Most recently I've been playing Mirror's Edge, although that is all about to change with the weekend gaming schedule always being hectic. This is one of those games that I think peaked a lot of people's interest but overall was met with a "wait and see" attitude. While it's no secret that there are mixed reviews for this game I find it to be a great gaming experience for multiple reasons.

First off you have look at the overall experience of game play. We've seen first person games that aren't necessarily shooters before but none quite like Mirror’s Edge. It’s the acrobatic elements and overall fast paced game play that set this game apart from anything even resembling competition.

While the first person perspective may cause problems in terms of spacing and positioning, especially when one extra foot really does matter, this is something that can be overcome. It’s the ever-present learning curve that some gamers seem to despise, in fact a lot of the complaints I read about the game are a result of just that. Sometimes when you play a game you won’t have the controls mastered within 30 minutes, gamers need to accept that. With some practice you become quite good at navigating your character and if you think outside the box you’ll be amazed with the movements you can perform. There are even achievements for string together movement combinations, just attempting to get these will help you to better understand the ways Faith can move.

The story in Mirror’s Edge is an interesting thing to analyze. In the game you play as a runner, Faith, who is attempting to essentially save all other runner and her police officer sister all while uncovering and defeating a massive conspiracy. There’s a bit more depth to it but not much, and to be honest it’s a fairly standard video game plot. While the story is simplistic I don’t think the game requires much more. After all it is the game play that’s the draw here, but if you need that emotional connection to your character in a game you’ll be hard pressed to make one with Mirror’s Edge. Interestingly enough this game would actually make a great movie. The plot is basic but could easily be expanded, there’s a lot of action and could be amazing that respect. If they threw in a love interest or at least more development of another character it would be something I could watch. Just don’t tell Uwe Bowl I said that.

From a more technical perspective the game still holds old. Game play is overall very smooth and fluid, though I’m not ready to give Dice and standing ovation for this since anything else would be incredibly broken. The combat works fairly well once you get the hang of using it and the best way to defeat or disarm enemies, although just running past them is often easiest. Even though it’s not meant to be a shooter you can acquire guns, which makes certain parts of the game a little easier, but the aiming is terrible. I often wonder if this is intentional as the developer must have had the resources to implement at least a decent aiming scheme. The character models are just plain horrible but luckily that trend doesn’t carry over to the beautiful environments of the game. I’ve had some issues with brightness settings of the game but I attribute that more to my television than anything else.

If you’re a person who requires that a game have multiplayer in order to buy it I wouldn’t count Mirror’s Edge out quite yet. While the game is single player only there is a lot of replay value in it. Like other games you can of course work your back through the story doing things differently or adjusting the difficulty to gain achievements, but it’s more than that. There’s “Time Trial Mode” and “Speed Run Mode”. Speed Run is just individually replaying each chapter while trying to meet a benchmarked time. You’ll get 10 points added to your gamerscore for beating the time but once you’ve done that you may find yourself done with the game mode. Of course there are world leaderboards and friends lists to contend with but unless you’ve got a group of at least ten competing you won’t be too drawn into that. Time Trial mode is smaller sections of maps in which you have to reach various checkpoints. There’s a large replay factor with this mode. You can try to beat various times set by the dev to earn a star rating for each trial as well as leaderboards. The best part is you can essentially race friends by downloading their fastest run, a red “ghost” will even appear on your screen for you to race. The best part about these ghosts is you can download anyone’s ghosts to see how they achieved their unattainable times. So unless you get lonely and really need company there’s as much value to the game play as most games that have a worthwhile multiplayer aspect.

So that’s the game, want a rating? 8/10 but this is a game where whatever score it gets is sure to cause controversy.