It plays as good & looks as good as it does here.

All right here’s my first SPEGA review, sorry if it’s a bit long winded, and no screen shots (I’m too lazy to go through them all) 

Mirror’s Edge is a fantastic game; it displaced Deus Ex as my second favorite game after Beyond Good & Evil, which is no small feat since I like Deus Ex a lot.

I give it a 9 out of 10.

The story:

Mirror’s Edge takes place in an unnamed city where a totalitarian regime monitors its citizens through invasive surveillance, tracking all forms of electronic communication.

The main character, Faith, is a “Runner” a messenger who transports secret messages to the underground, by employing her free-running skills, to traverse the rooftops, building sites and other precarious locales.

Faith soon becomes caught up in a conspiracy and is ruthlessly hunted by the authorities.

When she can’t run past the police she’ll resort to hand-to-hand combat, or disarming an enemy and using their guns against them.

The Game:

ME is sort of a first person action adventure game, with some gunplay and hand to hand combat added for good measure.

There’s no HUD except for a dot in the middle of the screen (which can be disabled) and you can see your feet and arms swing realistically even when you’re not holding a weapon, it really adds the immersion factor.

IMO There are too few first person games that show you more of the character than just disembodied arms. (I can count them on my fingers)

The most unique and endearing feature of ME is the fluidity of movement and the feeling of momentum; it’s unmatched in any other game.

It allows you to fluidly slide under, vault over it, or climb onto obstacles, shimmy across narrow ledges, Swing, slide, roll, wall-run and a ton of other things that I’ve never seen done in a first person game.

The hand-to-hand combat works very good, it doesn’t work as good as it could but it still works very well, you have a wide range of attacks; low attacks, high attacks, rear attacks, front attacks, disarms, kicks, punches, wall run kicks, etc.

The gunplay in ME works great.

You can disarm opponents and then use their gun; you’re limited to the ammo that’s in the magazine, and there’s no ammo counter, so you need to count your shots and make your shots count. 

Faith is a Runner not a gun fighter, so wielding a weapon larger than a pistol slows you down and prevents you from doing all the acrobatic things you can normally do, so you must decide strategically when to abandon speed and agility for firepower.

Another aspect of ME is the striking visual style.

The contrast is cranked up and all the architecture is modern, clean lined, and a colorless white.

The sterile whiteness is punctuated by splashes of vibrant colors (doors, stairs, billboards, cranes, etc) the most noticeable is the Technicolor blue sky.

ME is a difficult game, I recommend that you play the first level over and practice disarming enemies without using slow-mo, it will be imperative later on.

Mirror’s Edge (available on 360, PS3, & PC)

Publisher: EA

Developer: DICE (owned by EA)