Early Reviews Reflect Well On Mirror's Edge

The much-anticipated first person non-shooter Mirror's Edge is being released today for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Reviews for the game, while not without complaints, are generally positive. 1Up praises the controls, saying, "It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. ... Once you're familiar with Faith's abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it's easy to see potential routes through the world." Ars Technica is more critical, noting that the main story's gameplay only clocks in at about six hours, and that the artistic style doesn't vary much between levels. Nick Channon, a producer for Mirror's Edge, sat down with Gamasutra and discussed the reasoning for some of their design choices. The PC version of Mirror's Edge and some additional downloadable content will be available in January.

Comments

No more bobbing screens

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I just finished playing through the downloadable demo and I'm happy to see that they've finally implemented what actually happens with your point of view when you run. There's no more "the entire screen bobs" to simulate a walking/running effect. When you run, you're looking at a point in the distance and that never diverges from your center of view. If the camera's orientation is represented by an arbitrarily long pool cue, the tip of the cue is resting on what you're looking at and the end of the cue (the camera) moves up and down and side to side. So objects far away barely move at all while objects right beside your head move as much as your head does.

On another note, it's nice to see EA come out with something original though check back in a few years and see if there's a Mirror's Edge 2010, 2011, and so on.