Mirror's Edge Preview

There is nothing more refreshing than seeing a risk taken with a game. In the case of Mirror’s Edge for EA and DICE, that edge is a combination of genres and art styles to create a game that is not quite a platformer, not quite a first-person shooter, but still immerse the players in a wild ride of both with adventure and mystery underscoring the whole concept.

If there is any failing, though, it lays in the controls that seem to not read quite right at key times. Why is this important in a preview? Because EA sent the same disk for both preview and review, so unless something radical has changed between the version received and the final retail burn, what was seen in this disk is what players will be seeing when they pick up the PS3 version of the game. However, for those who can get beyond the finicky controls – and much of this is merely timing efforts coupled with reflexive control management – the game sparkles with some solid elements that are certain to keep players entertained, whether in the story mode, or in racing.

Mirror’s Edge is a futuristic tale where big government has become overwhelmingly oppressive government. People are watched constantly, the police (known as The Blues) are everywhere and crack down on the least bit of dissent. Free speech is gone. Sure, there are those who hold on to that right, but generally, they work in an underground manner. Part of that underground are the Runners, a group of highly trained, semi-acrobatic men and women who could teach Spider-man a thing or two about working across the rooftops of the city.

As just mentioned, the game takes place in a city and it is a world that the dev team has really brought to life with sound. You will hear all the sounds one would normally hear from a city, but in this case, the city is well below the game’s playground.

There are three difficulty levels, and these truly factor in to the way the game plays out. On both easy and normal, your path across the skylight of the city is marked with red objects – doors, beams, pipes, launching platforms, et cetera. Easy tones down the combat a bit. Hard, however, removes the red and you have to figure it out for yourself.

As the game opens in the story mode, Faith – the central character – spends some time in a training course. She is just coming back from a fall that sidelined her for a while and now she has to show she is ready for action. What this amounts to is a tutorial that explains the control scheme. Too much, though, is tied to the L1 button. This is the primary button for many actions, whether launching Faith across great chasm (jump), wall-running, or grabbing objects while in the middle of a jump. But as mentioned, it is all about timing – in much the same way as some of the early Lara Croft games required pinpoint timing to jump and land on precarious areas of the game.

Using a combination of live action from Faith’s perspective and stylized art-driven cut scenes, Faith is summoned to a scene to find her sister – a Blue – in the office of a dead guy. The deceased was a lawyer running for mayor. Faith’s sister entered the office when the guy was alive, was knocked unconscious by someone, and when she came to, the mayoral candidate was dead with a bullet wound to the head. Faith’s sister believes her gun was used in commission of the crime. Faith grabs a piece of paper that may hold a clue just as SWAT and other Blues show up. Her sister is a Blue and Faith is a runner – guess who the prime suspect is?

The world of Mirror’s Edge is pretty stark, with the live action seemingly blanched to an almost uniform whiteness that emphasizes the muted pastel shadows and allows the red pathways to really jump out. But even though the pathways are clear, it doesn’t mean you will move along them effortlessly. If you have trouble grinding a rail in a Tony Hawk title, this game will present some challenges – even though the SIXAXIS controller does come into play for balancing and rolls.

Mirror’s Edge is a game that is intriguing, challenging and lures players in with the puzzle elements (as in navigating around the world when you have to do things other than just run, jump, scale and swing), the combat and the storyline. This is a very nice melding of several genres into a game that should keep players entertained on several levels.

Look for Mirror’s Edge to release to retailers on Nov. 11 in the U.S.