Ballistics Report

Pros

Game Design: DICE has really stepped outside their element with Mirror’s Edge, as they have created a game based on a truly original concept, free running, and then based it in a beautifully rendered world that is nowhere as clean as you are lead to believe. The city’s glittering white image is a stark contrast to a majority of action games who seem to think that the color spectrum consists of only browns and grays.

Parkour: When you are allowed to just move as quickly as possible across the maps, you can really get into a nice rhythm that becomes incredibly rewarding if you can get the timing just right. When an upcoming object turns bright red, you begin to feel a real sense of accomplishment when you catapult yourself off it at a blazing speed and stick the landing just perfectly.

Time Trial Mode: Once you’ve completed the game, which shouldn’t take very long at all, you can easily extend your value by trying to complete levels in the shortest amount of time possible. Once you’ve learned all the little shortcuts throughout each level, you really challenge yourself to get the best possible time.

Cons

Length: We’ve actually played through Mirror’s Edge twice, with the first time being the longest and it honestly took us no more than 6 hours from start to finish.

Complex Controls: After your tenth time attempting to jump from one wall to another using the quick turnaround button, you end up so frustrated that you pretty much want to say it can’t be done. Or worse, that it can be, but it’s not worth the effort since it ruins almost the entire momentum you had going previously. You end up pretty much just using jump, crouch and punch throughout almost the entire game, making the other buttons feel useless.

Clunky Combat: While it’s extremely satisfying to lunge kick into a cop, then disarm him a second later, getting to that level of comfort with the controls takes so long, you’ll be near the end of the game when it happens. Gun combat feels a bit off as well and the inability to reload your weapon makes you want to avoid the whole thing altogether. Which would be fine, except for those pesky…

Forced Combat Sections: When an action game suddenly requires you to go stealthy, we want to find the developers and force feed them the sparkly bits of CD we just ran through a shredder. Well, it goes both ways my friends. If you design a game around stealth, or action, or free running, you are better off letting your game do what it does best. It doesn’t make sense to try to change things up by forcing nonsensical scenarios where your character does actions that pretty much go against what they just spent the better half of the game doing.