Skip to main content

Mirrors Edge - Why Walk when you can Fly?

When I was younger I used to have dreams where I ran and ran without my feet touching the ground. I am sure that the amateur psychiatrists will have fun with that but Mirror's Edge reminds me powerfully of those dreams.

The game is at its absolutely breathtaking best when you guide the sylph-like free-runner Faith in a madcap dash across rooftops leaping from ledge to ledge while narrowly avoiding flying bullets from the guns of your less nimble pursuers. The sense of speed and movement is magnificent and imparts a feeling of invincibility, at least until you miss a jump and end up plunging to your death hundreds of metres below.

The suspense is slightly marred by the realisation that the pursuers such weaklings that you can often turn around run up to them,  disarm them and use their weapon to murder their comrades with little more than a  few scratches to show for it. The fact that your unarmed elfin heroine can disarm an assault rifle wielding body armour clad SWAT officer strains credibility and feels like cheating. I try to avoid the tactic whenever possible but I must hang my head and admit to having resorted to it on a few occasions when my middle aged reactions proved incapable of leaping my way to freedom while under fire. I play on the default difficulty setting so it is possible that pursuers become more dangerous at higher settings but then I would have to put up with the frustration of not being able to get through certain sections of the game so it is a balance choice I
grudgingly put up with.

I actually put off playing Mirror's Edge for some time because I generally suck at running jumping games but I am pleased to report that this aspect of the game has proven perfectly balanced for me at least on normal difficulty. The mouse and keyboard controls work very well and I have even developed something of a fluidity as I glide across the rooftops. There are a few "difficult" jumps that look impossible at first glance but nothing that delayed me for more than about 10 minutes as I refined my timing or tried alternative approaches.

I am currently about two thirds of the way through the  game and I am playing it in small enough chunks so as not to get bored with the potentially repetitive game play.

Recommended.


Comments

Jayedub said…
Mirror's Edge is an interesting idea and a game everyone should at least try once. I didn't care for it much but I respect the game for doing something a bit different.
mbp said…
The game does have flaws. There are an awful lot of samey looking corridors and the gameplay can get repetitive but jumping across the roofs of sky scrapers is an adrenaline rush for me.

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p