Mirror's Edge

Author: Andy Fair
Published: 12th November 2008
Comments (44) Stumble

Gameplay

Mirror's Edge starts with the obligatory training level. The whole injury thing is just a way of way of explaining away why you need to learn things that you've supposedly been doing before. You've been off work for a few weeks, and suddenly you've forgotten everything you knew? Perhaps you fell on your head.

Anyway, the training level serves to introduce you to what is a really easy control method. Movement is the tried and tested left stick/right stick combo, but the clever bit is how you control Faith’s actions.

The left shoulder button controls everything to do with going up – jumping, climbing and wall-running – while the left trigger controls everything to do with going down – crouching, sliding, dropping from ledges, and so on. The right shoulder button spins you round by 180 degrees, and all attacking is covered by the right trigger.

One neat trick is that if Faith is walking across a beam, her balance can be controlled by the SixAxis function of the PS3 function – although it is possible to turn this feature off if you find, like me, that the PS3 tilt sensor isn't quite accurate enough for this level of control. With the feature turned off, or if you're playing on an Xbox, balance is controlled with the left thumbstick instead.

Mirror's Edge Mirror's Edge - Gameplay

These fairly simple controls underlie a fairly clever context-sensitive control system, so you'll jump when you want and wallclimb when you need. Even better, the control system is clever enough to allow you to string moves together using the same button – so it's possible to run along a wall and then jump to a ledge that's a little too far away to reach by jumping alone.

Sadly, the easy control method is let down by the near pixel perfection needed for many jumps, especially longer ones. At the beginning of the game, you'll miss more long jumps than you make and you'll get very used to the sight of the side of buildings flashing by as you plummet to your death, accompanied by the sound of crunching bone.

What's worse is that there’s no save game function in the game, so you're reliant on checkpoints if you make like a lead balloon.

Mirror's Edge Mirror's Edge - Gameplay

Most of the time, checkpoints occur every time you jump to a new building or complete a particularly devious section, so it's no great problem if you fall. Other times, however, you'll just miss that crucial last jump and be pulled all the way back to the beginning of the section. It becomes a tad increasingly tiresome when you miss the jump for the third or fourth time.

On the plus side though, there are often multiple ways across a building, so if you find yourself constantly flying like an rhino, it often pays to have a look around to see if there's another way across a seemingly insurmountable jump. Still, Mirror's Edge isn't as open as all that and as soon as you're being chased or inside a building, the environment gets closed down and you're back on the rails again. It’s an understandable limit of the technology and the design, but it’s also quite disappointing.

As you leap around the buildings, you'll notice just how beautiful they are. This may be a dystopian city, but all of the buildings gleam bright white in the sunshine. A city this clean must be run by shady characters, it stands to reason, as bright, primary colours fill the landscape. All of this helps with runner vision – jumps and other runner aids are highlighted in red to help you pick your way across the rooftops and through the buildings of the city – although this does fall down somewhat when you enter a building where the walls have been painted red.

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