I've been playing Mirror's Edge and I'm not impressed. The visual style is cool, and there are some moments when the free-running is fun, but mostly I just find the game frustrating because of a lot of poor design decisions. The controls really have some odd choices, and some parts are really frustrating. I actually got stuck and had to exit to the main menu because it's impossible to just drop from hanging on a ledge. (I tried to jump where there wasn't a path, grabbed onto a "ledge" that wasn't really supposed to be there, and couldn't do _anything_ but struggle.) The amount of times that I had to replay sections because I wasn't sure how to tell the game to do what I was expected to do.... Why is picking up a weapon done with the right mouse button, and not the use key? I honestly thought I couldn't pick up weapons unless I did a disarm move, until I had to watch a walkthrough for a level where you're required to pick up a gun.
My biggest complaints, besides controls:
- Runners vision looks cool, but is actually used as a crutch for poor level design, and it's still not as useful as it needs to be because they had to put in an Alt key function to point the player in the right direction (and it's hit or miss if that works correctly)
- The shooting, good gravy, the shooting. Even worse was the boss fight like encounter in chapter 7. I hope there's no more of that bullshit. It's not just that the shooting is out of place, but it's also just floaty gun aiming with poor feedback on if bullets are hitting or how much damage they're doing.
- Wait, I'm going back to the controls, why would you make using the scope on a sniper rifle the F key?
- Checkpoints are put in ridiculous places. In a fast paced game racing around rooftops, why would you ever put a checkpoint before a cut-scene or put one where you have a slow-opening door to wait for after every retry?
- Bland level design that makes no sense. Staircases do not work that way.
- Bland plot, underdeveloped world, cliched characters
I've only got two chapters to go, so I'll likely see this through to the end, but I'm glad I only paid $1 for this, I think I'd have been upset if I'd paid $5.