PS3 Review: Mirror's Edge (2008)

There's not much else to first-person gaming besides shooting. Outside of a few experiments with the perspective in other genres (including my sentimental favorite, "First Person Football" from ESPN NFL 2K5), it's a technique that has stayed with bullets through thick and thin. While Mirror's Edge may not be a total departure from the FPS model, it's certainly the best first-person action game on PS3 to actively discourage gunfire. Your character doesn't even come equipped with weaponry: you have to pick one up from a disarmed governement thug. Instead, the focus is on parkour techniques, finding creative ways to navigate the urban landscape while outrunning or tracking down corruption.

You play as Faith, a "runner" in an unnamed but thoroughly dystopian city. The city is a bright, gleaming, sterile metropolis, and this facade hides a totalitarian state in total control of supposedly democratic elections. Faith is one of many runners actively working with an underground resistance group to expose the state and free its subjects. Most of this story is told through animated cinematics between missions, though in-game cutscenes occasionally push the plot forward as well. It's a fairly well paced plot, though there is often not enough emphasis placed on the narrative stakes to make actions seem meaningful. As a result, I often felt as though I was merely encountering the next urban jungle gym, not racing against time to rescue Faith's sister, for instance. A voiceover guide helps to stress certain story aspects as you run about the levels, and he is particularly useful in underlining the offscreen urgency of any situation, but it's not enough to sufficiently work in larger narrative consequences.

Thankfully, however,  Mirror's Edge makes up for the failings of its story with first-person parkour. The key here is an almost total immersion into the first-person view of Faith, even with in-game cutscenes, as when Faith is thrown off a roof by a former professional wrestler. In terms of presenting this perspective, Mirror's Edge makes a wise choice in completely eliminating any kind of on-screen display of your health, bullets remaining, objectives completed, or direction. You get the impression that you can only rely on your wits and athleticism, though there are ways that the game "cheats" this impression: on the normal difficulty setting, objects leading you through the levels will be colored red (this can be turned off on harder difficulties). Not only is the presentation clutter-free, there is a similar simplicity in terms of controls. Essentially, you rely on your jump button to get through virtually all obstacles, though you also need to maser a few other buttons to slide, roll, and so on. Thus, progression is more about timing, perception, and momentum than acquiring a powerful weapon. Speaking of which, as I alluded to earlier you can go hand-to-hand with your adversaries and fire weapons at them, but the game is designed to make this decision seem generally unwise. Instead, you're actively encouraged to run away from trouble. Running in this sense means navigating crowded urban environments as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, levels in Mirror's Edge are a bit hit-or-miss: many of the rooftop stages are bland in terms of obstacles and design, whereas the interior levels paradoxically provide more freedom in navigation as well as visual variety.

Any game that lets me recreate a stunt from Who Am I? makes me happy.

What Mirror's Edge gets right is a sense of movement as well as verticality, and does it better than just about any other game out there. Nothing else I have ever played has equaled the sensation I felt in leaping over a guardrail and onto a moving subway car. Too bad, then, that the game is so short. Thankfully, however, there's a slew of time trials to complete once the main game is over, and the additional difficulty settings add considerable challenge on a second or third pass through the game. Still, despite its short length and substandard storytelling, I can easily recommend the game on the strength of its more visceral moments.