Mirror's Edge

by Electronic Arts

• Heroes Emerge - A young woman without a home until she is taken in and trained by the Runners.
• Your incredible gifts allow you to swiftly navigate the city while eluding those who would try to stop you.
• Go Vertigo - Heights create vertigo, movements flow naturally, collisions are felt realistically, and muscles and tendons strain as you chase and are chased throughout the city.
• Slip off the Edge - Perform amazing acrobatic moves from below street level, through buildings, and up to the dizzying heights of hyper real skyscrapers as you face off against your enemies or run for your life.
• Unrivaled Immersion - An exciting mix of chase, intense combat, strategy and puzzles draw you into a world like never before.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00198ZHC8
• Item Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: January 13, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,053 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

In a city where information is heavily monitored, agile couriers called Runners transport sensitive data away from prying eyes. In this seemingly utopian paradise, a crime has been committed and now you are being hunted. You are a Runner called Faith - and this innovative first-person action-adventure is your story. Mirror’s Edge delivers you straight into the shoes of this unique heroine as she traverses the vertigo-inducing cityscape, engaging in intense combat and fast paced chases. With a never before seen sense of movement and perspective, you will be drawn into Faith’s world. A world that is visceral, immediate, and very dangerous. Live or die? Soar or plummet? One thing is certain, in this city, you will learn how to run.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 71 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and fun game with no endurance January 23, 2009

By Grieger VINE™ VOICE

Platform for Display:PC

Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

I'll start by saying, I'm not including anything about the SecureROM thing. As much as I hate the reasoning behind it, it hasn't caused me any harm so far so consider it off the table with this review.

Mirror's Edge puts you in the trendy running shoes of a Runner, Faith, who gets sucked into a plot to (essentially) overthrown the government of a city in the not-so-distant future. The Runners are couriers that transport packages from point to point using Parkour (sometimes referred to as Freerunning though there is often debate about the similarities). Parkour is about getting between two points in the most efficient way possible. So, say you're on the rooftop of a building. A sane human would take the elevator down and take another elevator (or stairs) up to the other rooftop to get there. A Parkour runner would find a way (on the fly) to leap to the building.

The game makes it easy for you to get used to this idea by providing you with hints on Easy and Normal difficulties (Hard needs to be unlocked by finishing the game in one of the other difficulties and removes those hints). Also, the maps tend to be laid out in a way that makes it pretty intuitive to figure out where you need to go, though at times you're left scratching your head trying to figure out exactly how to get to that little air duct four stories up. There's another hint function that points you in the direction you're supposed to go but of course that doesn't tell you much about how to get there. To make matters worse, you're often being chased by police or Blues as they're referred to, especially as the game progresses.

The look and feel of the game is beautiful (to me at least).... From the menu with it's abstract view of the city and great music to the sites and sounds of the cityscape (even the end sequence has a great panning view of the nighttime city). The city is often painted in brilliant colors which breaks sections of the map up.

Combat is generally avoided but there are times when you have no choice but to fight. This is one of the lowpoints of the game. Not so much because of the combat itself, if you pull off a disarm, it's beautiful. But, because disarming is a Dragon's Lair type of game. You have a very small window during which you have to hit the disarm key at the right time to enable the action...and the time you do it isn't the most intuitive if you'd played shooters. As you get to the later parts of the game, the enemies you go up against get much harder to the point where if you don't have the disarm timing thing down right, you might as well just run and take your chances. It even seems like this was intentional at places because at one stage of a map, I was up against two "easier" cops with guns that enabled me to shoot the "untouchable" cops. Only way to survive that one. Ultimately, it seems like they could've made this a lot better and more fun (given how much time you spend on rooftops I'm surprised there isn't a mechanic that lets you grab and toss people off).

Another issue was the PhysX support. It causes hard freezes (I have a Quad Core 2.4Ghz box with a 8800 GT which should've handled it just fine). A patch came out just recently to address PhysX freezes but that didn't seem to change anything. Once disabled, the game runs fine (you can still notice a quick freeze during the same sequences that froze under PhysX...and they're not even areas where there should be a lot of physics being used).

Yet another issue (though minor) I had was with some of the game mechanics. Towards the end of the game, you're required to turn a lot of valve wheels (your opponents can just spin the damned things, you've got to slowly turn them) and you will often find you've really only got a single path to an objective. Not unusual for a game but a game about "free" running, it seems silly that they couldn't have designed the maps to offer a few options rather than one or two.

The last issue, though, is the clincher. And is the reason I dinged the score for this game. I was able to run through the entire game on Normal difficulty in six hours. The game offers a type of multiplayer which is really you running against other people's ghosts which isn't really much of a multiplayer so overall replayability is severly limited. If this game were sold for $20, I'd be fine with it but at full price ($50), it's ridiculous. And it sucks too since I really want to be able to play more of this game.

All in all, if you're an FPS type who wants to have fun trying something new, this game is definitely for you...if it's discounted to the $30's. Also, if you're not an FPS type and wanted to try something, it's definitely worth trying (at $30-35) especially given the fact that you don't have to tote guns (and in a way are penalized for using guns for any long period of time). Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A very innovative game that's over very quickly. November 6, 2009

By Patch Rowcester

Platform for Display:PC|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

[...]

Mirror's Edge is a first person running game developed by DICE. You play as Faith, a free runner. The story is set in a modern utopian society with a totalitarian government. Invasive surveillance is a part of life in this city and runners help exchange information between parties without getting caught.

Gameplay is the most admirable aspect, its not perfect but its very innovative and first of its kind. I was skeptical of how the game is going on handle, and it seemed baffling that DICE would not go the Prince of Persia route and make this a third person game. I remember there being a lot of talk in the press wondering why DICE are not making this a third person game. I am glad that DICE persisted with the first person perspective because Mirror's Edge is very unique.

Graphics can be stunning, some of the views from the tall buildings are beautiful and vertigo inducing. During the frantic chase sequences when there is a real rush to escape, vision tends to get a little blurry by the edges when leapt over rooftops and I could feel my stomach lurch forward at times. Playing this on my 24 inch monitor at 1920x1200 at highest settings with PhysX enabled is real treat. PhysX are supposed to be the selling point for PC version, but I did not find anything special about them - not that they are bad, but we have seen this in games all the way back to Max Payne 2.

I absolutely loved the soundtrack in this game. This ranks right up there with Halo for me. The theme song "Still Alive" by Lisa Miskovsky is now one of my favorite songs. Rest of the soundtrack includes some fast techno music which is perfect during free running segments. Voice acting is quite good as well. Sound is a very impressive aspect of this game....

On the flip side, Mirror's Edge can be frustrating in spite of DICE getting all the hard parts right. They made a game that handles free running extremely well. I never found the camera to be a problem and the controls on the PC are great. I loved the the chase sequences and getting the stunts right is not very difficult. The is hurt mainly by some intentional bad design choices - the scourge of all games. Weapons are extremely weak, it reminded me of Tomb Raider Legend and not in a good way - those of you who played it would know the reference, and melee combat is frustrating and unsatisfying. This only serves to break the momentum needlessly and seemed like an after thought. DICE have developed Battlefield games, so its not as if they are inexperienced in first person shooters, yet the gunplay in Mirror's Edge is very inadequate. I would recommend playing the game on Easy setting to avoid the frustration of combat.

Also, the game is quite short. On Easy I finished the game in about 7 hours. For a free running game to be truly effective, it must have the feel of an open city where the gameplay is not restrictive. Mirror's Edge in this case is like a modern version of the old school platform adventures because most often, there is one and only one way of proceeding. I can understand that at times this might be necessary, but throughout the game, you will be in a huge city, which you cannot explore and the path is very linear - just like an old platformer. I also get the feeling that it could benefited from the no-death mechanic of Prey, Bioshock and Prince of Persia.

Puzzles in the game are fairly intuitive but there are places where the player can get stuck without a clue. I remember a couple of such instances. Thankfully, Xfire's in-game browser supports this game, and I could quickly log into Youtube for the video walkthrough. That said, the free running part is very well done, but there are always some needless breaks in the free flowing gameplay, and the linearity would impede this too.

My biggest complaint is the lack of realizing the full potential, reminds of Quake 4 in a way for not capitalizing on key moments.

I bought this game for $7.22 with shipping on Amazon and I also got an audio CD with the soundtrack, and for that money, it is well worth it. If I paid the full price though, I would be very disappointed. Anything around $15-$20 would be a good price. So if you can find it around that price, this is a must buy.

+ Free running is very well done
+ Visuals
+ Brilliant soundtrack
+ Decent story telling
+ Some segments are truly breathtaking
+ Tight controls

- Very weak combat
- Some puzzles break the momentum
- Short

. Requires online activation

Verdict: Buy it for around $20 Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, sometimes fun, with major flaws April 23, 2012

By Larry

Platform for Display:PC Download

I bought Mirror's Edge several years ago when it first came out because it was a break with the traditional First Person Shooter genre that dominates computer games. The parkour aspect is nicely implemented and the city scenery is simply beautiful on a PC with a decent graphics card and physx capability to display all the eye candy. Actually, Mirror's Edge is the only computer game I play and I never seem to tire running with Faith through her city leaping from building to building and speed running down long halls. Some of the jumps are so realistic that I've often thought if Mirror's Edge was in 3D I couldn't play it for fear of falling since everything is seen through Faith's eyes.

But...

For all it's strong points that have kept me playing it for at least two years, there are two very major flaws that almost ruin playing Mirror's Edge for me. First by far is the necessity to almost constantly deal with the "Blues", city police who are trying to take out Faith. They're like mosquitoes - everywhere, and constantly breaking up the flow of Mirror's Edge with the necessity to evade or try to take them out with Faith's very inadequate abilities for combat and evasion. Faith has only limited ability to defend herself with guns and most of the time almost nowhere to run when the Blues are after her. This brings me to the second major failing of Mirror's Edge. The city Faith moves through is largely closed off to exploration and different paths other than the very limited routes the game allows. Worse, as you progress through Mirror's Edge evading the Blues gets harder and harder while Faith's ability to shoot or fight her way out of trouble never gets any better. The Blues get stronger and wilier and more numerous, but Faith never gets any better at combat or evasion.... There's just nowhere for her to go other than the limited paths established for her by Mirror's Edge developers. Her ability with weapons and fighting is simply pathetic and very frustrating to say the least.

In summary, Mirror's Edge is a fun game with beautiful graphics and some major flaws that keep it from being a real classic. Read more ›