I wouldn't usually describe myself as one of unusual taste when it comes to games. True, I'm one of those boring people who'd rather poke themselves in the eye with a stick than play Modern Warfare, but apart from that most of the games I really, really like are fairly popular. Fallout 3, Bad Company 2, Max Payne 1 and 2, Tomb Raider 2 - they didn't just go down a treat with me, they had great market success too. Mirror's Edge, it seems, is an exception. Just about everyone I know who has the game complains, usually about the brief story mode, but also about the small number of combat moves or the lack of lengthy free-running sessions. Believe it or not, I've spent longer on Mirror's Edge than I have Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV or Gears of War.
Don't mistake this article for an endless list of praises of the game. It is as a tall Scottish acquaintance of mine would say, 'a flawed gem', and there are plenty of things I still grind my teeth about whenever I play it. The amount of vent-crawling and elevator travel, the mind-numbingly dull cartoon cutscenes, Merc always being needlessly impatient; the list goes on. I can't blame anyone for being let down by a story that lasts four hours either. However Mirror's Edge manages to connect with me in ways that most games don't, in an different kind of beauty.
Personally, I think Mirror's Edge has the best art style ever made for a game. I don't mean 'it has pretty colours' - sure, the colour scheme is great, but I think for once the use of colour and light actually fits with the plot of the game itself. It's a police-ruled fascist society, and while this kind of dystopia is usually complemented with a palette of dark, dingy greys and browns (see: V for Vendetta, Schindler's List, Half-Life 2) Mirror's Edge is instead glistening and radiant. The city is a shining white metropolis beneath a warm blue sky, and while it appears to be a happy place to live, it's finding the deceit of this that hits the player so hard. It even goes deeper than that, think of what white represents - purity, but also monotony and the absence of free expression. In contrast, the striking red of the rebellious Runners. Red has often been the colour of defiance, often by left-wing rebels in Central American countries. It hits hard against its white background, without having the dead feel of black. You can say I'm reading too much into this, but after playing through the game plenty of times it's clear to see that Dice thought long and hard about using colour as a tool for storytelling.
My second point might be more of a personal one, but it's not a technique that hasn't been used before. Players will probably notice that by the end of the game, they still know little or nothing about the context of the game. That might seem like a flaw on the surface, but think about other examples of gaming's artistic triumphs, for example Shadow of the Colossus and Limbo. Read any review and you'll undoubtedly hear how encapsulating the total ambiguity of the stories are. In one you're an unnamed warrior in an unknown kingdom, tasked with fighting mysterious giants to save your wife from death, in another you're an unnamed boy in an unknown forest, tasked with finding your sister and escaping from a horrifying situation you don't remember getting yourself into. The game doesn't need to tell you the whole story, because quite simply, the possibilities flying around in your head take you so much deeper.
Less on the artistic side is Mirror's Edge mastery of the first-person view. Let's face it; this generation has flogged the FPS' proverbial horse to death, and by the time the next console turns up there will probably be nothing we haven't seen twice before. Here, Mirror's Edge stands totally out from the crowd. It's in first person, but you're not carrying a gun (unless you pick up an enemy's, but only to be dropped again promptly), there's no ever-present HUD reminding you that you're not really looking through the eyes of a human, and perhaps most impressively, you can actually see your body. This has been done a couple of time before, in games such as FEAR, Halo 2 + 3 and various military sims, but never with so much detail and with such brilliantly smooth animation. Everything from the biceps down is visible, and looking down to see your legs treading air whilst leaping across a 20-foot rooftop gap in slow-motion is truly stunning.
Love this game as I might, of course I admit games are all down to opinion, and despite everything that strikes a chord with me, it's still not going to be everyone's cup of tea. As I said, amidst its peaks, it's not without its frustrations and for some they will be the game's undoing. Regardless, for what it's worth, I think that Mirror's Edge should truly be respected for doing something different, even if it perhaps didn't go as far as it should have. I might have triple-starred every time trial and mastered every speed run, but I know I'll be coming back to Mirror's Edge time and again these coming years.
