If you can excuse the lack of an amazing opening line, or an amazing title, I can begin. Mirror’s Edge is a first person platforming game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE), released for the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360, and the PC. Now when it was first being released people had some worry about the “first person” part of platforming, there was the obvious issue of not being able to see where in God’s name you’ll land when you jumped somewhere, and now that the game’s released we can take a look at if DICE managed to maneuver around this issue as well how the game itself turned out. So did DICE figure a way around not being able to see your feet and where you land? Yes, they did. How? Through smooth interactions with surroundings and a great lock-on feature for ledges and similar spaces. Of course you probably want to know more about graphics, gameplay, and all that jazz.

Graphics wise, the game is magnificent. The colours are vibrant and the cityscape is well designed, though like Bethesda, DICE likes to copy and paste some locations and change minor details. Character models are well developed and I have to admit Faith is pretty sexy. You’ll notice that there is cell-shading in cut-scenes and depending who you are you may like it or dislike it, it’s a preference of style. There are minor graphical glitches though, nothing extreme like see through doors or clipping, just some anti-aliasing issues that if you stress over, can ruin your experience.

Gameplay is where the game falls a bit short, around six hours short to be exact. It is understandable that the game is something different and its rare to get the perfect formula for a game type the first time around but there are some issues that need to be fixed for the proposed second Mirror’s Edge.

Controls – I can only speak on the 360 version of it, but it’s smooth, the consoles are mapped nicely so you won’t be button bashing just to perform a wall jump. LT for crouch, LB for jump, RB for punch/kick, and the obvious double analogs for movement and looking. There are uses for A, B, and Y, but you’ll mainly be running and jumping and crouching.

Combat – A.I. is dull and just stand there and shoots you (with poor accuracy I might add), but not so dull that if you run into a hiding spot they’ll think that you magically combusted out of sight. A.I. will hunt you down as long as you’re in their vicinity. Don’t be fooled though, this game is mainly platforming and has small combat sections in each level. Hand-to-hand combat is very fun, mostly because you can combine moves to utterly destroy enemies. Let’s say you have an enemy near a wall, well wall-run and kick him in the face. You can also disarm enemies with Y and the animation for that is pretty satisfying. The point is hand-to-hand combat is much more fun that the standard FPS style you can play in.

Platforming -The actions are responsive enough so that you can get a nice flow of moves going, but what the platforming really lacks is the breathe of new puzzles and challenges. Further down the line in the game you’ll find that jumps are pretty simple and the path is fairly obvious.

Replayability? Not much, even for six hours of gameplay. Mirror’s Edge is scripted so events happen the same way every time you play that level. What does change is how you want to get there, often there is more than one route you can take to get somewhere but why would you care? There are also collectible items (backpacks) you can find but it’s only something you’ll bother with if you’re obsessed with fully completing the game. When you’re done the story there are speed-runs of each level, and that is the online for Mirror’s Edge. Enjoy your trial runs.

Mirror’s Edge is a fun game, there’s no doubt to that. It doesn’t exactly live up to its hype but it doesn’t disappoint to the level of utter misery. You’ll get a guaranteed six hours of enjoyment and maybe a bit more if you love the game enough to do the speedruns and the collectibles but personally I don’t find it worthy of $60. Rent the game? Hell yes, buy it? If you got the cash to spare, sure.