Mirror's Edge

Shep wanted to know about Mirror's Edge, so, here we go.

IIIII like it a lot. It's far from perfect, but, I still had a lot of fun with it. It's a refreshing change from all the FPS games.

It's crazy short though. I beat it twice in two days, once on Normal last night and I beat it a little while ago on Hard. The Story Mode, anyway, the Time Trials and Speedruns are a whole other matter entirely.

Some issues with it, though. For one thing, the cutscenes look like butt. I just don't dig the style of animation, it looks cheap and poorly-made, I don't care if it's supposed to be stylized. It looks great when it's still, but as soon as it animated, ew. Looks like one of those crappy cartoons on Adult Swim.

In addition, the controls sometimes just don't work. There's a few instances where you will not be able to figure out why Faith isn't grabbing the fucking ledge. Specific moments where she'll only do what she's supposed to three or four times out of ten. And you won't even know why you can't make it, it just seems random. But there're just a few instances of that, so it's not a huge deal, just worth mentioning.

A couple minor issues: all the white can sometimes blur together and make distinguishing things difficult. That may be just on SDTV's, though, I imagine it's clearer in high definition. And, of course, there are some instances of cheap deaths, but, what platforming game doesn't have those? It's certainly not rampant, just mildly annoying.

Oh, I almost forgot my biggest problem! The load times. When you first start up a level, I don't mind a long load time. And the load time for your last checkpoint after a death is remarkably short, usually. But each chapter has at least two, I think, moments where the game stops and it reads "Loading Level" at the bottom left of the screen. And it'll sit there for a good 10-30 seconds. It's annoying as hell. Maybe this isn't such an issue with the PS3, and won't be for the PC, I don't know. But it's certainly present for the 360 version.

Some good things? The score, I like the music a lot. The voice-acting's good, as well, though the story itself is kind of meh. Not bad, just unsurprising. The gameplay itself is terribly fun, the parkour aspects of it especially, and the gunplay isn't bad. Nothing really broken or poorly-implemented that I found in my two playthroughs.

And there you are, some of my quick thoughts on Mirror's Edge. Final summation: if you have a PS3 or 360, play this game. If you've got a PC, give it a little time, it'll be out in about a month.