Faith will fuck you up.
I am not really sure how to approach a review of Mirrors Edge, because it is so different one really doesn't have a basis for comparison. Based on that, I guess I could start by saying that
Mirrors Edge is a groundbreaking game. Based in a dystopian future, like every other game nowadays, you are a elite private courier, or as the game calls it, a runner. In this city, all electronic communications are monitored and the city is under constant video surveillance. The only way to get a secure message through is hand delivering written letters to and fro all the while evading innumerable police. You play Faith, one of the runners.
The plot starts from there and ramps up very quickly, none of which I will spoil here.
The game is set in a first person perspective without deviation, and does not use pre-rendered cut scenes outside of loading between chapters. This fact has a profound impact on the way the game is played and experienced. Mirrors Edge is the first game to successfully distort the players perception of their own body to the point where you no longer feel like you are controlling some floating torso with a gun. You are a human being. And like all humans you need to look where you are going.
To give a very concrete example: the height of your jump is attenuated based on where you are
trying to go. Need to jump forward? Look forward. Need to jump up? Look up. This sounds very natural and obvious, but no game has really done this before. Taking this even further: where you are looking even effects the audio experience. During the games many in-game cut scenes, Faith's head will look in several different directions while someone is talking and the volume and location of the sound adjusts based on that. If you have surround sound, the effect is quite astounding. The game is filled with little details like this, and at no time is the effect broken. While the whole look thing sounds like it would be very frustrating to adapt to and control, it was completely natural after the first bit of training.
Graphically, the game is stunning. The entire city is before you at all times, the draw distance is seemingly infinite. Look off a building and you will see cars moving, police walking, trains moving, etc. You can tell that they didn't make too much stuff to actually put in the game. Every fence is the same, every pipe is the same (but may not be the same size), every A/C unit is the same, etc. While this may seem like a drawback, it only re-enforced the idea of the top to bottom control, the uncompromising conformity of the entire city.
Color comes and goes with entire buildings. Go into a green building, the entire building is based around green; all the chairs, the paint the doors, everything is green. Once again, this may seem to be a drawback but it serves a very important purpose. Things that you can interact with, jump off, swing from, or crash through turn red when you see them. This is the games way of telling you where to go when you are dropped on a rooftop and are not sure where to go. That combined with the hint button, the game keeps you moving in the right direction at all times. However, that isn't to say that you cannot use your own ingenuity to come up with a faster route on your own. In fact, during many chases and escape sequences, you are told where you have to go, but not too much else, which gives a certain physical challenge puzzle element to the game.
Controls are simplistic and intuitive. One button controls all upward vertical actions and another controls all downward vertical actions. Another controls attacking, with a gun or not. There is a quick turn around button, a button to pickup, disarm, and discard weapons, the hint button, an action button, and a reaction time button (which I never used once). You are trained in all of the actions that you can do, right from the get go and you are expected to put them together yourself to make your way through the game. Awesome.
Fighting is tough. But it should be. You are a 150 pound girl with no body armor that has to take down SWAT Team-esque cops. You are quite the fighter, and can disarm any foe if they try to hit you with their weapon, but when you are around five bad guys, by the time you disarm the cop, you usually no longer have a lead deficiency. Faith is not the best shot, but I always go for the easy win first (the weakest cop with the least armor and weakest weapon), then use his gun to kill the next most powerful guy, and continue until they are all dead. Thankfully, you recover health if you hide and avoid damage for a while a la Gears of War, because you will be shot excessively during your first run through the game. Oh, and don't expect to be able to run along walls carrying a assault rifle either, your movement is impeded in relation to how big of a gun you are carrying.
There are bonuses to the game including searching for the runner packages hidden throughout the game and the time trial courses to run through, but the games single player campaign is the only real reason to own it.
All of this amounts to a video game experience that doesn't really have an equal.
It is an orange among apples. It stands as one of the biggest achievements in game design this generation and deserves any accolades it receives.
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