Cyberpunk Review » Mirror’s Edge (A review from our reviewer’s forum)

July 1, 2010

Mirror’s Edge (A review from our reviewer’s forum)

Review By: Gren

Year: 2008

Developer: EA Digital Illusions CE

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: High

Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Medium

Rating: 7 out of 10

Finally managed to pry my head out of my ass. I don’t like letting CPR go so long without some kind of review or news, so I’m going to act on a suggestion from our resident Stormtrooper of Death. If I see that there have been no front-page updates and I haven’t read/watched/played something worth reviewing, I will check the reviewer’s forum and post a review from there. This way, should the news be slow, we can keep this site fresh.

To start, here’s Gren’s take on the recent parkour/free-running game Mirror’s Edge (Link to the Reviewer’s Forum post). I purchased this game via Steam, but couldn’t play since my video isn’t up to specs. Once I do that upgrade and get to play, I’ll post my little review in the comments. Till then, take it away, Gren…

Mirrors Edge was one of those games I was psyched about for months. I hung on every second of the hauntingly beautiful trailers, did my best to chisel out every little detail I could about the games stirring theme: A lone girl named Faith (who happens to be a Parkour expert) attempting to live free in a society ruled by a psychotic surveillance state.

Faith

You just gotta have Faith.

The product they ultimately delivered possessed all of these qualities in theory, but the theme was more or less ignored in favor of a simplified plot involving a kidnapping by the government, a thinly veiled conspiracy, and a daring rescue. It was about when I was sneaking into the office of a pro wrestler turned ‘goon in a suit’ named “Rope Burn” to interrogate him that I realized the game was getting a little bit off message. Also, the game sometimes seems like it’s trying to convey some sort of political message, but apparently it keeps getting confused on which message it’s trying to send. On one hand, the cuddly nanny state which takes the place of the games thematic antagonist is typically a perversion of an overly liberal society (”you don’t need guns, we’ll keep you perfectly safe, there’s cameras everywhere, self defense is so last century”). Yet halfway through the game your apparent enemy becomes a cartoonishly evil Private Military Corporation (which is why it scores “Medium” on the theme rating instead of “Low”), which is a theoretical scenario associated with an overly de-regulated or libertarian society. It’s also entirely possible that this mash up is entirely apolitical, but the theme seems to be at odds with itself in this regard.

There’s a lot of cyberpunk fluff padding out the games plot, such as hideouts bristling with computers constantly monitoring the city’s surveillance grids and police patrols, the members of the protagonist’s organization all have these cool circuitry tattoos denoting some sort of ‘hacker status’, but it rarely has anything at all to do with the game itself. Also, because the cutscenes are delivered in a trashy 2d flash animation style, it removes these elements even further from the experience.

However, the visuals of the game itself warrant a mention. When you’re standing on the edge of a sky scraper, over looking an endless white city sprouting from the earth like fragments of polished bone, speckled with only sporadic blotches of color (usually propaganda billboards), watching cars drift silently up and down the thoroughfares like drone insects, you’ll feel for a moment that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Don’t Look Down

Nosebleed territory…

You can find plenty of reviews that will explain the particulars of gameplay and story in gratuitous detail, but for the purpose of this site, suffice to say the gameplay is fair and with an emphasis on movement rather than combat (though combat certainly exists and is seldom optional).

In closing, Mirrors Edge is still an enjoyable game, even with the afformentioned detractors from the plot and theme. It’s extremely linear and has no significant multiplayer to speak of, so replay is limited. It’s definitely not a game for everyone, and some folks will tire of it exponentially faster than others. If you can forgive it’s short comings, though, somewhere in the midst of a forty foot jump between buildings, with the streets below passing like a dizzy dream and the birds scattering in anticipation of your landing, you might find the feeling the game is trying to convey.

Comments

July 1, 2010

comwedge said:

Check out another review here:
http://www.machetegirl.com/ezines.html

July 2, 2010

SSJKamui said:

Thanks for starting to add user reviews from the forum to the main site.

Hammerjack said:

I agree with SSJKamui, thanks for doing this Mr. Roboto.

July 3, 2010

SSJKamui said:

I hope that there will be more than just 1 User Review per Month. (At the moment, we have more than 16 User Reviews, so, I think this would be possible.)

July 4, 2010

Stormtrooper of Death said:

Indeed, SSJKamui, its is good that now user reviews start to appear on the frontpage.

Simply, the more people write reviews, the more up-to-date or interesting this site becomes. We have a lot of members who made or are going to write reviews. So, its just logical.

Hmm, i am wondering why SFAM or Mister Robot didnt do this from the start of CPR in 2006 ? anyhow, i am not the boss, but i agree with SSJKamui, Hammerjack and with myselve. hihi.

July 5, 2010

SSJKamui said:

In the past, the User Review to the Album Cyberpunk of Billy Idol was put on the main site, but I was also wondering why the other reviews weren’t already put on the main site.

July 7, 2010

stn said:

if this is cyberpunk then it’s not the kind I enjoy. Broad daylight, white and clean lookin buildings … Where are my beloved cyborgs ?

July 8, 2010

comwedge said:

It is cyberpunk but in the tradition of things like corporate greed and slipping through the cracks in the system. I agree though the daylight factor is unsettling aka “What if they see me” type issue. In all fairness to this review it does say its not for everyone.

The most annoying factor is I can only play it on my machine with nvidia card on it and its running XP ffs!

I tried getting past the lack of weapons issue in the game and for me unless you have a psi lazer attached to your brain that blows shit up in a million fames per second……..nup

July 9, 2010

Not Necessary said:

This site truly is a disgrace to The Seventh Art, and most notably cyberpunk genre.
Especially because the reviewers are giving ridiculous scores and writing ridiculous reviews. Not at all surprising since this is all, one can expect from under aged, undersexed and and poorly educated people. But then again this is what America is known for, throughout the world…

Cyberpunk reviewers/fans?

Hardly…

Film critics?

GTFO!

July 14, 2010

G4sM4sk said:

Not Necessary: Your post only invalidates your opinion.

Only an idiot makes a statement as to why something is of poor quality either in content or scores and yet doesn’t give an explanation as to why they feel as such.

————

Good Review Gren! Don’t let the zombies of pretentiousness get you down. :)

SSJKamui said:

@G4sM4sk: I agree.

August 3, 2010

Mike said:

Where are my beloved cyborgs ?

August 18, 2010

K3 said:

@G4sM4sk- well said. I also enjoyed the errors in grammar and punctuation in Mr. Necessary’s sentence describing others as “poorly educated.” Silly trolls…

September 9, 2010

Marc McKenzie said:

Solid review; it’s pretty much spot-on. I loved the game, warts and all (sorry, but searching for 100% perfection is, to use the expression, a “Muggs Game”).

One thing does work in ME’s favor: this game delivers a true “First Person” experience. The last two games that did that were BREAKDOWN and THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK.

It’s too bad that the game was slammed (unfairly, in my personal opinion), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a solid game that delivers quite a bit. Yes, the cyberpunk elements are toned down, but they are there.


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