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Mirror’s Edge (2008) Faith is a runner – a pedestrian courier that surreptitiously uses the rooftops as her pathways – but, given that her packages will almost be illegal, the authorities are trying to fulfil their clichés. So Faith, blah, blah, freedom, blah. 7/10 This is a game that treats the players’ input with disdain and where your on-screen avatar (Faith) simply refuses to put the effort in. She won’t help herself, she won’t try and grab for a ledge you’ve missed (by a femtometre) or go through a door or walk down a street unless you’ve meticulously avoided catching your invisible aura on door frames and the like. There’s no strain in her on-screen hands and arms and little sense that what you are doing is physically strenuous or miraculous. You frequently can’t look around using the right stick, the button that tells you where to go frequently doesn’t, the button to drop your gun sometimes won’t, the button to jump tends to be more of a suggestion and the button to make a hard landing soft is reinterpreted as ‘fall to your death’ if you don’t quite clear the gap or land on a vertical pipe. The inability to redefine keys is almost criminal as the control scheme is alien to learn and it’s advantage over the more traditional buttons used for jump, crouch and attack is never apparent. Even with all that, Mirror’s Edge is an unmissable game for striking art direction and proving platforming in first-person is possible and the game can be visceral, thrilling and rewarding and the ending is good. It’s a nearly game and, for such a bold and unusual attempt, that’ll do for now. This game contains mild swear words and offensive gestures and melee violence, gun violence, unpleasant scenes.
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