Aka “Mirror’s Edge is Just Like My Fugitive Dreams!”

That’s right. :O My fugitive dreams, where I end up having to run from someone. I end up having to skip over hills, fields, plains and countries, just to get away from them, only to find that they managed to follow me. :O

In Mirror’s Edge, you spend most of the game running to the goal, and occasionally from bad guys. Kinda like my dream, you cover great distances (by running, jumping over buildings, stairs, fences, railings, grabbing a hold of things on the sides of buildings, etc). It’s also very surreal-looking, with the color palette being mainly cool colors (whites, blues, blacks), with the occasional red, orange and yellow (yellow mainly, for the sides of buildings and walkways, anywhere you’d normally expect to see a yellow painted area in a city). Things that hint at where to go to get to the goal are highlighted in bright red (almost #ff0000 red, but not as bright). Things like planks leading off to buildings (jump off them to reach the roof of another building), sandbags, ladders, stairways, doors would fall under this category.

And what did I think? It took me a while to get used to the first person view. @.@ I’m used to third-person (S4 League, Shadows of the Empire, etc). I kept missing stairs and corners in hallways because I couldn’t see the character. XD But it also helps put things in perspective a little more (rather than you controlling Faith, the runner, YOU are Faith). It also upped the surreal setting a bit more. @.@

It’s not a shooter game. There are moments where you can use guns, but you can also disarm enemies and take them out with your fists (not to mention carrying a gun has its downsides, like you’re slowed down). Also in some situations, it’s usually better to run from the guards than to confront them.

I only played the demo on my brother’s PS3, since my own computer doesn’t have the requirements to run it (3.0 GHz processor, my MBP only has 2.4 GHz). It’s very graphics intenstive (you could actually see the lifelike textures on Faith’s hands). I heard on Amazon that some people haven’t been able to play it period, because of the SecurRom thing. The PS3 version has this feature where you can control the character’s balance by tilting the controller. This comes in handy when walking across pipes and other narrow objects from one building to another.

For me, it’s very intense. Those who are expecting a shooter will be disappointed. Otherwise you constantly have to be on your toes, not just while running from baddies, but while running and jumping over obstacles, grabbing ledges and the like.

(And I think I will be having some very weird dreams tonight. ^^;)

Modified: June 22nd, 2009