I don’t know why I do these kinds of things to myself. I know full well that I am not going to like a game, but I play it anyway, and continue playing it. However, as a part of my quest to play the big name titles of 2008 I never got around to, I find myself here.
This week, my poison of choice is Mirror’s Edge, which arrived last Friday from GameFly. This game was hyped to all hell, and then upon its release, it provided average reviews. However, this then sparked discussion about reviewers overlooking innovation. All that is long since water under the bridge. I’m just here to lament, since this is my stump to speak from. I’m going to leave alone the cutscenes that look like they were designed in Flash (Chris Remo’s line I believe), and instead focus on the soul-breaking gameplay.
A training ground, a prologue, and three chapters into the game, I hardly have an urge to return to it. It has been said before (ugh, don’t remember my source on that line) that you should not have a platformer that you cannot see your feet in, and I wholeheartedly agree. They did a good job of making about 60% of the environments simple, with jumps that can be easily assumed and lots of room for error. However, the other 40% of the time is just grueling. For a game to essentially tell me I have to jump off a board at a certain point in order to successfully complete a wall-run, but not give me the ability to see my feet and know when I’m at that point, it becomes trial and error. I kept replaying through the same parts over and over again, because the points where the level design is in that other 40% is simply brutal. I wished Elika was there to hold my hand and catch me when I fell.
Ah, Prince of Persia. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Maybe that’s why I am so bad at this game, because my last platforming was in Prince of Persia as well as PoP: The Sands of Time, and both of those are extremely well done platforming games with rather lenient death mechanisms. However, outside of Mario games, combat is something that really befalls a platforming game. While a quick jump on an enemy’s head does the job most of the time, these other platformers see you in a near-choreographed dance with your opponents. Except Mirror’s Edge. The game tells you in the training ground and on loading screens to avoid combat, but then puts you in situations where you have no choice but to fight.
I was at a section where three “blues” (police officers) descended from a “bird” (helicopter to us normal folks), and the only way through the section was climbing up some pipes behind them. I managed to get around them and not get shot until I tried climbing the pipe, at which point I was turned in to a slice of Swiss cheese. I then was forced to fight these soldiers, who are wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles, with nothing on my person. Luckily, in those situations where you must enter combat (thus-far), the AI is comprised of the dumbest cops possible who will alternate between the shooting animation and the rifle-butting animation if you just take a step backward and then a step forward.
The only reason I keep playing is the absolutely awesome art style, which you may have noticed by now that I am a sucker for, but even that may not be enough to keep me going. When a game forces me to relive the same moments over and over until I learn where to jump or how to fight, I eventually lose interest. Maybe I’ll be playing Far Cry 2 sooner than I think.
