Hello everyone, welcome to my second review here on Vizzed, and because I'm so psyched about Mirror's Edge 2, I felt like talking about Mirror's Edge today. I'll let you know, I actually used to do parkouring when I was about fifteen years-old, and I was pretty okay at it too. But then I fell on the ground hard, broke my ankle, and that was the last time I remember ever parkouring. But some time after that I saw Mirror's Edge laying on the shelves of my then local gamestore and I just had to try it out. Although I didn't expect much from it, I'm someone who always prefers the real thing to a simulation, Mirror's Edge was a real pleasant surprise.

I have never felt the urge to parkour in real life ever again.


The Graphics
This game's style and presentation is obviously its strong point. The menus are beautiful, feauturing a lovely white city background. When you start the prologue, the first thing you'll see Faith -the character you control- do, is run along the side of a skyscraper, leaping from a billboard onto a construction crane, sliding down, jumping from the lowest point towards another building. All in first-person! How's that for an opening presentation? Furthermore, the entire game still looks utterly beautiful. There's 'runner vision', which shows all passable objects, such as ramps to leap from; beams to balance across; boards to wall-walk across; etc etc. Seeing as how nearly everything in this game is coloured brightly white, it is as if the bright red objects say "BAM! Look at me in my all-majestic redness!" You get what I'm saying, do you? This game's just beautiful. Even for a game from back in 2007, the visuals could still pass for a game in 2013. It's just that stunning.

The Sound
The soundtrack is beautiful, from the piano medley to the ambience in the levels. There's this level, The Shard I think, where I just refused to make progress for a couple of minutes because the ambiece was just so hypnotizing. The game also does a great job at going from calm, soothing background music to more rushy 'oh damn, I need to go!' techno music. The voice acting is also top-notch. The only thing I noticed here and there is that when I was being shot, a bullet I heard hitting me sounded weird. As if something something scratched a microphone. There are a few bugs here and there, but it's nothing really horrible.

The Addictiveness
If it isn't clear yet, I'll make it clear now; I love parkour. It is only natural that I like Mirror's Edge a lot. The free running is fluid; disarming a bad guy -however difficult it is- feels very satisfying; there's this slowmotion button which is actually meant for you to make disarming easier, but when you leap off of a high ledge and trigger slowmotion, looking down the busy streets... man, I could do that for hours. The time trials got me coming back for quite some time too. I actually once held the #2 record time of the Prologue level! So that was cool. But anyway, I was quite addicted to Mirror's Edge.

The Story
Ehh, the story didn't interest me much. You're a free runner, and naturally, the police doesn't take kindly to it. You're in a city which is almost free of crime, which makes the police that much more eager to shut you down. Your sister is wrongly accused of a murder, and you have to save her. That's pretty much it, if I recall correctly. I didn't play this game for the plot, I played it for the sweet parkouring. And that's what this game does best.

The Depth
The stuff you can do in Mirror's Edge aside from the free running is pretty basic: there are time trials from both the levels of the campaign to made levels where you can compete for the world record. This may sound very 'been there done that' but this is a lot of fun as this isn't just any racing game. Be gald, though, if you end up in the top 1000 for each level. A lot of record holders are internet addicts who owe their world record to watching YouTube vids. You can re-watch cutscenes, listen to the game's soundtrack, etc. All very basic stuff, but it works.

The Difficulty
I noticed a lot of people talking about this game like it is really difficult. If you ask me though, it is one of the easiest games I own for my Xbox 360. Pathfinding is usually a piece of cake, and once you disarm a baddie, you can easily dispose of them by shooting them. This game is pretty short, and as soon as you have a gun, each action sequence should be easy as pie. There is this challenge though, where you need to complete the entire campaign without firing a single gun. This may prove to be a challenge for some, but I didn't have much trouble with it. Overall, I think this isn't a hard game, but apparently the opinions differ on that.

The Verdict
Overall, Mirror's Edge is great. The visuals are beautiful, free running is awesome and it's thrilling to make a flawless run. The sound effects may be buggy, and the game may be a bit short, but still. You'll find a lot to love in Mirror's Edge.

Pros:
- visuals are stunning
- controls are great
- musical score is unique

cons:
- sound may be buggy sometimes
- a little short

This is a great review written by you. It had Lot's of detail, and depth as well. I would like to see more reviews coming from you, This is great. Oh, and I saw that duplicate review don't worry to much about it. All it is a glitch so worrying about getting in trouble won't help. Anyways well done. You mastered the are of reviewing, and you did a fine job at it as well. Also for some help on your reviews that might make the a little better. Here are the links to my two best reviews I did so far.

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=59890

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=60296

Well that is about it good luck until next time fellow reviewer of the future .