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Mirror's Edge: PS3 Hands on Impression
Navneet Prakash, Oct 07, 2008 1737 hrs ISTOne of the most visually stunning game
Mirror's Edge (ME) is on the road to success, gamers are going ga-ga about Faith and her Parkour abilities. ME is one of the most visually stunning game that I have seen in a long while. The game has an uncanny clean look, which is new to the FPS genre. The game is an FPS/action adventure game but feels and plays like an old-school arcade platformer.
ME's strength lies in the fresh look and feel that the game is able to deliver to a possibly stale genre. You play as Faith, a runner in a world where communication is under control by the government. The job of a runner is to transfer data and other important documents through the city while evading the authorities. The plot goes deeper, Faith has an emotional obligation, and hence goes against the government, see the trailer below to know more.
I recently got some hands-on time with Mirror's Edge, and although the level was a short, the experience was grand. The game has been designed on the Unreal 3 engine, but you won't find the Gears of War-ish grittiness, just take a look at the screenshots. The idea behind the look goes beyond cosmetics, it is a major part of the gameplay. The game revolves around Faith's ability to overcome all most any obstacle, either by jumping over or sliding under it.
As you run, you gain momentum, and you will need high momentum to overcome most obstacles. The first thing I noticed while playing the demo was that unlike most FPS games, ME's movement feels more real. While you run, you can see your arms swing, similarly a high jump will result in accurate movements of both limbs. This gives you a more realistic feel to the game.
The game has no HUD, which is great as the more you see in ME, the more options you have to reach your destination. The objective of the level was to pick up a package and pass it to another runner waiting for you a few blocks away. The entire level, just like the game takes place on the rooftops. The controls are very simple, L1 for jumping and L2 for sliding. You can avoid damage after a high jump, if you time your slide button just before landing, which results into a roll. The roll is very useful as most high jumps will result in major damage. Check out some more gameplay footage below.
The game uses an ability called Runner Vision, which basically highlights key points/objects in the open world in bright red. The objects/areas marked red will always help you overcome most obstacles. Faith is quite nimble and really skilled at scaling walls. While playing the demo, I encountered a few cops, who surprisingly were quite fast and very difficult to get rid off. The idea in ME is to avoid combat, but you can resort to violence if you want. I never handled a single weapon in the demo, instead I would disarm the cops by using CQC tactics against them.
The combat was fun, but it was the last thing on my mind, I was busy jumping around and running on walls. You can use bullet-time in ME, this is really useful when jumping long distances. One can slow down time before a very long jump to fine tune their leap and make sure you don't fall face first on the ground below.
The level ends with a very Matrix-like sequence, but I ain't complaining, it looked uber-cool. The level was very short and took me about 5 mins to complete, but I played it through a few times to look for new paths and secrets, I found both. The demo level has me very excited about the game, I am really looking forward to the full release, believe me you should too.
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