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Mirror's Edge | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $59.99
Buy New: $44.00
You Save: $15.99 (27%)
New (20) Used (4) from $48.00
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 335
Platform: Playstation 3
Genre: shooter_action_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: PlayStation 3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 15474
Model: 014633154740
UPC: 014633154740
EAN: 0014633154740
ASIN: B00149ND28
Release Date: November 11, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | 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. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Imagine a world where communication channels are highly monitored and the movement of human traffic is closely watched. Mirror's Edge introduces you to Faith, a "runner" in this world. When Faith's sister gets framed for a murder she did not commit, Faith finds herself on the edge of the city, on the wrong side of the law. Mirror's Edge delivers you straight into the shoes of this modern day heroine as she traverses the vertigo-inducing cityscape, engaging in intense combat, fast-paced chases and challenging puzzles. With a never-before-seen sense of movement and perspective, you are drawn into Faith's world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Fast and Fun with an attitude November 11, 2008
ice grizzly (Dream Land)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful
This game is also made by the Battlefield team, so be assured the controls are spot on. Normally they love to shoot and blow up every thing. This time around; instead of going head on, they want us to run away. You even get trophies for not killing and not for getting shot. This is coming from DICE :).
The game is fast first person platformer. A fresh new adaptation of true and tried platforming. Rather than moving slowly and timing the jump from the edge. Speed is what counts here. You need to be moving at a constant speed to kick open doors, catch a drop wire etc. etc. Every thing is setup for constant nonstop movement. The level designs are so perfect; once you get hang of controls there is no need to stop. The game takes you through roof tops, A/C vents, malls, office walk ways and lots of other varied setups. At every stage there are multiple paths to move forward. There is a lot of freedom and it is tied well with risks. As with Battlefield risk reward balance is impeccable throughout the game.
The character is not a military marksmen. Neither are the enemies. They are just guards patrolling the building. So don't expect a epic gun battles. She is a fast and cute runner, so just run run. Don't waste time in gun battles. Your aim is to reach the check point not clearing the enemies. The game controls are very easy to pick up, yet very satisfying. I liked the time travel mode much more than the main game, mainly for the sense of accomplishment.
The game will take easily 10 hours to finish in the first run. I read reviews about 7 hrs, they must be super humans. Some of the latter levels do require you to try a few times. The real challenge comes in finishing the game without shooting any one. The main character can disarm, kick the guards un-conscious. If you really want to shoot them you can do it too. There is no penalties for shooting guards, you can't carry weapons while moving fast.
Audio is spot on. The art direction depicts the totalitarian regime. Every thing is cut out from a single template like old communism. It is a nice breath of fresh air. If you are tired of post apocalyptic burnt and brown backgrounds, join the party. The character models and physics are very impressive. Every thing moves as you expect them to.
It may take some time to get a handle on the game. Once you pickup the controls and nail jumps it is very addictive.
Run Faith, Run November 20, 2008
Chris Longhurst (Salt Lake City, Utah United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mirror's Edge is an unique game, and I like unique games. It's always difficult for publishers to come up with a new idea and make it into a game that works, but with Mirror's Edge, EA / Dice seem to have managed it.
The basic premise is simple - you're Faith - a runner. In a city run like a police nation, runners take sensitive packages and deliver them via alternative means. In this case a highly athletic form of street running, or parkour. Each mission is an A to B affair but you have at your disposal the entire urban landscape from the bottoms of the sewers to the tops of the skyscrapers. Run, duck, slide, swing, wall-run, hop, skip and jump your way around obstacles that would, in any other game, be unpassable.
The majority of the game takes place well above street level, hopping from building top to building top, balancing on crane arms, and working your way around air conditioning units, pipes, construction materials and the other detritus you'd find on the top of any modern building today.
Gameplay.
Mirror's Edge is not only unique in it's idea, it's unique in it's presentation because it's a first-person game. You see through Faith's eyes, which means you see hands and feet, and unless you're in front of a mirror, nothing else. This is one of the game's strengths. Trying to use a third-person view just wouldn't work (as it doesn't work in Metal Gear). From a first-person view, you get a proper sense of speed and depth. As you run to slide under a pipe, you'll find yourself ducking in your chair. And if you've got a touch of vertigo, it wouldn't pay you to stand on the edge of a building and look down in Mirror's Edge - the effect is very convincing. The controls are pretty simple - run with the left stick, look with the right stick, and jump and duck. In addition there are basic combat controls to kick and interact with other objects, as well as a slow-motion effect for those hairy moments. You build up the ability to use slow motion by the amount of 'flow' you have. Flow isn't something with an on-screen meter, it's just a natural sense of making progress. If you stop before climbing every wall, and go everywhere at walking pace, you're not really making progress. But wall-run and then jump on to a roof, hop over to an A/C unit then drop off and slide under some pipes - that's a nice, flowing style of getting from A to B. Although when you first pick up the game, you'll be tripping over everything in sight and smacking your head on low-hanging objects all the time.
The game does mix it up a little with occasional encounters with 'Blues' - the police. You have some basic slide, jump and kick skills that can be used to attack them or disarm them but it becomes obvious that more time was spent in the control of Faith as a runner than as a fighter, as the sparse fight scenes are awkward to contend with and you'll often find yourself doing them over and over again just to try and get past the police. In some cases, you don't need to engage them though, so hop up on a container, jump over their heads and get away.
As well as all the rooftop acrobatics, there are many levels set indoors from the cavernous underground water tank in the first couple of levels (think the underground ice store in the film Total Recall) to the frantic subway chase which has you both dodging oncoming subway trains and riding their roofs whilst dodging rail tunnel infrastructure and jumping from train to train.
The game is short - 9 sprawling levels in all plus a training level - but it's exciting and fun to play and you'll find yourself going back and trying to better yourself on the levels you've already done. Having said that, the levels do get incrementally harder as you go through the game, and whilst the run/jump/slide gameplay might seem repetitve, there is always more than one way to get through a level. Crawl through the ductwork, or run through the office itself? Up to you.
You can choose to use 'Runner Vision' in the easier game modes which will highlight objects in red as you approach them to hint at the direction you should go and what objects can be used to achieve your goals. For example pipes light up red to indicate you should probably climb them, but as I said above, there are other ways of completing every task.
There's also trophies to be earned in Mirror's Edge, which is an added incentive to go back and do better. The tropies are nicely balanced between bronze, silver and gold. For example the easiest trophy is the bronze for just finishing the training level, whilst some of the harder silver ones require strings of moves to be assembled, such as wall-run to jump-tuck to slide.
Graphics.
The graphics in Mirror's Edge are excellent. The developers have created a unique art style which is mostly white with very pure colours here and there. It sounds dull, but it looks absolutely amazing when you play it. Your point of focus changes depending on whether you're looking at things up close or far away, and when you get up a lick of speed, there are motion blur effects that are added to the scene in a subtle enough fashion to not destroy the look and feel of the game. The usual sun flare and whiteout effects are present if you look the right way, and if you look down the cavernous canyons between the buildings, you can see people going about their daily lives as well as the occasional police cars parked up looking for you. The lighting and texture work is top notch with bump maps and reflections everywhere you'd expect them to be. Shadows are relatively well drawn too. The modelling of the levels is very very good and so far I have not noticed any popup in the game. That is to say, objects change detail or appear so subtly that your eye is never drawn to them. It's also worth pointing out the 'falling to your death' effect. Rather than simply understanding that if you walk off a tall building, you're dead, Mirror's Edge prefers to show you the ride all the way down to the pavement. As you speed up, the screen becomes more and more distorted until it suddenly goes black with a sickening accompanying sound effect. Whilst on your way to becoming a ketchup pancake, you still have full control, so if you really want to, you can pivot in the air and look at the rapidly approaching ground. But I wouldn't recommend it.
A final note on the graphics - read the signs on the fences before you jump over them, or at least get used to what they look like. Your first encounter with a high voltage fence will teach you that lesson quickly.
Sound.
There's a lot of breathing and panting in Mirror's Edge, as you'd expect from a game which is mostly concerned with running like hell. Other than that the environmental sounds are excellent. As you cross the rooftops, the background noise of a normal city is all around, from aircraft and helicopters overhead to the streets below and everything in between. Chain-link fences rattle when you jump over them. Steam vents hiss as you pass them. Bullets zing past and ricochet off walls if you're being shot at. Everything is properly in its place. The subway levels are made all the more nerve wracking by the sound of the train cars, and especially the train horn if you get too close. More than once, the horn took me so much by surprise that I fumbled a move and ended up as a hood ornament.
The music is very ambient for the most part. A lilting background accompaniment to your superhuman feats of dexterity. But it does change at the appropriate times. As you're getting close to an encounter with the police, for example, it starts to become a little more menacing, to ramp up the tension. And when you get in to a full-on foot chase over the rooftops and through office buildings, the music changes completely to an excellent run-for-your-life soundtrack, very similar to the style in the cult film Run Lola Run. The music in this mode alone is enough to stop you turning around to see how close behind you the police are.
Overall.
I wanted to take a star off my rating for this because of the somewhat clumsy fight mechanics. But the more I play the game, the more I can forgive that element of it because everything else works so well. From jumping over wire fences, to sliding down zip lines, to hopping over subway turnstiles and sliding under closing doors. If you're not sure, download the demo from the Playstation Store first - it's free and you'll get a feel for the game dynamics. I like it. 5 stars.
One of my favorite games November 17, 2008
Jeremy Epstein (New York)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Simply put, Mirror's edge is on the best games I've played for one simple reason, character movement. No game, and I mean no game, does your character move better than in Mirror's Edge. Those trailers and videos you might have seen and you said no way that's in game gameplay, it is, all of it. I do agree that some people may not like it. Here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
-Amazing free flowing character movement
-Controls are fantastic, no stiffness
-Sharp art design, excellent use of color contrast
-Fantastic ambient music
-Excellent sense of immersion (panting, head-bobbing, momentum, etc... you are the character)
-Variety of locales in the city
-Cool menu presentation
-Great sense of speed and momentum
-The light puzzles can be a bit confusing at first but are rewarding
Cons:
-While combat looks really cool and works most of the time, there are 2 problems;
some disarms are a bit too difficult b/c the timing has to be exact, also you should be able disarm right after you do a strike attack, but instead you have to wait for the disarm animation to come up again.
-While graphics are generally sharp and art design is great, there are some aliasing and screen tearing issues.
-Story mode could be a bit longer (but that being said, you will definitely play through these levels over and over b/c they are so much fun to play and you will keep refining you smoothness, and of course, the time trials with online leaderboards; as a review on 1up.com said, this is THE speed run game)
-I'm not really digging the animation of the cutscenes, the psudo-cartoon style doesn't work as well as full motion capture would have, I think
Press reviews have been all over the place for this game, but I am definitely on the side of loving this game. There is no game that provides so much sheer enjoyment and satisfaction. I'm already excited for the next one.
It's worth it November 14, 2008
Rokkudai (PA)
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Much like the 5 star reviewer before me stated, Mirror's Edge is an incredible fast paced trip through a freedom stifled world in which "Big Brother is watching" much akin to the film Equilibrium or the novel 1984. Everything about Mirror's Edge is streamlined to give you maximum thrill with minimum effort, which in this case is an incredibly good thing. The entire premise of this game without giving away the plot is to just keep running...it's just that simple.
Controls
As stated above the controls in ME are incredibly simple to the extent that all you really have to do is press the coresponding upward movement or downmard movement button to keep you on the move. The entire control scheme has been narrowed to a few essential actions with no buttons on the control being wasted or leaving you feeling cluttered, because you can't move your fingers fast enough to do everything you could possibly need them to do.
Sound
The sound track is incredible, for me to say anything else would be an injustice to the quality being showcased. Just know that the right music is there when it's needed. Now having said that, the voice acting is pretty good but could still use a little work with characters coming across a little bland at times.
Visual quality/Design/Graphics
As an artist myself, the design in this game is unbelievable and the graphics themselves truly highlight this. Everything from the Flash animated cut scenes, to the obvious hints given to help you progress through the levels, down to the subtle uses of shadow to point you away from areas you should be trying to avoid enhances your overall experience. Visually I've never seen a game this polished, the characters themselves however fall to that saying by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future 2, it still looks fake. I only say this because of the obvious attempt at photo realism which is still lacking with the character models. Don't hold that against me though because they do look good.
Combat
Combat in this game is simple and sweet, everything you need in essence is accomplished really with 4 buttons, 2 of which are exclusive to combat. I can't comment on the gunplay in the game because I went through the game without shotting a single enemy for the silver trophy it awards you for doing so. The melee aspect however comes across solid if not a little limiting on the possiblities. I do disagree with the previous reviwer however concerning the enemy AI. The computer is no slouch when it comes to putting you down, keep in mind though it may have been more difficult for me because I wasn't trying to kill them.
Overall for a game I beat in about 6 hours -even making mistakes, it truly was a fun play, and since I only earned about 27% of the trophies and a fraction of the unlockables, I'll be going back for more.
This is going to truly be a game that either you love it or you hate it, so play the demo or rent it and see where you stand.
Unique Experience November 14, 2008
Brian Klein
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mirror's Edge is a new parkour game which pushes the boundaries of action/shooter titles. In a class of its own, though perhaps closest to a 3D platformer, Mirror's Edge is a joy to watch and play.
Graphics: 5/5
Mirror's Edge forgoes the gritty realism of modern titles to present a sparkling, clean, and beautiful city for you to romp around in. The effect is stunning, to say the least. The presentation and lighting are top notch. The character models are fairly detailed as well. I have seen minor graphical artifacts (mostly on Faith's glove/hand), and when you watch another runner jump about the city they don't look like they are completely connected to the surfaces they are interacting with. These are minor complaints though - overall the game is beautiful.
Cut scenes are done in cell-esque animation - they are pretty, but I don't know if I would've preferred the in-game engine to handle the cutscenes instead. Its probably personal preference.
Sound: 5/5
The atmospheric noises (typical city noises, air rushing past you as you run, your footsteps on the rooftops, even Faith's breathing) is superb, and really lets you lose yourself in the game. The music is subdued for the most part and fits perfectly with the gameplay - when the bad guys come and the music heightens its reminiscent of Run Lola Run and does a good job of getting your adrenaline pumping. Character voices are pretty good for the most part - a relief, as bad voice acting has ruined more than one game for me.
Controls: 5/5
Mirror's Edge has a wonderfully simple and easy to learn control scheme: Analog sticks control movements, left triggers control jumping/rolling/etc, right triggers are attacks. You have 43 additional buttons (x to activate items, triangle to disarm, circle to turn towards where you should go next if you are lost, and square to activate runner vision), which are very situational and rarely used. You'll rarely use your attacks as well. The control scheme took me a few minutes to pick up, but after that it was completely natural. For the type of game this is the developers did a wonderful job with making simple, easy to learn controls.
Gameplay: 5/5
Mirror's Edge has a somewhat open-ended gameplay environment. There are many ways to reach your objectives - the game doesn't force you to take one predetermined route. You can also choose whether to fight or to run - the game will rarely back you into a corner. Mirror's Edge's gameplay could be summed up as a free-flowing, fast-paced intense experience. Oftentimes you won't have the opportunity to think of what to do or where to go (beyond pushing the circle button if you are lost) - you just have to go with the flow. While most doors remained locked to you this isn't too big a problem - if you could go through *any* door I imagine one would get horribly lost, and the gameplay experience would diminish dramatically. Choosing to somewhat railroad players into certain paths instead of having a completely open experience was a good choice, in my opinion.
Plot: ?/5
I haven't finished the game yet, but so far the plot is looking to be decent. I don't think it will compare to a game like Final Fantasy Tactics or anything like that in terms of depth, but as long as the plot isn't completely inane I will be happy.
Overall: 5/5
Mirror's Edge is a great game to play in almost every way, and I recommend buying it. If you are on the fence you can download the free preview from the PS3 store to try it out. I think that this title merits more than a rental because its just so much fun - after I complete the game I plan on just running about in trial levels for fun. Also its good to support unique games like this if you enjoy them - that encourages developers to make more (nothing wrong with more mainstream sports/shooter/rpg/etc types, but something new and different is good too - as long as its done well).
*Edit* I've finished the game, so here are some additional thoughts:
Plot - The plot turned out to be very disappointing. There were plot holes and the ending was unsatisfying. Which is depressing: a good plot would've made the game that much more excellent. Mirror's Edge is like Portal - a relatively new and unique concept done pretty well. The difference is that portal had an excellent plot/voice-acting backing it up. Speaking of which, the voice-acting overall was meh, I feel. The rest of the sound effects were excellent.
Length - The main campaign was too short. It is 9 chapters in length, and could've used an additional 2 or 3 chapters to fully flesh it out.
Replay Value - Moderate. I played the game on normal difficulty without shooting anyone (you get a trophy for doing that). I have no desire to replay the whole game on another difficulty, but redoing the levels individually to try to get good times is fun. Its too bad there is no real multiplayers - a race component or some such would've been a lot of fun.
Overall Mirror's Edge is a game definitely worth buying and playing through for its excellent gameplay, graphics, and sound. However it is a bit disappointing in that it could've very easily been so much more. Hopefully there will be a sequel that addresses the many minor problems in Mirror's Edge.
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