Late to the Table, thoughts on Mirror's Edge

I absolutely loved this game. I just really wanted to throw that out there to begin with. On a personal scale it gets full marks - it totally pushed my buttons, and I just kept wanting to play more. During my short two weeks with the game (borrowed it from a friend), I hammered the hell out of it and tried to complete every possible aspect that I could. I think I managed about 900/1000 Gamerscore. It certainly wriggled it's way into my top 10 gaming experiences of 2008.

However, I'm also aware of the mixed reaction it enticed from the gaming community at large. I can understand where criticism is warranted - it is a remarkably linear game. Not only when it comes to level design as a whole (get from point A to point B) but in how it wants you to experience gameplay (go this way, go that way, and do it as fast as you can!).

Some of these criticisms just don't gel with me. The main gripe people have is that at certain points during the story missions, you'll be pinned down by a squad of SWAT troopers and you need to deal with them before you can progress. Admittedly, as a first-person shooter, this is where the game fails. Our protagonist Faith is not decked out in Mjolnir armour - nor does she have the military know-how of countless other FPS heroes.

It seems, though, that most of the people whose opinions I have read found this to be a gigantic roadblock and it tarnished their opinion of the game. Personally, I found only one spot in the entire game which couldn't be overcome through haste, precision and mastery of my surroundings, and not just running past them, but also using these gameplay attitudes to actually defeat my foes in combat.

I'll use a couple of examples. First it should be noted that on my first playthrough, I completed the game as per normal. But on my second playthrough, I completed the game on hard difficulty while also garnering the achievement for completing the story without shooting an enemy. In one of the earlier levels, I think it was Jackknife, there is a point where a helicopter drops off three SWAT troopers. If you are not quick enough, they quickly take up positions which allow them to cover pretty much every avenue of escape. If you are quick enough, however, you can get into the middle of that particular rooftop just before they touch down and aim their guns. I attempted this particular segement probably five times. There is one drainpipe that you need to climb up in order to escape the area - climbing up as per normal gives the enemy time to kill you. On my final attempt however, I found a tiny, thin vent poking out of the wall. On a hunch I ran up it, turned, and jumped. I automatically grabbed onto a smaller, normally out-of-reach pipe, which got me out of danger immediately. They didn't hit me with a single bullet.

The other example I wanted to highlight is in the first car storage area of the boat level, when you burst out of the truck upon some unsuspecting guards. I was beating my head in trying to run past them to safety. I finally realised that it was the machine gunner with his extra-powerful firearm that was finishing me off before I could flee onto the air vents. So I set about trying to take him out. I would disarm the first guard by grabbing him from behind, toss the weapon, then strafe around a box so that I could quickly kick the second guard in the knees. He would hunch over, another attack would knee him in the face, then two more punches and he was sprawled on the ground. I noticed the machine gunner was standing next to a truck. I ran top-speed while in cover so that he couldn't see me, then burst out next to the truck - a wall kick spun him around for a quick disarm maneuver, and throwing his weapon to the ground, I knew then that I would be able to climb to the ceiling without getting killed.

These are just two examples of how I dealt with the combat scenarios using the attitude championed by the game's design. Amazingly enough, even in speed run mode (where it's in medium mode by default) these are the sort of tactics you need to succeed. Is it that the majority of gamers have FPS combat tactics so deeply etched into their psyche that they can't approach Mirror's Edge's threats without requiring total victory to proceed? After my own experiences, I find it hard to see these situations raising such a wall in the general flow of the game.

At the end of the day, I got a great thrill from the challenge of trying to maintain momentum across rooftops, through shopping centres and around deadly threats. Matthew Gallant makes a good point at The Quixotic Engineer about how it's a puzzle game at times, and it really shouldn't be. But I'll contest that, once you've cracked the puzzle, shaving precious seconds off of your times calls in the exact type of flowing, freeform gameplay that he feels clashes with the level design in general.