Xbox 360
Seems like these days everyone's doing parkour, from James Bond and Jason Bourne to the kids in Hunter's Square, with varying levels of success. Mirror's Edge from EA's Dice Studio in Sweden is the first game to take a decent crack at a first person free-running title, and arrives amid no small amount of fanfare, having picked up a number of awards at this year's E3.
As Faith, a "Runner" for an elicit courier service that uses the rooftops of the city as its information conduit, the skyline is your playground. The story mode takes you through the (wafer thin) plot in around 8-10 hours, freeing up speed run options for each of the nine chapters. Time trial mode gives you a selection of the locations visited in the game and tasks you with hitting a number of check points as fast as possible.
The basic controls are just that—basic. One button to jump, one to crouch, one to attack and one to look directly behind you. However, when combined with momentum, position and the cityscape itself, these simple options open up a surprising array of balletic moves. Faith jumps, swings and climbs with the grace of a Persian Prince, and all the while never breaking the immersive first person perspective. Whilst combat is discouraged, Faith is not entirely helpless. Enemies can be disarmed with a well timed attack (and their guns used until they run out of bullets) and Faith is no slouch at hand-to-hand, with most enemies going down after four or five hits.
Mirror's Edge is very much a game of two halves, both of which work relatively well in their own right. First, there's the path-finding puzzle element involved in getting Faith from A to B across the rooftops without plummeting to a very messy death. In its purest form in the time trials section this is a joy, and the experience of finding a new route and then nailing it is an awesome feeling of accomplishment.
Secondly there's the high adrenaline, fast action, flight from the cops (or "blues" as the game would have you believe) as you run desperately for a safe place to hide. When done well these sections can be genuinely panic inducing, and after finally making it to safety you find yourself catching your breath along with Faith.
Where the game breaks down horribly however, is where these two disparate sides of the game are thrown together. It's hard to work out which platform you should be trying to scale whilst being drilled with automatic weapons fire. And here frustration is further heightened by erratic platforming, with some ledges that seem apt, actually being impossible to use.
On top of this the combat system is designed to make players want to choose the flight over fight but this is frustrated by level design that occasionally leaves no option but to engage. Some enemies are brutally strong, along with some of your disarming moves taking far too long and as such, leaving you horribly exposed.
At its best, Mirror's Edge is a contender for one of the best games of the year, but at its worst it's poorly designed and frustrating beyond all reason. If DICE can manage to iron out the creases and tweak the gameplay, then a sequel could be something really very special indeed.