Has anyone here tried Mirror's Edge?

[TheMuffinKing]

Has anyone here tried Mirror's Edge?

If so what are your impressions of the game?

Is it worth the cash, or should it be relegated to rental hell?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I tried it briefly. It seems kind of neat, I guess, in a Descent sort of way.

Beyond that, nothing amazing. I wouldn't shell out $60 for it.

[Ford Prefect]

Well, I really enjoyed it. What is most striking about it is the almost uniformly excellent art design (The cargo ship and the Pirandell-Krueger building are pretty ordinary, really), as well as how immersive it can be. If you get into it, you can get really into it. It's pretty intuitive, as well, and I had no trouble picking up the controls, though the system is deep enough that there is some skill involved in stringing together more complex 'combos'. The story is interesting enough, and I rather enjoyed thinking about its themes of freedom and danger versus security and opression. I find the setting strangely compelling, and would have enjoyed some more stuff about being an information courier. It's also got some pretty sweet music.

It's not all roses. It's short; if you've played The Darkness, I'd say they'd have a similar length. Some of the combat is iffy as well, in particular the timing for disarms. Though most of the disarms look rather cool, some of them are pretty difficult to get right, such as enemies with submachine guns, which I can never seem to get right, even in slow motion. On top of that, combat with pursuit cops is something of a process of trial and error/frustration. Faith doesn't take much in the way of damage (which is fine, really), but the callous way with which you get countered can kill you really quickly. The game is very linear, as well. This doesn't bother me at all, but given the intuitive and fun movement, I'd have liked some more oppurtunities to use it outside of the 'track' of the missions. The puzzles and set pieces are, for the most part, engaging and at times spectacular, and I will undoubtedly play them to death for fun in my spare time, but it seems a bit of a shame that you can't really go completely nuts with parkour. It's pretty tightly paced though. There's also a minor quibble in how the cutscenes done with cel animation are considerably inferior to the actual game itself. Given how pretty it is, I don't seen why they didn't use the engine for the cutscenes.

In all, I'm glad I bought it. It's one of the better games I've played recently (though it's no Gears of War 2). It does basically everything I expected it to do, and I haven't noticed any gamebreaking bugs.

where is my STRAK to put me in perspective

[Stark]

If you're after a run-in-a-straight-line simulator, it's for you.

Every time you stop and see all the area you can't get to, you'll think 'wow, where's Assassin's Creed?' Just rent it.

[CaptHawkeye]

It's this year's Crysis to me. It's stupid lameass shit with a linear path through every level. I felt like straying a few feat from the intended course would fail my mission. That's not a game, it's an interactive movie. Unfortunantly, you can't even give it points for being an interactive movie, because you pretty much never learn anything about the characters or world. (Not like you'd want to.) So what is it then? Someone's 3D Studio Max project?

Stark's right, Assassin's Creed just blows it out of the water.

[Joviwan]

I'm enjoying the game so far, if for no other reason than I really enjoy Parkour (I've got a friend that does it, so my appreciation is a little biased), but everyone's complaints are largely correct, in my opinion. The game couldn't be more on rails if they laid down a track and made your character shout "choo choo!"

Considering the nature of what Parkour is, I find this design decision a little disingenuous, but at the end of the day, I'm still enjoying the game. Worth at least a rental.

Also, the animated cutscenes are absolutely hideous.

[Jade Falcon]

I played the demo and it looked nice, but honestly it didn't grab me.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Actually, I noticed there are a lot of places where there's multiple smooth paths to go through and for much of the game you can brute-force your way with falls and careful climbing instead of all the smooth parkour.

If you just meant that you have to follow a general, but tight, course from A to B rather than being able to go any way you want, well, yes. The game isn't wide open at all. If you're looking for something more than a modern version of a side-scrolling platformer, this isn't worth a purchase.

As for my impression of the game, well, basically everything Ford said, but add on a complaint about the occasions where the game forces you to beat people up rather than avoid them. I want my run-in-a-straight-line simulator, not this clumsy-first-person-melee-combat simulator!

[DPDarkPrimus]

There are many, many ways to get from point A to point B in the game - the time trials and speed runs will demonstrate this quite clearly, as the routes you are used to taking will get you really crap scores on those.

The game is a great platformer, which means it's oftentimes frustrating but feels great when you figure it out. Unfortunately, the combat is not so great, and there are sections where you're all but forced to fight (if you haven't played it before and don't know where to go, you can't get there in time without fighting, anyway).

The game isn't perfect, but I have to applaud it for what it does, because it's really done something new and if they can iron out the kinks for the inevitable sequel it could be even betters.

If you're not into replaying levels to get better scores and doing time trials, the game probably won't have enough for you at full price. But I'd definitely recommend it when it drops to $30, if nothing else.

[DarkSilver]

PErsonally, I thought this game would have been better with a Third Person Camera, instead of First Person. It would make the combat so much smoother, and you'd actually get to see the parkour moves the character is suppossed to be making.

There's certain places which will annoy the ever loving shit out of you, because unless you take out every single god damn cop, you will die in the middle of trying to do a vault or jump nearly every single time.

The best way to experience this game is in Time Trials. The Single Player Campaign is a nice intro...but the Time Trials is the meat of this game. And even then it could have been better as a third person game than first person.

It's a renter, I ended up trading the game in, but I'll probably reget it out of the bargin bin when it hits there. Though I do love the awesome Runners Bag I got for preordering it....

[DPDarkPrimus]

PErsonally, I thought this game would have been better with a Third Person Camera, instead of First Person. It would make the combat so much smoother, and you'd actually get to see the parkour moves the character is suppossed to be making.

And how would this distinguish the game from all the other third-person platformers out there? The entire point of the game was to be a first-person platformer.