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As you may guess from the title of this post, I’ve been playing Mirror’s Edge recently on my latest addition of my gadget collection, the XBOX 360 Pro. I decided I’ve worked hard this last year so I wanted to spoil myself a little.

Back to the game…

I first saw reference to Mirror’s Edge a few months ago when people were referring to the demos (available for XBOX 360 and Playstation 3) and what caught my attention was the emphasis on the game physics and physicality of the game’s main character, Faith. I also heard mention of odd effects in the rendering engine such as a sort of ‘tunnel vision’ where everything outside of a certain area becomes blurred and blown out as you run. Sounded like an interesting way of doing things.

Then a few weeks back, I saw a Tweet by Aubrey Kilian aka buge on my Twitter peer network about a review he’d written and being the curious fellow that I am, I followed the link and read a very honest, straightforward review, followed by some trailers. Now I’m not usually a game trailer fan as they usually show you scenes played by gaming pros or beautiful cut-scenes that the game itself never lives up to…

This time though, it looks like I was wrong.

From that point onward, I can only describe my interest in the game as something bordering fanatical obsession. I downloaded HD trailers from the official site, went hunting for the theme music, watched YouTube videos and read every review I could get my hands on.

I had to have this game… and so I went and bought the XBOX 360 edition, thinking that I could maybe monopolise a friend’s console for a while and try it out. I think that thought lasted about 4 days before I couldn’t take the wait any longer and went and bought the console myself.

Anyway, back to the game itself… First impressions…

The controls are relatively intuitive once you get the hang of them and stop confusing yourself about which finger is doing what on the controller. Initially I found myself tapping the ‘turn’ (RB) instead of ‘attack’ (RT) but that may just be because I’m a console newbie.

The viewpoint of the game is through Faith’s eyes, leading a person to think that this is just another FPS game. However, no other FPS that I know of (please feel free to correct me!) shows you your own body in relation to your actions. As you vault, climb, hang, jump, etc in the game, you will see your arms, shins and feet, even thighs as you tumble. And the motion is not the typical “camera on a stick” feeling you get. You bob. You lean (especially when walking/balancing along pipes, etc). You fall… spectacularly at times.

Landings come in 4 flavours – relatively gentle, hard (losing you some health temporarily unless you roll), fatal (ending in a grisly sounding crunch after the rush of wind signaling your impending doom) and then there is the landing-on-your-back-feet-in-the-air landings where you have to ask yourself, how the hell you managed to do that…

Also, unlike other FPS games, Mirror’s Edge is not primarily a combat game. You start off with what nature and training gave you – your hands, feet and (hopefully) quick reflexes. You can disarm opponents and take their guns but don’t suddenly start looking for a HUD giving you an ammo count. You’ve got very limited ammunition and depending on the size of the gun, it may or may not encumber you to the point where you can’t jump normally (bare in mind you are playing a relatively small-framed Eurasian girl that probably only weighs about 50 or so kilograms). After a few shots the gun is emptied and discarded and you either have to disarm another opponent or resort to hand to hand combat which is where the game really shines.

Faith is a very physical character. She runs. She jumps. She slides. She runs along walls and does any number of impossible looking manoeuvres inspired by “parkour”. Add some basic punching and kicking into the mix and you have the makings of a very agile and elusive martial artist. Add to that a sort of “bullet-time” effect and you have someone that could run at an opponent, slide-kick them in the groin to drop them, or disarm them and then knee them in the face, or jump-kick them, knocking them off scaffolding to fall to their death, etc, etc.

Your environment becomes something you can use to create some spectacular attacks. I haven’t done so myself as yet, but I believe you can roll past an opponent and disarm them from behind, wall-run and jump to launch a aerial kick-attack, jump onto an opponent from higher-up, effectively doing a Mario Brothers styled stomp (which unlocks an achievement) and so on and so forth.

A quick note about shooting in the game. Picking up a gun does not mean you’re suddenly invincible. It takes only 4-5 shots to kill you, even less if you’re recently taken a hard fall from somewhere (this makes the scenes where you’re being shot at from a chopper quite hair-raising at times) and you’re opponents generally don’t die from one shot either, so you need to be pretty sure of yourself when shooting. I found the sniper rifle and the shotgun the most effective, but in a pinch, the handguns will do.

Controlling the firing reticule on the XBOX controller takes some getting used to (I’m gathering the PC version players will find it much easier) but with some practice, you can take down some opponents at range. There is however two achievements for not firing a gun – one, “Pacifist”, requires you not to fire a gun during any one story mode chapter; the other, “Test of Faith”, requires you not to fire a gun throughout the whole game. Having played as far as I have, I have to wonder how you get this right and still keep your sanity…

Aside from the combat (which is fast, furious and a little frustrating at times until you get the hang of it), the primary aim of the game, in my opinion, is as a fast-paced 3D, urban-themed, platformer.

Don’t get me wrong… you’re not running around looking for coins or tokens or anything like that. I have LEGO Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda for that… You’re more often than not running for your life from someone, or occasionally, chasing after someone that is trained like you are. The 30 or so runner bags you may find, spread throughout the game are more like special bonuses or secrets.

But there are also quieter portions of the game where you are trying to work out how to get from here to there. This is where Runner Vision comes in handy. That and (B) on the XBOX controller. (B) give you a hint as to where you want to be headed. But it often does not take into account the obstacles in your way. That is where Runner Vision comes in by providing red-coloured objects as hints, indicating that you can use this to overcome an obstacle. The further you get in the game, though, the less this happens, making you become more aware of your surroundings because you have to look for these yourself.

The story for Mirror’s Edge is also quite interesting. It’s set… well… now-ish. Or a few years from now, at most. In a city called New Eden, an almost militant “Big Brother” like city built over the old city. The police are everywhere. Everyone is watched. Everything is monitored. Information flow is strictly controlled.

Which is where Faith and her friends come in. They’re Runners, agile athletic couriers that transport information that their clients can’t send through the normal channels, for a price of course. A price justified by the fact that they are hunted. They stay off the streets where possible, using the city rooftops as their playground and just run…

Now Faith has an added complication in that her sister, Kate, a cop, has just been framed for the murder of a prominent politician in New Eden. In one of the early missions you go to her at the crime scene and she asks for your help, etc. Shortly after that, you start running for your life as bullets start flying around you… From there, it just seems to get more intense as you uncover more behind what happened and other people try to make sure that you never get a chance to reveal the truth…

The action in the game is enough to keep a person sitting on the edge of their seat most of the time and some of the stunts you perform are not for the faint of heart. Or those that get motion sick easily as this is one of the few games said to “hack” proprioception, ie. it screws up your sense of where your real limbs and body are. Fear of heights may also present a problem to some folks…

I’m about halfway through the game (it has often been criticised as too short) on easy mode and once I can complete it, I intend trying the other modes. For those that feel competitive, there are also non-combat time trial versions of the story maps as well as other maps. And sometime this month, a downloadable content pack will be released, focusing purely on time trials and finding your path through what looks to be a purely geometric map.

Mirror’s Edge (on the console at least) has the standard achievements and unlockables. The achievements are story mode based, combat style based and time trial based. The unlockables feature cut-scenes, game music and concept artwork.

I will say this though… if you’re going to play this game, play it on HD, 720p at least. SD is ok, but it just doesn’t do the game justice at times. Dolby 5.1 will help too. And turn up the volume. Trust me on this one…