Blog
Mirror's Edge impressions by Voyou
i am sure i am alone on this
by Voyou San
So here are my thoughts on Mirror's Edge, do hope you enjoy this thought/rant. For safety reasons, you might want to keep any small children out of reach of this thread.
So after trying to demo i was unimpressed and proceeded not to pick up the game for many months, despite friends telling me it was a fun experience. Well thanks to gamefly i decided to give this another shot since at 7 hours and no online worth mentioning it is the perfect rental game. Well after an hour or so and chapter 3, i closed up my gamefly envelope and sent Mirror's Edge packing back to the hell it came from. So where did this game go wrong you ask, well i am glad you asked cause i will tell you.
The Controls
What drunk blind man thought up these controls and how did EA ever let this ship like this? This has to be the stupid laid out control scheme i have seen in my many years as a gamer. Really EA/DICE, out of all the buttons on the control to use, this was the best you could come up with? L1 to jump, L2 to slide, R1 to, oh fuck i give up already. They had me convinced the controls were rubbish at L1 to jump, what the flying shit is that? Which leads me to point B...
The Combat
Why even put hand to hand combat in this game if you are just going to half ass it? I mean it really feels like the developer decided at the last minute the game might not sell that good unless you put some hand to hand combat and crappy gun controls into the game. And it does not help that the button configuration that made running and jumping horrible is now also used to try to combat crime, oh but its not just them, you also get to use the 
.. I KNOW, i was pumped up at this thought also. I mean the combat is so horribly implemented that it makes you wonder if they tested the game before it shipped.
The Looks
I wonder if the painters of this city ever ran out of white paint because the WHOLE DAMN PLACE is white. I mean who paints a whole city white??? SERIOUSLY??? Its blinding and I for one find it a bit racist!! On the topic of looks, who designed the main chick and the crappy ass tattoos all over her arms and face, and really for that point, who designed the crappy character models all together, the game just does not look good and maybe thats what it is going for.
yes i know the last paragraph was just nitpicking but you get my point. I was completely disappointed in this title and i feel sorry for the people who wasted 60 bucks on it. Maybe they can address all these issues with ME2 but considering this is DICE/EA behind it i am not holding my breath. So 2 hours after it arrived, it is going back. Your friend VS has dismissed this title FOREVER!
Comments
Yikes! You may be in the minority in completely hating this game but hey, everyone's entitled to his or her opinions and honestly is always appreciated, no matter how brutal.
sorry you didn't like the game. i really enjoyed the hell out of this title, so much so that when we went to meet NECA toys, I spent like 20 minutes trying to convince them to make a Faith action figure. Anyway, I understand all your points (with the exception of city design), and could see how the controls could aggravate some people, but after a few hours they felt really simple and intuitive to me, and I was doing things more second nature than thinking about which button to press. I totally agree that the combat is awful, and spent much of the game avoiding it when possible... but hey, at least you only Gamefly'ed it.
Yeah, I can understand where you are coming from controls-wise, but the look of the city was completely necessary and intentional. C'mon - the sanitized white city of our dystopian future, it's genius!
i just dont get why they didnt add the option for custom controls.. any game that trys to make me slide with L2 and hit R2 to kick is just asking ot be hated by me. Also i dont know how many times i ran up to an enemy and hit R1 to attack only to have my chick do a 180 and get owned in the back...
but yea .19 i am very glad i just rented it. I would have been pissed if i payed 60 bones for this. I just hope for a ME2 with custom controls and zero combat, unless they actually want to refine the combat and give faith much needed flexability in combat.
I do sort of agree about the control scheme, but I eventually got used to it. I totally disagree about the look of the game. The white was a deliberate choice to highlight the sparseness of this horrible future.
Nice little rundown you've got here.
I'm curious, what button should they have used for jump? It would suck to have it be A or something, considering how often you need to jump. I usually don't like moving my thumb back and forth between the stick and the buttons too much.
well if your going to make jump a top button thats fine, but then dont make all the other damn buttons in the game a top button. I just hated hitting L1 to jump, then L2 to slide, R2 to kick.. it just didn't feel comfortable..