If you don’t know what Mirror’s Edge is, watch the trailers for the game. The exhilaration that you feel watching it is something that can’t be perfectly described in words. The feeling of jumping between large gaps to only cling to a pipe makes your heart skip a beat. Well late last week, Electronic Arts released the playable demo of Mirror’s Edge on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network and finally everyone can get hands on with the unique first person action game.
It’s exciting to play demos like these before the game comes out. Games that look and feel so refreshing and innovative are some of the best experiences that you can achieve as a game developer and a gamer. Mirror’s Edge takes the acrobatic styles like Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider and twists it with speedy gameplay, stylish combat and puts it in a first person perspective. When you boot up the demo, you’re treated to an extreme slick menu followed by a beautiful animated opening. The question is, after all the spine tingling trailers, after all the all the stunning audio and visuals, do gamers have what it takes to control a game like this?
Though most gamers can relate Mirror’s Edge to games like Prince of Persia, it actually feels like it spiritually runs parallel to Sonic the Hedgehog. It primarily consists of trial and error gameplay mixed with a ton of speed and dexterity, something Sonic fans have understood with since the original hit nearly two decades ago. When you first play through the demo, you probably feel like you cannot grasp the speed, the coordination and the fun the game is supposed to feel. Tragically, that is exactly what the newer three dimensional Sonic games have been dealing with over the last few years. You will have to learn how to get past obstacles one at a time by failing and dying, which for some people, can feel like work than fun. You’ll feel like a mess when missing a jump or failing to disarm a guy correctly and dying only to try it again until you do it right. Though if you run the demo a second time, in all likelihood you should be guaranteed to at least cut the time it took the first run-through in half. Playing the demo after that first time captures what Mirror’s Edge tries to be, but the surprise and suspense that it wants you to feel is worn off due to memorization of the route.
The controls help damper the experience as well. After playing the demo on the Xbox 360, it’s perfectly understandable that it feels more at home on a PlayStation 3. The game’s platforming is based on the 360’s left trigger and bumper, which is not at all comfortable compared to the DualShock’s L1 and L2 (it can be switched to the right, but the results are the same). It ends of feeling very unintuitive can lead to needless deaths or screw ups. The lack of custom mapping the controls was a foolish decision, since some players might have liked using the A and X buttons instead of using the left bumper/trigger.
Mirror’s Edge is watching poetry in motion, but only if you’re able to string along the visual rhyme scheme. Though multiple runs grasp the concept better, it sacrifices the heart-stopping action that the game was meant to initially deliver. Though this is a short demo and the game might deliver on its promises with later levels, the controls mixed with annoying hit or miss trials make Mirror’s Edge lose its edge.
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