Mirrors Edge it’s a cult classic game the first game released back in 2008 by DICE the guys who made Battlefield. This game is a free running parkour game kind of like Dishonored and Assassins creed. It has a philosophical nature to it particularly existentialism and free will.
The game is a futuristic utopian city where life is comfortable and that the city they live in is under the control by powerful yet highly corrupt corporations.
This is a reboot prequel that takes place before the main series.
One of the most notable things I found in the game are its traversal style. You can do free run parkour and its very smooth and fast and you can travel in any direction and run on walls.
The Graphics are very good along with its bright visuals powered by the frostbite engine. It does feel futuristic and deeply immersive and the graphics always do run smoothly.
The Combat in the game while fast and I do like the martial arts first person style of combat and Faith's Combat animation for her melee combat. The combat itself is average to say. You cannot kill people in this game as you can't use weapons. The combat takes time to get used to as this is not a button masher you have to use different kinds of techniques. And the game encourages you to use your movements and attack swiftly to take out enemies quickly. You can also jump kick enemies as well and attack from above which is pretty fun to do. You can evade enemies at anytime while you are off missions or take a stealthier approach to avoid combat.
The enemies can be tricky to fight at times I had to get up several times due to one enemies overuse of using his electrical taser as a weapon instead of adapting and trying to use his own skills to fight me. And one enemy kept knocking me down several times while I was trying to hit him and he kept countering my attacks so I had to improvise and use my traversal abilities. The combat while I do like the style it could have used more work. There is takedown cameras that switch the game to a third person view but while well done they don't really appear often as they should.
I found the open world to be very interesting and with having parkour it is fun to jump around and explore buildings. The open world is on the rooftops of the Glass City and if you fall off to the streets you are going to die. Later on you acquire a M.A.G which acts a zipline and grappling hook for you to get around the city quicker and explore new areas which is fun.
Character wise each of them can be hit or miss. Faith I found to be your typical action girl she has a good character to her. Shes resourceful,adventrous,skilled and witty I like Faith shes a pretty decent character. Icarus I found to be arrogant and way to overconfident in himself. And Rebecca is your typical charismatic ruthless anarchist fight the power resistance leader. The supporting cast was one dimensional and uninteresting.
The learning curve is pretty steep. If you don't get it right the first time practice again in free roam or missions to get it better next time right? In this game you have to do the mandatory tutorials instead of skipping it like and you have to get it right the first time or else you are going to be doing it over and over again.
The upgrade system in the game basic movements that should have been given to you at the start you have to unlock them with your xp points by finding collectibles and completing missions and side missions. But you do unlock them earlier later on once you have enough xp points and you can also upgrade your abilities as well like increasing damage towards enemies and earning more health bars.
The story is ok but not the best. I like the futuristic style of it along with the Philosophical themes but it would have been more interesting if it wasn’t so focused on the typical fight the power type of story you can see in other forms of media.
The game does have collectibles to find such as audio logs to learn more about the backstory of the city of glass. And documents which covers on who are the characters you meet and the backstory of the city itself.
The game has multiplayer aspects to it like creating your own time trial races. If you have friends unlike me you can find entertainment in it by challenging them in testing their skill in parkour.
The music in the game has a futuristic ambient feel to it. Which suits the philosophical nature of the game and its pretty good.
All in all It does try to be good but it could still use improvement.
The game gets 3 stars
I like this game I actually enjoyed the fun of the in game parkour and exploration finding my own paths and how smooth the game runs. I think it could have been more better if they would have taken the time to rework the combat mechanics and work on the story more.