{"id":1496,"date":"2008-11-18T08:11:21","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T14:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2008-11-18T08:11:21","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T14:11:21","slug":"mirrors-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/18\/mirrors-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror’s Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>\"\"<\/a>Mirror’s Edge is the kind of game I\u00a0hate because of how much I love it. (Portal is another great example.) These are games that thrill me with their style or uniqueness while making me want to break the record for how fast you can throw a controlleragainst a wall. I’m about halfway through and stuck in Mirror’s Edge, stuck in a way that makes me want to NEVER start the game again … but I know that’s not true. I’ll break eventually. Mirror’s Edge is too interesting and cool for me to be able to ignore it completely.<\/p>\n

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Mirror’s Edge features acrobatics, combat, and what could be called puzzle solving. In a highly stylistic future world where cel-shading meets anime, Runners use Parkour (look it up, preferably on YouTube) to leap from building to building. They scale fences, scramble through openings, rush down hallways, and, frequently, fall to their death. The cutscenes and story are fairly trite and simple, so I really can’t tell you why these couriers risk their necks, why the city is so empty, and why police are always shooting at me, but I can tell you this. Running along rooftops is exhilerating in a way I didn’t expect. It’s kinda like in the Spider-Man games when you get the hang of web swinging. Maybe it’s because I played several grim and horror themed games right before this one (Dead Space, Left4Dead, Brothers in Arms), so the white on blue (with red accents) and style of the game are so intriguing – while the story isn’t.<\/p>\n

Combat is problematic and there’s too much of it. It reminds me a bit of an experimental game Bungie put out before they became “The Halo Company” called Oni.\u00a0 Oni had a female asian protagonist – like this one – who could fight like a fighting game. The parkour in Mirror’s Edge is terrific but also frustrating. Red shows you where to go, and the B button shows where the goal is, but it’s easy to get stuck and have no idea how to move onward. Add cops and helicopters shooting at you, and this problem is compounded. It’s the kind of game everyone should rent but only a select few will be wild about the purchase. It’s far cooler in concept than execution, but in a cookie cutter world, that can be welcome and even refreshing.<\/p>\n

KID FACTOR:<\/p>\n

It’s not a bloody game and T-Teen feels exactly right. Falling can be disconcerting, you fall in first person, but falling equals failure, not death. The acrobatics are thrilling and Kids? Don’t try this at home.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mirror’s Edge is the kind of game I\u00a0hate because of how much I love it. (Portal is another great example.) These are games that thrill me with their style or uniqueness while making me want to break the record for how fast you can throw a controlleragainst a wall. I’m about halfway through and stuck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}