Mirror's Edge

Will Smith — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:45:00 -0500

We love parkour, but next time, please forgo the combat

Here’s the thing about Mirror’s Edge: It’s 85 percent awesome, and we’re as surprised as anyone that the part that’s awesome is the first-person parkour. The running, jumping, and climbing bits are utterly engaging and even transcendent. There’s something liberating about leaping fearlessly from rooftop to rooftop while fleeing from a nebulous anti-freedom force. Unfortunately, for every high you get while soaring through the sky, there’s a painful low in the form of a combat sequence.

And therein lies the rub. The rooftop chases, where the designers were free to build many-pathed courses through the map, are sublime. By confronting the player with a constant stream of risk-vs.-reward decisions—do I take the risky jump to shave some seconds off my time, or the safe jump to avoid death?—and increasing your players speed as she successfully strings together long combos, the game is elevated from the run-along-a-path-on-the-rooftops experience it could have been into something emergent and amazing and wonderful.

And then you go inside. Moving into an office building or a sewer cuts down on the number of potential paths, but even that’s not so bad. The game really falls apart when you stop running from the cops—as an early loading screen tip advises you—and have to start fighting them. Later in the game, you have to disarm and disable your ever-present pursuers in order to open the path forward. This wouldn’t be so bad, except the combat system is maddening at best. While DICE managed to make a spectacular first-person jumping and climbing game, it hasn’t broken the curse of first-person melee combat—we’ve never played a first-person game with good melee combat, and Mirror’s Edge is no exception.

Were melee combat not required to progress in Mirror’s Edge, the game would receive a much higher score. Were melee combat excised from the game entirely, Mirror’s Edge would have undoubtedly received the Kick Ass award.

The Game Boy: Mirror’s Edge, We Hardly Knew Ye

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:00:00 -0500

I’ve been playing Peggle lately, and – confession time – I love it.

Despite the attached “casual timesink” stigma and even though the game’s main gameplay conceit is essentially as complex as watching a slinky bounce down a staircase, I can’t get enough of it. On top of that, it serves as a perfect contrast to the other stigma-prone game I’m currently loving in that can’t-let-the-family-find-out sort of way: Mirror’s Edge. Why the wariness? Well, Mirror’s Edge was supposed to lead EA’s innovation charge, but the game’s over-reliance on frustrating trial-and-error-based gameplay caused it to fall slightly short of its lofty goal.

As with Peggle, though, that “controversial” gameplay conceit is my main reason for loving it so much. So, to sum up: Peggle is simple and fun, while Mirror’s Edge is brutal, but still enjoyable. Playing one when I’m fed up with the other makes them perfect compliments. End of story, right?

But this complimentary contrast isn’t without a point. See, typically, the ridicule Peggle receives is purely in jest. The game’s casual and addictive, so – obviously – you’re putting your hardcore gamer cred on the line by playing it. “Oh that Nathan! Giving [Big Name Game X] the cold shoulder for Peggle? What a loon!” And then hilarity ensues. Etc. But the truth is, Peggle’s a fantastic game, and most will acknowledge that.

Mirror’s Edge’s jump-die-jump-die-???-profit shtick, though? That’s the kind of thing that inspires gamepad-shaped holes in the wall and cursing strings that’d make Q-Bert blush. Lower than expected review scores and a general air of disappointment shortly after the game’s release reflect that. As a result, I’d wager that the type of gameplay Mirror’s Edge took so many verbal blows for is on its way out. Which is a shame, because I think it still has a place in today’s gaming climate.

See, the beautiful thing about Mirror’s Edge is the way it presents the ever-looming specter of death. Other games, of course, do this to an extent, but Mirror’s Edge exemplifies it. One slightly incorrect leap and you’re pavement pizza. Fail to immediately incapacitate that police officer and his shotgun will splatter the city’s white rooftops with red. Stop moving forward and some form of boogie man – be it cop or helicopter – is bound to gobble you up and set your progress back a few minutes. Thus, the possibility of failure is never out of sight or mind, making any kind of success a thrill of the highest order. Going for a sustained amount of time without dying, then, is like achieving a big combo. It’s something you really, actually earn.

In spite of all that, though, many gamers still jumped aboard Mirror’s Edge’s hate train, creating an object lesson in why this type of gameplay probably won’t be sticking around for much longer. As evidenced by Mirror’s Edge’s mixed reception, gamers’ tolerance for “unforgiving” gameplay is dropping. Mirror’s Edge isn’t even all that unforgiving (not compared to many old-school games, anyway), and yet much of the gaming populace wouldn’t let it catch a break when it came to criticism. As a result, the game’s sales definitely weren’t as high as EA was hoping for, and if the game receives a sequel, I imagine it’ll attempt to toss the trial-and-error altogether. Money speaks loudest, after all.

Where’s that tolerance for high-risk, high-reward gameplay going, exactly? Well, while it isn’t directly to blame, Peggle represents the polar end of the direction in which many games are now headed. In stark contrast to Mirror’s Edge, Peggle heaps rewards on you like you’re some kind of gaming god. In that sense, it is the anti-Mirror’s Edge. The threat of failure is replaced by the ever-present promise of success, supplemented by rewards for every little thing you do. If you now expect triumphant sound effects and an explosion of colorful words to appear every time you do one of the following, you’re probably a Peggle addict: Launch a ball, hit more than one peg, hit zero pegs, hit anything that’s not a peg, or – you know – beat a level. Like those old claw machines at CiCi’s restaurants, everyone’s a winner no matter what. Not that I’m knocking the game for that; it makes players feel good, and in today’s stressful society, that’s exactly what plenty of gamers want.

Therein lies the problem, though. These days, only a certain sect of gamers prefers the kind of panicked tension Mirror’s Edge’s failure-heavy gameplay presents, and with the feel-good vibes of games like Peggle spreading throughout the industry, that sect is losing its influence. Death in many (for lack of a better term) hardcore games – and any sort of trepidation it might bring – is becoming illusory. Developers take players’ hands and gently guide them through seemingly nightmarish worlds instead of asking players to forge their own paths. They reward players for just participating, much like a certain incredibly popular reimagining of Pachinko. With these hardcore games, though, at some point the illusion breaks.

Where does it break, exactly? Well, that’s much more difficult to nail down. Here’s what I can tell you, though: games like Fable II and BioShock that essentially took death out of the picture got my blood pumping for a bit, but once I realized that death and loss of progress weren’t actual threats, my mindset changed. I didn’t rush. I didn’t feel fear. Messing around with the game world and poking holes in the immersive experience quickly became appetizing options. Nothing was stopping me.

Mirror’s Edge, on the other hand, loaded my tank with a palpable fear of loss and told me to run. When I tried to stop, I was punished. No chance to snoop around for flaws in the game world. No time to be snarky ol’ me instead of focused, straightforward Faith. To be perfectly honest, it’s the first time I’ve felt a real rush while playing a game in years.

It’s a shame only a few people apparently echo my thoughts.

The Game Boy is the soapbox Nathan Grayson stands atop to pass down proclamations about the world of gaming. Installments are posted at least once per week. Nathan's currently playing Peggle instead of the soon-to-be-updated Team Fortress 2. What a loon.

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Mirror's Edge

The Game Boy: Mirror’s Edge, We Hardly Knew Ye