![]() Perhaps the people, like the promise of a looser, rangier environment, would simply get in the way: Mirror's Edge may be a platformer at heart, but it has a racing line that rivals Forza. There are no office workers, no pedestrians, not even a stray window-cleaner. And while the world is filled with chic details, it's devoid of a human presence other your pursuers. It's not repetitive - despite the endless white skyscrapers, and iPod-colour interiors, the game finds time to take you from the top of the city to the bottom, from penthouses to storm drains, via subway tunnels, dockyards, shopping malls, and offices - but it is a funnel more than a sandbox. Choppers turn up every now and then to shoot you to pieces.Įven on the rooftops, in the game's safety zone, some may find this a very linear experience, with a scant handful of routes to uncover. These problems are inevitable given the kind of experience Mirror's Edge is trying to provide - a parkour game where you didn't end up as a puddle now and then would be like a driving game without crash barriers - but while it's a resounding victory that the first-person viewpoint is almost never responsible for your demise, the trial-and-error approach the game requires to challenge you can put fatal breaks in the sense of flow - and that flow is the very best thing about Mirror's Edge. Throw some armed pursuers and nasty falls into the mix, as DICE often does, and you become conscious that you can only work out how to do something right by first doing it wrong and being sent back to the (very occasionally sadistic) last checkpoint. But the propensity for asset repetition can be disastrously confusing in claustrophobic interiors, and it's not helpful that it's at exactly these moments your Runner's Vision often takes a sabbatical. Like everything else with the game, there's an element of acclimatisation to this: as you progress, you get better at working out where you're meant to be going indoors, even if the game doesn't get better at giving you clues. The best linear videogame levels guide you without letting you know it the ones in Mirror's Edge often blindfold you, spin you around a couple of times, and then let you wobble off down a nearby manhole. Sometimes it just points at the floor, for example, or at a blank wall, rather than explaining you need to pull off a string of handsprings and wall-runs in the opposite direction to get round it. ![]() Equally, the hint button, which works fine outside when you've got nothing but horizon, often directs you straight towards your target when you're indoors, rather than at the path you need to take to reach it. The muddled layouts lack direction, with few useful indicators of where to go next and an unhelpful smattering of red herrings. In the open air, with huge chunks of freshly scrubbed city stacked around you, Mirror's Edge recalls all the right memories of Jet Set Radio, but inside it struggles. But a more serious stumble is the indoor bits. ![]()
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