Mirror's Edge - When I first played the demo to this game I loved it. I fell in love with the first person free running and loved the how fluid the movement and controls were. Upon reading reviews and initial reactions of the full game, I was apprehensive about opening my shrink wrapped pre-ordered copy. Out of the gate the gaming world was relaying that the game fell far short of expectaitons. It was a frustrating and short trial and error trek through a very beautiful game with many flaws. After realizing I shouldn't let these people's reactions force me to return the game and I remembering I only spent $10 on it, I finally decided to tear it open.
During my first play session I went through the first three missions and had fun with it. I understood the frustrations and experienced the trial and error gameplay. I put it down for a bit and finally picked it up again this weekend. I burned through missions 4 to 9 and finished off the game. It is the only game I played (I had planned to try and make it through MGS 4) and it was the only game I wanted to play. The trial and error gameplay to me was non existant. Every situation I was put in I was able to see what I had to do and I just had to get my fingers to press the buttons at the right times in order to make it work. And when it worked it was very cool. I loved running at full speed off a ramp then a transition to a wall run then a transition to a 90 degree turn to jump to a platform that is hanging 100s of feet in the air. I also loved walking into a room and pressing the circle button (a hint button to direct your view to where you have to go) and seeing that I had to travel from the bottom of the room to the top of a 500 foot pillar. Everytime I walked into a room I had to figure out where to go to get to the next point and that was always fun to me. I loved having to find the first ledge or the first handhold to grab onto to make it to the next point. The other aspect of the game was the combat. While not exactly deep it was fun. At the beginning of the game an enemy encounter would get me cursing at the TV because it was annoying to try and make it past the blues. But as I played more I learned the finer aspects of the enemy encounters. You have to isolate the enemies and take them out one by one. That really made the combat much more interesting and much more fun. Entering a room full of blues went from a shoulder slumping curse-fest to an exciting game of cat and mouse. I would run around the room jumping between different floors and the blues would chase me. Then I isolated the enemy and would jump kick him to the head and then kick him in the crotch and give him a nice punch to the noggin. That would knock out most enemies so the next step was to get up to full speed again and isolate the next guy. By the end of the game the combat was not the big let down that it was in the beginning. It helped break up the free running and kept the enjoyment of the game at a high. At the end I could definitely say that I enjoyed every aspect of the game. The only issue I had was the frustration of missing a button press or the game seemingly not doing what I told it to do.
As for other aspects of the game (e.g. graphics, atmosphere, etc) the free running on the roofs of buildings was always exhilirating and it was enhanced by the sound of wind whipping past your ears when you hit a full speed sprint and were leaping and rolling from building to crane to building. Falling to your death always gave me that vertigo sickly feeling in my stomach. Mirror's Edge is a very immersive game.
My only regret in my purchase of the game is that I didn't get it for the 360. Besides the obvious lack of achievement point whoring, I prefer the feel of the 360s analog sticks. Especially for controlling first person games. But there is exclusive DLC to look forward to on the PS3. So hopefully that will change my regret to a feeling of joy!
No comments:
Post a Comment