Mirror's Edge

Mirrors edge is a first person, action-adventure and platforming game, developed by DICE (EA). The game is set in a futuristic dystopian society, which has people known as "runners" transporting messages whilst trying to evade the government. The game received mostly positive reviews and scored a META score of 81%.

The story, summarised in the above paragraph, is very short but is often lost amongst just trying to continue in the action that the game brings. The setting of the game is in an unnamed city which is seemingly pristine and has non-existant crime. However this is due to a completely totalitarian regime run by the government. You play Faith who is one of these "runners". The overall story is very much lost unless you pay very close attention to it, and so it is most definately not story driven.

The gameplay is very interesting. As you play a group of people known as runners you must travel through the city quickly and without detection, which means you must do this via free-running or parkour. This is an urban sport which involves quick travel across buildings through forms of acrobatics and such. This means that the game will be fast paced and keep you looking around the area for unique ways to progress through the level. Unfortunately the game is very narrow and there will be 2 ways to get on top of a building, as for the rest of the time you will have no choice but to follow the path they have set out for you.

The graphic style shown in this game, are incredibly strange, but suit the context of the story very nicely. The game uses very few colours (Mainly whites, oranges and blues) throughout the whole game and with the only variation on colours being red to highlight a ledge that you must jump up to, to continue the story. This graphic style makes the game very interesting, however, this game has no colour-blind support and so anyone who suffers from colour-blindness with colours such as red will not be able to understand where the game is requiring you to go.

Fun-factor within the game is the aspect of being a free-runner. This game gives you the thrills of jumping from building to building several stories in height, without having to suffer the glorious reality of realising that you don't have the body of an Olympian.

The final point is the replayability, this is what can make and break a good game. This game features no multiplayer features, which in my opinion can be a very big let down of any game. However this game does have a time trial mode. This has each level in the game, without the cutscenes and story areas, which times you when trying to complete the level in the fastest time possible, with online leadrboards. This is not multiplayer but it is fun to see how you compare against your friends on the same course, this can give the game a sense of an online community which a more traditional multiplayer system gives. They also use a conventional collectables system, which people may return to the singleplayer mode to gather all the collectables.

This game receives:

3/5 "Rentable"

The game is very interesting and incredibly fun, but once you have completed the game there is very little that persuades you to continue the game.