Mirror's Edge is a hot new IP from EA that may have consistently quoting the Matrix as some broken mantra to get you through it's many obsticles. In this high flying, gun disarming, highspeed obstacle course of death, you'll notice that shooting is not the focus of the gameplay. You are encouraged to find ways around or intelligently through your opponents. Shooting is an option but not the games core experience.

Where the meat and potatoes of this game are is in the controls and the immersion of being in the shoes of main protagnist "Faith." First off it's important to know that Faith, unlike many FPS protaginist, has no powers or abilities. She's a human with physicallity and will die granted a long enough fall or about 2 shots from any gun. It's her ability to jump, get through obstacles, and dissarm her foes that is the emphasis in this game.  

This is a concept game. Even Metal Gear concept game when it was first conceived. Concept game, meaning - a game with an intentional restriction for the sake of creating a specific experience. If you're coming to this game expecting a bread and butter FPS you'll be dissapointed. This games primary emphasis is on running, flow-of-motion, and ultimately recreating that feeling you got when Trinity was being chased by an Agent in the first Matrix movie and expanding it.

    Now for the review - story. The story is told through interesting quasi-flash animations which does lend the cutscenes a unique look and feel to them. The story itself, however, is something that you've seen before if you've watched any 90's thrillers. It'll be passable to those who haven't watched any of those types of movies and it'll be "Ok where do I run now?" to those who guess the layout of the beaten path that this story follows.

Gameplay - this is what seperates Mirror's Edge from the pack. The emphasis on physical movement from a first person perspective is molds the gameplay. (360) Left Bumper is jump, vault, grab ledge, pull yourself up, run up or along the side walls. Left trigger is used for sliding and "action rolls" when falling from high distances. ."Y" is designated for disarms which are initiated by a timed button press when the gun flashes red. These are easily achieved at first but gradually become more difficult to perform with different enemy types that progressively appear as the story goes on. The animations for disarms are many and are pretty satisfying to execute - especially when you've been beaten to death a couple times. "X" is a temporary slowmotion command which can make for a freebee disarm or an annoying irreversable slow motion death. Right trigger is your punch-kick variations which can be used in conjunction with your jump, wallrun, and slide. Right trigger is also in charge of the firing mechanic which will be subject to much scrutiny. Everything else is implimented smoothly and effectively but this mechanic is what many people will squint at.

The game is all about flowing and the feel of the character movement. When shooting is brought into the equation the games feel changes entirely, as it was intended. Shooting is almost an odious chore that requires an enemy to be right in the dot crosshair to be killed by a shotgun at four feet away. Faith now moves, as intended, like a sloth in comparison with her usual speed and agility. This is all understandable as you're now adding approx. 25-60 pounds of gun to a 105 pound woman. Regardless of her physicallity she'll understandably become more sluggish when asked to perform her usual acrobatics. Furthermore, based on the training section, we're really given no inference that Faith is trained in how to fire guns - we know she knows how to disarm people with them and take guns apart. She's trained as a runner - not a shooter. However, this nod to realism does make shooting the decidedly less enjoyable aspect of the game.

Graphically the game has an interesting pallete for it's city. Extreme specular highlights grant impossibly detailed reflections of everything - giving the city that "utopian-pristine" feeling. The game looks clean. The color schemes interestingly lend thematic elements to the game. Like pearl white, reflective blacks and blues tend to have a kind of blank clean oppressive nature to them where as red is decidedly the "GO" color. Textures in tiles and bump mapping all load in realtime - there is however the occasional "level loading" message that appears from time to time which can interrupt at certain points but these points are really few and far between. 

Unlike most FPS's Faith's character model is ever present and making itself known is part of the immersion into her character. Her hands progressively volt higher as you increase speed, when you jump over a face you see her legs lift over the fence, when you climb a ladder or ledge her forearm and hands are ever present lending personallity to you efficiency or your foul-ups. Vision blurs at the sides when you increase speed or fall from high enough distances. Vertigo can actually effect Faith's vision when being exposed to a sudden and unexcpected high altitudes. Light fades from the screen as Faith falls into the shadow of a building if you fall off. The game has a definite graphical style to it and faiths character animations are second-to-none in the realm of FPS. They're just really good.

In the sound department we're treated to a great many things - Faith's footsteps increasing and slowing in tempo with your individual movements. Faith's varying grunts add to the immersion factor. Scuffing of shoes from certain high altitude impacts make apearences. Fading and muffling sounds when near death. Ambient street noise becoming insanely loud and oppressive with wind whipping past your ears when you fall off a building and a great wet snapping sound when you hit the ground is also an incentive not to die. And let's not forget the bullets - oh crap the bullets.  The sounds of bullets whipping past you with the "dab'll do ya" death ratio will, while adding a layer of urgency, spur you into running your ass off. Having 50 calibur bullets whipping past your running pants, tank top, protected body will have you running for damn life. On a side note you'll have Merc feeding you intel through an ear piece about a possible blockade or a prefered route to take. Which really is ineffectual because the as game may provide you with many ways to go about going down a single path - there usually is infact a single path.

Extras - The game follows a linear story-line as opposed to a sandbox style of world. You can go through the story, complete it at your chosen difficulty and go back via chapter select. Hard is an unlockable that you have to beat the game to unlock. You can race against yourself in the many time trials which add a single player Midnight Club style time trial element to the mix. Plus you can race your ghost - which is always interesting. You can go through the previous chapters of the story through speedrun and beat it under a certain time which at their base levels are pretty challenging. You can also race the times of friends or the "world's best" via the E.A. server. These can add to your replay value if beating your time and the times of friends has some apeal to you.

Overall - The Mirrors Edge team set out to make a unique and entertaining experience with flowing ease of movement and hand to hand combat with a hightened sense of being in the shoes of main character, Faith. This they achieved, but because of the shooting mechanics the game should probably be more regarded as a first person action platformer with guns in it - as opposed to a first person shooter. In this light Mirror's Edge is a most respectable first entry into the forray and breaks new ground for future incarnations to follow. An original title in spirit and form - Mirror's Edge is well worth a playthrough.
Good luck and remember - "There is no spoon."

- Josh