The city’s graphics are great. There is a huge city which sadly you cannot explore but still looks amazing if a little bland. I heard someone describe it as a “hospital turned inside out†which is quite true with its plain white buildings. White is very much the prevalent colour when moving around the city which splashes of orange, yellow, green, etc in places. There are other locales such as a ship and sewer which aren’t terribly inspiring but still look pretty good. Draw distance is superb and frame rate also holds up fine. However character models are pretty pathetic.
Controls: The controls do a good job of making the game intuitive. For your Parkour you generally have an up button and a down button. Up is mapped to LB (360) and handles actions like jumping, vaulting, pulling yourself up and wall-running. Then the down button handles actions like rolling, sliding and coiling. Then there is an attack button, disarm button and reaction button (explained later). All in all they do a good job and are fairly easy to wrap your head around.
Gameplay: This is where Mirror’s Edge truly shines. As mentioned earlier, it revolves around the sport of Parkour. So throughout the 9 levels, you use your Parkour skills to get into a place then escape said place. While that is all you really do it is a hell of a lot of fun. You’re no longer Masterchief in this game so you can’t survive many shots from a gun. Thus you are forced to evade and run from the enemies in your path. However what I found odd is the game promotes this running from the fights and yet there were several instances where I could not find a way to continue without fighting enemies. When you do need to fight, Faith has several melee attacks at her disposal. She can punch and kick her enemies to knock them unconscious or use the disarm button to steal their weapon. When you are close enough to an enemy they will stop shooting and attempt to hit you with their gun. When this happens their gun will (briefly) flash red. While it is red you need to hit the disarm button and Faith will relieve them of their gun in a rather stylish animation. Since you only have a brief time to hit the button, you can activate “reaction time†which is just another name for bullet time which allows you to nab their weapon much easier. This game is played in 1st person which has its pros and cons. On one hand it draws you into the world much more effectively especially with being able to see your limbs on the edges of the screen and the camera bobbing around with your movements but on the other hand some acrobatics (especially jumps) can be difficult to pull off. The last thing worth mentioning is this is very much a trial and error game. While you don’t die every few minutes you can expect to plummet to your death as your learn the boundaries of Faith’s movements and where the hell you are supposed to go.
Controls: The controls do a good job of making the game intuitive. For your Parkour you generally have an up button and a down button. Up is mapped to LB (360) and handles actions like jumping, vaulting, pulling yourself up and wall-running. Then the down button handles actions like rolling, sliding and coiling. Then there is an attack button, disarm button and reaction button (explained later). All in all they do a good job and are fairly easy to wrap your head around.
Gameplay: This is where Mirror’s Edge truly shines. As mentioned earlier, it revolves around the sport of Parkour. So throughout the 9 levels, you use your Parkour skills to get into a place then escape said place. While that is all you really do it is a hell of a lot of fun. You’re no longer Masterchief in this game so you can’t survive many shots from a gun. Thus you are forced to evade and run from the enemies in your path. However what I found odd is the game promotes this running from the fights and yet there were several instances where I could not find a way to continue without fighting enemies. When you do need to fight, Faith has several melee attacks at her disposal. She can punch and kick her enemies to knock them unconscious or use the disarm button to steal their weapon. When you are close enough to an enemy they will stop shooting and attempt to hit you with their gun. When this happens their gun will (briefly) flash red. While it is red you need to hit the disarm button and Faith will relieve them of their gun in a rather stylish animation. Since you only have a brief time to hit the button, you can activate “reaction time†which is just another name for bullet time which allows you to nab their weapon much easier. This game is played in 1st person which has its pros and cons. On one hand it draws you into the world much more effectively especially with being able to see your limbs on the edges of the screen and the camera bobbing around with your movements but on the other hand some acrobatics (especially jumps) can be difficult to pull off. The last thing worth mentioning is this is very much a trial and error game. While you don’t die every few minutes you can expect to plummet to your death as your learn the boundaries of Faith’s movements and where the hell you are supposed to go.
