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Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360)
Jan. 30th, 2009 10:51 amThe ending of Mirror’s Edge is great. The camera pulls out from the first-person POV you’ve spent the game in to show the city you’re fighting for, the best in-game song I’ve heard since Late Goodbye takes you to the credits, and you genuinely feel like you’ve played a good game. It’s the rest of the game that makes you feel like you’re playing a frustrating, cliché-ridden mess.
Now, the chief gimmick of Mirror’s Edge is that it’s a platformer played like an FPS. Now, given how much FPS fans hate jumping puzzles, how control pads and mouselook aren’t the best bedfellows, and how the POV means you can’t accurately gauge distances… you’d think the controls would take a page from PoP and be a little forgiving. Nope! You’ll never say “But I made that jump!” so many times.
And the combat system is just totally fuxxor. When you grab a gun, the targeting is loose as hell. It’s a console game, why isn’t there any autoaim? You're given these disarms which work by pressing Y when the enemy swings at you and their weapon turns red, but the animations are repetitive (only one per weapon) and it seems like guesswork whether it works or not. If you want to make a game about running away from baddies and jumping off rooftops, MAKE THAT GAME, don't include a half-assed combat system.
The other day, I read someone from the production of ME say that they saw ME as the first in a trilogy. Really? You have enough story for three games? Cuz from where I’m standing, you barely have enough story for one. TO give you an instant of the lazy, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-placeholder plotting, Faith is breaking into a corporate HQ to look for an assassin. She just so happens to see the assassin, in her distinctive assassin outfit that she has no reason to be wearing, on a livefeed at the docks. Why does this company have a TV tuned to the docks? What is the assassin doing there? ZZZZZ I don’t know, lol.
And it’s just cheating that characters refer to the assassin as male when they know she’s not. Genderfuckery or transparently obvious attempt at a red herring? Tough call.
Everything about the story is obnoxiously generic. Faith is a 100% personality-free tough chica heroine. At least Lara Croft has an accent. Faith just has a stupid tattoo. As for everyone else, they stepped right out of Central Casting. There’s your mentor, I wonder if he’ll die to spur you on. Hey, it’s your best friend, bet she’s not secretly evil. Oh, your only remaining family, no way she’s getting kidnapped. How can I care about any of these people when there’s nothing to care about?
As for the story, brace yourselves, people, we’re in for deep hurting. It’s one of those near futures near enough for all the cops to be wearing stormtrooper armor. The government has become a fascist surveillance state because… they got bored? I guess it’s supposed to be a shot at Bush, so we shouldn’t care that it doesn’t fit into a narrative. Ooh, edgy! I’m taking a point off just for trend-whoring.
Anyway, the baddies have painted the city in bright primary colors—ah, they’re the Gay Mafia, it all makes sense now—and the good guys see that red door and want to paint it black, so they hire Runners to smuggle documents and color samples across rooftops.
Now, let’s go back to the city becoming Fascism R Us. Even aside from a “topical” 9/11 analogy, there are lots of ways you could sell it. There’s a new religion or political philosophy sweeping the world, intimidating the ruling class. A depression has resulted in a large underclass, with a correspondingly large panic. Neo-leprosy is destroying the world, leading people to sacrifice freedoms for safety from the plague. (And, of course, the government could be exaggerating or exuberating any of these.) Any one of those could’ve offered myriad opportunities, so naturally the entire business is tossed aside for the Gay Mafia. Even Faith being a courier for revolutionaries and the underworld never comes up: the entire game is about freeing her sister. She could’ve been a butcher who likes to save on busfare for all it matters.
Oh, and when a messianic mayoral candidate is assassinated (probably for saying Barbra Streisand can’t act), what’re the odds that the incumbent mayor of a fascist government is responsible? Treating that as a game-ending reveal is actually insulting to my intelligence. What's worst is that the Big Bad is the MAYOR. Of a CITY. What is this, Mega-City One? If you're that torn up about the Gay Mafia taking over, don't learn how to jump onto helicopters, just... fucking move to Chicago. There, you're done.
Now, there are parts where the game is good and you get wonderfully cinematic moments like running your ass off as bullets fly and glass shatters all around you, or ninjas chase you across the skyline. But they are flowers among weeds. For a game this short, it’s inexcusable that it feels so unpolished. Wait for the PC version to hit the bargain bin. You won’t be missing out on much.
Now, the chief gimmick of Mirror’s Edge is that it’s a platformer played like an FPS. Now, given how much FPS fans hate jumping puzzles, how control pads and mouselook aren’t the best bedfellows, and how the POV means you can’t accurately gauge distances… you’d think the controls would take a page from PoP and be a little forgiving. Nope! You’ll never say “But I made that jump!” so many times.
And the combat system is just totally fuxxor. When you grab a gun, the targeting is loose as hell. It’s a console game, why isn’t there any autoaim? You're given these disarms which work by pressing Y when the enemy swings at you and their weapon turns red, but the animations are repetitive (only one per weapon) and it seems like guesswork whether it works or not. If you want to make a game about running away from baddies and jumping off rooftops, MAKE THAT GAME, don't include a half-assed combat system.
The other day, I read someone from the production of ME say that they saw ME as the first in a trilogy. Really? You have enough story for three games? Cuz from where I’m standing, you barely have enough story for one. TO give you an instant of the lazy, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-placeholder plotting, Faith is breaking into a corporate HQ to look for an assassin. She just so happens to see the assassin, in her distinctive assassin outfit that she has no reason to be wearing, on a livefeed at the docks. Why does this company have a TV tuned to the docks? What is the assassin doing there? ZZZZZ I don’t know, lol.
And it’s just cheating that characters refer to the assassin as male when they know she’s not. Genderfuckery or transparently obvious attempt at a red herring? Tough call.
Everything about the story is obnoxiously generic. Faith is a 100% personality-free tough chica heroine. At least Lara Croft has an accent. Faith just has a stupid tattoo. As for everyone else, they stepped right out of Central Casting. There’s your mentor, I wonder if he’ll die to spur you on. Hey, it’s your best friend, bet she’s not secretly evil. Oh, your only remaining family, no way she’s getting kidnapped. How can I care about any of these people when there’s nothing to care about?
As for the story, brace yourselves, people, we’re in for deep hurting. It’s one of those near futures near enough for all the cops to be wearing stormtrooper armor. The government has become a fascist surveillance state because… they got bored? I guess it’s supposed to be a shot at Bush, so we shouldn’t care that it doesn’t fit into a narrative. Ooh, edgy! I’m taking a point off just for trend-whoring.
Anyway, the baddies have painted the city in bright primary colors—ah, they’re the Gay Mafia, it all makes sense now—and the good guys see that red door and want to paint it black, so they hire Runners to smuggle documents and color samples across rooftops.
Now, let’s go back to the city becoming Fascism R Us. Even aside from a “topical” 9/11 analogy, there are lots of ways you could sell it. There’s a new religion or political philosophy sweeping the world, intimidating the ruling class. A depression has resulted in a large underclass, with a correspondingly large panic. Neo-leprosy is destroying the world, leading people to sacrifice freedoms for safety from the plague. (And, of course, the government could be exaggerating or exuberating any of these.) Any one of those could’ve offered myriad opportunities, so naturally the entire business is tossed aside for the Gay Mafia. Even Faith being a courier for revolutionaries and the underworld never comes up: the entire game is about freeing her sister. She could’ve been a butcher who likes to save on busfare for all it matters.
Oh, and when a messianic mayoral candidate is assassinated (probably for saying Barbra Streisand can’t act), what’re the odds that the incumbent mayor of a fascist government is responsible? Treating that as a game-ending reveal is actually insulting to my intelligence. What's worst is that the Big Bad is the MAYOR. Of a CITY. What is this, Mega-City One? If you're that torn up about the Gay Mafia taking over, don't learn how to jump onto helicopters, just... fucking move to Chicago. There, you're done.
Now, there are parts where the game is good and you get wonderfully cinematic moments like running your ass off as bullets fly and glass shatters all around you, or ninjas chase you across the skyline. But they are flowers among weeds. For a game this short, it’s inexcusable that it feels so unpolished. Wait for the PC version to hit the bargain bin. You won’t be missing out on much.
