Mirror's Edge (PC)

“Mirror's Edge was one of the few titles of 2008 that I genuinely got excited about. It looked to be an original IP, with awesome graphics and original gameplay, and I remained in my state of excitation despite knowing that this would be published...”

“Mirror's Edge was one of the few titles of 2008 that I genuinely got excited about. It looked to be an original IP, with awesome graphics and original gameplay, and I remained in my state of excitation despite knowing that this would be published by EA.

Admittedly, EA has put out some very interesting games that aren't rehashes of old franchises, but they're so rare that I feel that looking for them is like dumpster diving.

Mirror's Edge is a purely single-player experience, with high score leaderboards on the side. The game mechanics are similar to Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed, but depend much more heavily on speed. Your goal throughout the campaign is to find the fastest, most efficient, and if need be, most flashy route from point A to point B across a ginormous urban sprawl. This being a first person game, the obligatory bullet time mechanic is included, if only to make the game a little easier than 'blistering.' Yes, the difficulty curve is more vertical than most, but you won't find yourself cursing the game as much as your own ineptitude, since the reward of performing fast-paced parcour is particularly enthralling.

The unnamed city that is the setting for Mirror's Edge is gorgeous throughout. The harsh contrast of stark whites and vivid colors makes for a very flashy, if somewhat convoluted diorama. Character animation is fluid and life-like, however little of it you actually see. The inter-mission cutscenes, however, break the course of the narrative, which is presented mostly through in-game dialogue. The animation in the cut-scenes looks like it could have been done in Adobe Flash. Not that the art style is bad, but not putting the cutscenes in the game engine, which they probably could have very easily, makes the storyline feel like it's been broken up into bite-sized chunks. The characters are unfortunately rather stale, falling into cliche traps left and right. Also, the story is incredibly short. I took a break in the middle of the campaign, believing myself to be approximately half-way through. When I sat down again, I discovered that I was actually closer to 3/4 of the way through. You'll probably get a good six to eight hours of play out of the story mode, more if you want to find all of the hidden items.

Overall, Mirror's Edge delivers some thrilling gameplay in a gorgeous setting. If you love high scores (or top times in this case) I suggest you buy Mirror's Edge if only to get a few solid hours of sexy parcour goodness.”

“Hmm.. where to start.... First, this is a BEAUUTIFUL game. Basic and low end computers are sadly missing out. the controls are with WASD as always and e does the 180 turn and space is jump. The game is quite short though. It took me about 5...”

“Hmm.. where to start....

First, this is a BEAUUTIFUL game. Basic and low end computers are sadly missing out. the controls are with WASD as always and e does the 180 turn and space is jump. The game is quite short though. It took me about 5 hours non stop to beat it completely, no long breaks... Mirror's edge is not a hard game, it just makes you think of faster routes. You can always go faster another time, which is a good replay value for once in a while...

Overall: a great PC port to a great game: NOTICE: for lower end machines, beware, i had frame rate issues and computer shutdowns with graphics on full blast. You can always turn them down for the perfect framerate, but this is to let YOU know that if you don't, you MAY have problems...


-:) TangTom”

“An interesting new take on platforming and action games. Needs some fine tuning, but is overall solid.”

“An interesting new take on platforming and action games. Needs some fine tuning, but is overall solid.”

“A sleek flowing game that puts moves over firepower. Figure out new paths that lead to faster finishes. A freerunning puzzle.”

“A sleek flowing game that puts moves over firepower. Figure out new paths that lead to faster finishes. A freerunning puzzle.”

“A unique concept! Parkour wasn't ever in games really before Mirror's Edge and you never really saw your character move is such a dynamic way as your character faith did in this game. The gameplay was fun but I felt that you had to know what you...”

“A unique concept! Parkour wasn't ever in games really before Mirror's Edge and you never really saw your character move is such a dynamic way as your character faith did in this game. The gameplay was fun but I felt that you had to know what you were doing to progress or be stuck for ages on the entire game, if you weren't stuck then you were already going through the game at a fast pace and there weren't too many levels so I managed to complete the game within a day which was disappointing because I feel it should of been longer. There is multiplayer but only highscores and ghosts and not actually seeing real-time players that you are racing. I hope this is added in the next game (Mirror's Edge2) which EA said will be coming out.”

“This is a hugely underrated game, with an amazingly well-told story and gameplay that grows on you. The latter point is probably its biggest failing; the first time you play it, it just isn't much fun as you fight to learn the peculiar...”

“This is a hugely underrated game, with an amazingly well-told story and gameplay that grows on you. The latter point is probably its biggest failing; the first time you play it, it just isn't much fun as you fight to learn the peculiar control-mechanism.

I honestly feel that this game is destined to become a classic, as people dig it out in the coming years and give it a second shot. I think DICE were outside their comfort zone as they developed this one, but that is probably how it managed to escape the sense of pretence that usually afflicts experimental games. This fact also contributed to the sense that there are few preconceptions here; the game works how they wanted it to work because they were not fighting to make it accessible to players of other games.

Playing this soon after Assassin's Creed, I really got the sense that the free-running of Assassin's creed was tacked on, where Mirror's Edge (as you would expect) really made it work. I am sure this game will spawn imitations, but I think it will be a while before it is beaten...”

“It's a game with good graphic, parkour, and a beautiful city. ”

“It's a game with good graphic, parkour, and a beautiful city. ”

“Awesome setting, great feel of adrenaline-pumped parkour running. Great simplistic art style. Combat feels a little awkward and the only thing I'm missing is an ingame documentation of the special moves, all else it is pretty much great and a...”

“Awesome setting, great feel of adrenaline-pumped parkour running. Great simplistic art style.

Combat feels a little awkward and the only thing I'm missing is an ingame documentation of the special moves, all else it is pretty much great and a game definitely worth playing!”