Sunday, November 02, 2008

Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360) Demo Impressions


I downloaded an gave the demo for Mirror's Edge (Xbox 360) a try yesterday and replayed it today, and I must say I'm rather impressed with it.

You play as Faith, a runner (someone who carries and delivers illegal information to people who would prefer to remain anonymous) in a city that's very government controlled, and the appeal to Mirror's Edge is simply how you navigate through the game's environments.

The game is first person, and you're basically racing all around rooftops jumping, tumbling, climbing, etc. all over the place in crazy, death-defying situations. I've seen a lot of people complaining about the game's controls, and while they took a moment to get used (and to marry them with the game's mechanics), I found them very intuitive. In general, Left Bumper is your everything with the occasional use of Left Trigger, but how well they came together to let you quickly and fluidly navigate the demo level's environment was a nice rush.

Graphically the demo looked nice. The environments are generally crisp and clean, which goes along with the story-theme of complete control and order. Audio wise the voice acting was good, and the music was excellent. I really liked the tracks featured thus far.

At this point, I wouldn't pay full retail price for Mirror's Edge, but it's definitely a title to watch the reviews on. While a nice change of pace from your average game, I can see how the environmental navigation could wear thin after a while, but it's certainly worth a rental for a weekend or so. Really, how often have you heard me say something like that based off of a demo for a game I haven't been following?

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