|
Expert Member
|
A landmark release in terms of its innovation, but it fails to deliver consistent fun. - 8.0
Quote:
Mirror’s Edge is brave, very brave. As a new IP launching at Christmas – a time when the marketplace is swamped by blockbuster sequels to established franchises - it sits apart from the crowd. Like the gawky kid gripped by a comic book while everyone else plays kill the dill with the pill, Mirror’s Edge is ignorant to the events surrounding it. It is caught up in its own world, where little is old and a lot is new.
It’s a true sci-fi experience, with other-worldly music, a unique colour palette, a futuristic setting and unconventional Parkour-inspired gameplay. All this from a developer who, to date, has been content to carve out a niche in the online war genre through their Battlefield series. This is something new, something fresh and it cannot be ignored. But at the end of the day, is it any fun?
Certainly the style of the narrative is unlikely to be everyone’s cup of tea. Told in part as comic-like cartoon animations high on style and minimal on activity and also as in-game cut-scenes, it tells the story of Faith. In a futuristic utopian society, a Big Brother-on-Crack government maintains low crime and peace though intense security measures and complete lack of citizen privacy.
Those unwilling to live in such a world are scraped to its edge where they look to fight back. With traditional communication methods under high scrutiny, messages are passed between these fringe posses through illegal human runners with talents in parkour – the running ‘sport’ made famous in Madonna’s Jump video clip. As Faith, you are one of these runners and you get caught up in a political shit-storm when your sister is framed for the murder of a politician hoping to bring an end to the Big Brother mentality.
It’s a pretty cool premise, but is perhaps a little too subtly told. It has the flavour of a cult classic – think Solaris and Aeon Flux – rather than something that’ll slam you back into your seat and barely give you time to blink, a la Independence Day or Total Recall.
Given the urgency of the gameplay, we’d have liked to have seen that carried across into the telling of the story, and the mid-chapter comic narrative seems out of the place in that respect. It’s not bad, but as a design decision it will prove less charming to the broader audience than cult enthusiasts, and it isn’t helped by an underwhelming end game. But it has other means of captivate you….
‘Immersion’ is the big buzz word of the next-generation and we’re seeing rapid evolution and innovation in the way developers are going about completely submerging gamers in their experiences. From HUDless gameplay in King Kong and Gears of War’s crouched run, we’ve gone through the likes of SKATE’s analogue controls and FIFA’s Be a Pro mode though to the “head cam” in more recent efforts like Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty: World at War. Gone are the days of no hands, no feet and no sense of bodyweight. In the next-generation wide-screen TVs, HD resolutions and surround-sound setups are facilitating experiences much more visceral and engaging than anything possible previously.
Mirror’s Edge is all about immersion and takes it to another level altogether. More than just “head cam” and certainly more than scripted user point-of-view cinematics, Mirror’s Edge revolutionises the sense of movement and momentum in a character. With a perspective that incorporates peripheral vision and that never exits the body to facilitate a gameplay mechanic like using cover or to allow for complex movements like commando rolls and flying karate kicks, Mirror’s Edge is the real deal when it comes to the immersive experience.
To add complexity to this approach, the game is not an FPS: it is an FPP – First-Person Platformer. It is in fact more akin to the level navigation puzzles of Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. So if you can imagine the complex gymnastic sections of those games played out from the first-person perspective then you’ll know just how ahead of the game Mirror’s Edge is in its ambition. After seeing the potential in Digital Illusions’ vision for platform gaming, suddenly comparative third-person games like the ones mentioned above feel old-school. Tis’ a shame then that DICE has only got the idea half right.
What it has got very right is getting the perspective, controls and movements to work in unison. Be it wall-runs, commando rolls, aerial kicks, weapon disarming manoeuvres or a wall-run into an aerial kick landing with a commando roll up to a disarming manoeuvre you’re constantly in the head of Faith. It sounds difficult and those with a weak tolerance for vertigo may suffer from a bit of ‘Descent syndrome’ early on, but the truth of the matter is that the controls are wonderfully conceived and prove quiet intuitive to master. Once you have got your mind around being aware of Faith’s momentum and the way her body moves – such as suddenly curling into a ball and flipping into a roll, displaying a whirl of skyscrapers and objects around her cute little feet – are visualised it’s truly invigorating.
What all this immersion acts to drive is a sense of tension. The core loop – to use a Cliffy B-ism – of the gameplay finds Faith’s casual monkey-climb from point A to point B across the tops of the city’s skyscrapers disturbed by some policemen, which suddenly throws the action into a chase. Here the game is dying to be as cool as Half-Life 2, with you running at full pace and making calculations on the fly that lead you naturally and fluidly in the right direction as you tap into all your character’s skills to leap off walls, volley objects, slide under barbed-wire, swing off flag poles, kick people in the head and so forth. Often you cannot even see who is chasing you, with just the sounds of their angry voices and the constant peppering of bullets at your ankles moving you in the right direction.
When Mirror’s Edge gets it right and the level design does click properly the game zeroes in on the genius of Valve – who achieved the suspense of a fluid chase consistently through Half-Life 2 – and becomes ridiculously awesome. The rad parkour moves, the perspective, the pigs on your tail – it all gels into heart-pounding, exhilarating gaming. There are some great sequences too: one early example has you go from the top of a skyscraper all the way down to street level, along a road and into the subway before heading back up again all in the one chase. Later on you’ll dodge trains, and slide down waterfalls in sewers and more.
Unfortunately these moments are rare. Digital Illusions is awesome, but it ain’t got nuthin’ on Valve it would seem… not yet anyway.
The gameplay struggles to remain fluid for more than a few minutes at a time and with a very forgiving checkpoint system, the action descends into trial and error gaming on way too many occasions. You bust through a door onto a roof-top with half the city on your back, helicopters zeroing in and everyone yelling at you. You panic, head the wrong way and die. You do it a second time, head the wrong way and die. The third time you get it right and move on: not all the time, but too often this is how it plays out and that just isn’t cool.
It needed to be like Half-Life 2, where the way you head always happens to be the right way, even though you feel like you made a conscious choice as that is far more rewarding. The need to add a ‘head in this direction’ button and a pointless bullet-time gimmick perhaps reveal DICE’s own frustration in not being able to make it all stick. There’s such a fine line between getting this type of gameplay to work, or not work… you only have to be seconds out with the action’s pacing.
And worse still, instead of you getting more knowledgeable and reactionary to the way the world unfolds as you go along and better at helping things become fluid, you simply become more lost and more frustrated as identifying climbable objects (which glow bright red) becomes more difficult. There are simply too many “why the **** did I just die?” moments. And when that happens two or three times on the same puzzle you quickly begin hating yourself and looking for a sharp razer and some nine inch nails.
This is undoubtedly the game’s core flaw. Some will find it frustrating to the point that the whole thing becomes a chore rather than a fun experience, especially those who found the combat of games like Uncharted far more appealing than the level navigation. Make no mistake; your weapon in this game is your jump button, not your fire button. Others will lament this weakness in the gameplay, but still enjoy working out the puzzles and making ‘em stick. Like we said, when it hits the mark, Mirror’s Edge is awesome. You just wish there was a greatest hits package for half the price.
The game looks good. Obviously most of the effort has gone into the perspective and animations of Faith, but by following a theme of a dry and passionless metropolis given life and vibrancy by our colourful lead, DICE has created a unique world. Bright whites outside, futuristic ‘The Island’ style interiors and constant glimpses into futuristic ways of life offer enough to keep ‘purveyors of the Sci-fi channel’ constantly aroused. The city feels big, imposing and alive, especially when viewed from inside buildings and out of windows. Minimalist in nature and plastic by design, the city isn’t about to recall Condemned or Gears of War, but that is exactly the point.
That said we would have liked to have seen this game play out in DICE’s Frostbite Engine rather than tired old version 1 of Unreal Engine 3 (we did ask DICE why this was the case: apparently Mirror’s Edge was in development for three years, well before Frostbite was complete). Gaming has moved on and sometimes the cracks show. We also experienced some pretty intense screen-tears with the review code, but have been promised the issue has been resolved in the final build, a claim backed-up by the recently released demo.
Particularly worthy of praise is the game’s soundscape. Say what you will about EA’s moral standards, but its games unanimously wield awesome quality of sound and the Mirror’s Edge experience doesn’t break the mould. On those rare moments when you are quietly strolling around, the city buzzes about you in a way that recalls GTA IV – without the crime. While at other times there’s a Deus Ex/Half-Life/Demolition Man futuristic propaganda system filling you in on the greater city activities. The score is less memorable, but fits well enough with the style.
It’s a shame the package isn’t rounded out with a multiplayer mode. Racing a friend through the city would have been damn cool, like a human version of Race Driver. It would have been unique and they could have allowed for combat and argy bargy as two or more users scurry to a destination. At the very least a leaderboard system that tracked times across each action-sequence – similar to the way Burnout Paradise records times between traffic lights - would have inspired greater replayability.
Ultimately though, Mirror’s Edge is a first-generation attempt at a whole new frontier of platform gaming. Digital Illusions has made revolutionary inroads on perspective and the relationship it shares with movement and combat, but simply couldn’t build the levels to allow it to unfold in a consistently engaging way. It deserves to be seen, played and experienced by any discerning gamer with an interest in the progression of the industry, but is unlikely to resonate with the majority of consumers. We hope in all honesty that EA persevere with the planned trilogy and give DICE the time to perfect the level design and pacing for the next iteration, as many of the greatest advancements in culture only gain resonance in retrospect of what they inspired.
Once you have had a chance to look at this game, let us know if you think it should make our legendary list of the Best Games to Play Stoned.
|
|
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Linear Mode
