This game just came out of the blue.  DICE has always been known for its first person shooters, one notably the battlefield series where Battlefield 2 was one of my favorite.  They then announced that they will be making a Parkour game.  For those of you who don’t know what Parkour is you can read it up here.  They were then asked if this would be a third person action game which they firmly denied.  Which got me thinking, an action game based on moving through the environment as fast as you can in first person.  I was ready to be impressed

To an extent I was impressed.  I found the game to be quite refreshing and very satisfying.  DICE has gone out of their way by creating a game that is no where near their usual interest.  Which I do commend them for doing.  However there are some flaws which doesn’t make this game a home-run.

First lets talk about the pros.  The whole object of Mirror’s Edge is to get through an environment as fast as you can.  Which is what I found to be the most enjoyable.  I never felt myself stopping and looking around to find the exit.   Mainly because of runners vision which turns certain objects red in letting you know which way to go.  Running through the environment is quite satisfying because when you pull off some nice chain of moves it feels good.  You just keep going and going as fast as you can.  Through hurdling walls, sliding underneath bars, zip-lining on a rope, to wall-running,  the game feels very fun and fluid in motion.  Also you will fall, and I mean a lot.  You get punished quite severely if you don’t hit a jump, often resulting in death.  But the object is to try again and once you started nailing the combos you become better and you begin to enjoy the free running.

Now the cons.  There is combat in this game, and this is where Mirror’s Edge starts to loose its edge (haha see what I did there, no pun intended).  Since this game is in first person DICE did put in gun-play.  Which I’m afraid is quite terrible.  Using the guns are quite useless because I could hardly aim with them.  Being an fps fan my opinion is if you are going to put gun-play make it so I can pull off maybe a few head-shots.  Which DICE is very good as seen with their resume of great first person shooters.  I don’t understand how this one was very weak.   Another con is the combat.  Yes the game throws some bad guys at you to try and stop you.  This is fine in some cases because the game encourages you to runaway from them and to not engage them at all.  However there are sections in the game in which you cannot move to the next area until all the guards have been dispatched.  This was the worst part because I probably died 50 times trying to take these guys out or runaway from them (I can think of what part in particular where I just dropped the controller and walked away).  The game started to get very frustrating almost to the point where I did not want to play anymore.

In addition the story is not so hot.  It introduces some interesting elements about government control and how the runners are like the rebels.  However it doesn’t really expand on this element.  Also what is with the Esurance cut-scenes.  Yeah all the cut-scenes are done in an animated style (see any Esurance commercial for an example) which I thought was weird because there are some scenes which are done in first person.  I feel they should have kept it that way, more like a half-life style because the visuals look pretty good.

In terms of longevity I recommend you rent this one.  The single-player campaign is very short and there is nothing there to keep you entertained for a while.  If you are into a time-trial mode this game has it where you can clock your fastest time in a given section and put it up on a online leader-board.  In addition free DLC coming in the form of time-trail maps.  So if you really love doing time-trails this game maybe for you.  Other than that I don’t see any reason to own it, but however do check it out.  It is something very unique and DICE should be commended for trying something new.  From all the criticism the game has received I’m pretty certain that the sequel is going to be much better.

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