Elation follows when you've cleared that final hurdle by the skin of your teeth, but herein lies the game's first problem. If you don't make that hurdle, you're left to the mercy of the checkpoint system. Now, I've never been an advocate of checkpoints, much preferring the good old quicksave Some say it makes games too easy, I say you don't have to actually use it if you think that's the case. Certainly, Mirror's Edge could have been improved by the presence of an easily tapped F5 at an opportune moment Tire problem with arbitrary checkpoints is that they have to be placed perfectly to be effective.
If they aren't frustrations quickly mount up and mice get thrown out the window. One of the things most likely to put someone off a game as a result of this is being forced to repeat the same section time after time. In a title like Mirror's Edge, where the excitement and thrill of the chase is the primary ingredient doing the same bit again completely negates that.
Due to the uneven dispersal of the checkpoints, you often have to start a substantial distance away from the place you died and, if this happens to be a tricky part there's a group of cops or a helicopter shooting at you, for example you're going to be quickly grinding those teeth down to bloody stumps. This is where Mirror's Edge's signposted linearity becomes both a blessing and a curse.
You see. The advantage of Mirror's Edge's linear model is that, most of the time, you know exactly where to go and everything clicks into place to produce brilliant action sequences. The game is at its very best when the split-second decisions go your way, when you make that leap between speeding trains or smash through the door just in time to avoid being cut to pieces by gun fire.
Where the linear model falls flat on its face is when things aren't immediately obvious, leading to moments of confused frustration as you're trying to figure out where to go as the cops are shooting you up.
Couple this with the awkward checkpoints and you have a recipe for disaster. There's also no option to quickly restart from the last checkpoint at least none that I saw , which can lead to problems when you clear one in the middle of a difficult section, but then mess up afterwards, falling back down or regressing to a point before the checkpoint. In the trickier platforming sections towards the end, you either have to do them all again or quit to the main menu and reload that way, which is hardly ideal.
Thankfully, these moments don't occur too often though, as you'd expect, the further you go, the more likely they are to crop up. Usually, Runner Vision guides you in the right direction. Runner Vision not available on the hardest difficulty highlights important areas of the landscape that you can use to jump off, cling on to or manipulate by colouring them in usually bright red. It isn't a foolproof system though - sometimes the important areas aren't highlighted at all, which can be frustrating when indoors.
The danger with the Runner Vision feature is that it can make the game feel too linear, like it is on rails, but as we saw above, by having these signposts all over the place, you at least avoid the frustration of getting lost and dying repeatedly.
Runner Vision is one of the most prominent examples of Mirror's Edge's unique visual style. As you can see from the screenshots, the environments are post-modern in their stark colour schemes. At first, you'll be worried that all you'll do is play about on rooftops, surrounded by the gleaming white buildings and primary coloured Runner Vision objects. Thankfully, DICE have done a good job of varying the design of the locations, while sticking to their 'slabs of colour' template.
It really does make for some striking visuals, even when indoors, which makes a refreshing change from most games. What you will also notice is how resolutely clean everything is - even the sewers are devoid of dirt or grime.
The lack of visual clutter means the game will perform really well on midrange machines, even with a smidge of anti-aliasing chucked in. The slab-like nature of the colours and architectural design makes anti-aliasing particularly important, as crisp edges make the visuals look a lot more impressive.
That said, I did get one or two moments of inexplicable system crunching at random times and I couldn't find a way of un-letterboxing the game, but on the whole, things ran as smooth as silk. Having it in letterbox wasn't a hassle either - in fact, I didn't even notice it until somebody pointed it out. As a first-person game, there are also a few moments when you're forced to fight back against the cops, mainly through hand-to-hand combat and disarming moves.
When your crosshair turns blue, you have access to a bullet time-esque slo-mo ability, which makes it much easier to time your attacks and disarm your opponents. If you do succeed in stealing a gun, you can use it to defend yourself for a short period.
What you can't do is pick weapons up off the floor or obtain extra ammunition for the one you are holding. This might annoy some, but the game wouldn't really work if you were allowed to tote weaponry around all over the place. One of the best things about Mirror's Edge is that it makes you not want to kill the police - all you want to do is have it away on your toes. In any case, you'd also miss out on the opportunity to deliver a flying kick to a cop and send him flying off a building.
You can even wall-kick by jumping off a wall, spinning and then executing a flying kick. It would have been interesting to see a Riddick-esque system employed, with more context-sensitive moves and actions available, but you usually don't want to get anywhere near the police, so it isn't really something you ever truly miss. Most of the time, combat is actually a bit fiddly and you'll often end up being killed while faffing about trying to pull off a move.
Curiously, Faith can also get hit by more bullets than she can take violent shoves from the enemy. Windows Windows. Most Popular. New Releases. Desktop Enhancements. Networking Software. Trending from CNET. Download Now. This patch fixes a potential freezing issue that some machines might encounter only when PhysX is enabled. Full Specifications.
What's new in version v1. Date Added February 2, Version v1. Operating Systems. Additional Requirements Mirror's Edge full game. Total Downloads 8, Downloads Last Week Faith has a greater variety of movements because of the 3D structure of the game. The player will see the world through Faiths eyes with the first person perspective camera.
Players will see the world as Faith makes her way around the vast city, jumps from rooftop to rooftop, and sneaks into buildings through the vent systems. For example, if she is running at an increasing speed the camera will start to bounce up and down quicker as well.
0コメント