are notably weaker than the former.

The combat in Mirror’s Edge isn’t totally bad by itself though, it’s just that when it does come then it tends to come all at once. It isn’t ever a case of one guard for you to take down or disarm, but five or ten shotgun wielders who have to be mowed down one by one. It's an anti-thesis to the rest of the game design and even though there's only three or four situations where it's a real pain, those three or four moments stand out in retrospect.


That said, the combat is usually a lot more optional than it appears to be and there are several places in the game where you’re advised by your friends on the radio that it would be best to tackle foes you could easily avoid if you wanted. The actual mechanic of the combat means that encounters don't last long too - enemies go down with just a punch or two and can put you down in the same amount of time. Getting through most encounters quickly isn't a problem, it's just when you hit a bad run that things feel annoying.

To focus too much on these relatively minor negatives though would be a crime in our eyes, taking attention away from the far more numerous redemptive aspects of the game. The only problem the game really suffers from is a somewhat stunning brevity and an ending that’s strangely abrupt and unfulfilling despite the fact that the run-up to it left us panting like excited dogs with blocked noses.

OK, so Mirror’s Edge still isn’t perfect despite the extra coat of gloss that the PC versions received. The fact remains though that it’s an absolute must have for anyone who likes FPS’ or platformers and for any console gamers who, like bit-tech.net’s Jamie, were put off the console version by stiff and awkward controls. This is the definitive and superior version of Mirror’s Edge and it’s truly glorious despite the brevity.