There was a lot of interest surrounding Mirror’s Edge in the
build up to its release in 2008. It was an intriguing idea for a game, mixing Parkour
with a first person view point to run through a near-futuristic city. For Dice,
it was an experiment with gameplay and unfortunately it didn’t quite work. Thankfully
it wasn’t a complete flop. The game-world was a stimulating scene of perfect
whites and bright primary colours. It stood out as a visual feast in a time of
grey-brown shooters.
Both EA and Dice had been very coy about the prospect of a sequel.
It seemed that another original IP had been doomed to a single instalment for
not being blockbuster success. So it was a pleasant surprise to see a teaser
trailer for Mirror’s Edge 2 at this year’s E3.
Being a teaser trailer, it didn’t really give away much. In
particular, the direction Dice will be taking the gameplay in. Mirror’s Edge
was a bit of an unfocused mess, as it veered between exciting Parkour chase
sequences and clunky combat that would break the flow; usually as a hail of
bullets blocked your progress.
And as shown in the trailer, the combat is here for another
round. Dice only need to achieve two things to make melee fights a welcome part
of the game rather than a frustrating roadblock. Learn from games such as the
fantastic recent Batman titles, which demonstrate how to perfectly have big
flowing melee brawls; and clearly sign post which enemies you have to fight and
which you’re supposed to evade. There were points in Mirror’s Edge where you
were never really sure if you had to stop and fight, or keep running. The
action often devolved into a horrible trial and error routine, as you
frantically scrabbled for the path to follow.
A revamped control system would also add a lot to the
sequel. Faith had an extensive move set, but it was difficult to time your
actions. The minimalist HUD wouldn’t give you any hints as to how long you
could wall-walk for, or when you needed to time your melee moves to disarm
opponents. It gave the game an unnecessary high skill requirement, which a
couple of interface hints could go a long way to fixing.
My biggest hope, is that the world becomes a lot more
fleshed out. The opening cinematic set up the events of the story for Mirror’s
Edge, but you never really got to find out more about the city. It looked
gorgeous and was fun to run around, except you never got really explore it.
There were some opportunities to take different routes, yet the majority of the
game was a linear path. It would be interesting to see some real branching
paths that give you a choice in how to approach the level. Most of all, it
would be great if the story for the sequel is longer than five hours. The length
of the story really hamstringed Mirror’s edge as it was hard to justify paying
full price for such a short experience. So here’s hoping that Dice use the time
they have (as the trailer simply gives a release date of ‘when it’s ready) to
perfect the sequel, and deliver a game that matches the hopes we had for Mirror’s
Edge.
