You may or may not recall the release of Mirror’s Edge on consoles back in 2008 but it featured parkour style acrobatics, stunning and interesting artistic style and a strong female lead that wasn’t over sexualized but still alluring all in a first person viewpoint. It certainly was not a typical run and gun game of the genre as the protagonist known as Faith didn’t use guns at all, in fact she had moves to disarm enemies that did. Flash forward to 2010, a 2D platformer version of the game is released for the iOS platform which brings us here to it finally being ported to Windows Phone 7 in 2012. While not as flashy and as graphically intensive as its console big brother this game has quite a bit of charm but not without its flaws which we will be covering in this review.
Graphically the game is pretty well rendered on the smaller screen and hardware of the Windows Phone 7. This version of Mirror’s Edge would be considered a 2.5D games as its displayed as a side scroller but
utilizes 3D models to represent the world. We have well designed character models and the brightly colored backgrounds and saturation of the console version but in terms of overall geometry of the backgrounds the lower polygon count does become apparent but its nothing that detracts from the experience as where the polygons need to be they are. The animations of the character models are pretty fluid and do not look rushed or robotic which I’ve noticed with lesser mobile games utilizing a 3D rendered engine.
The game features some good tunes including the single “Still Alive” by Lisa Miskovsky featured in the console release. The sound effects are generally crisp including most of the vocal effects from Faith and the enemies she faces in the game. However some of the vocals for the enemies just come out muffled and low quality which just seemed odd considering the other sound effects didn’t suffer this same effect.
As for how the game plays? Well, the controls are fairly simple utilizing finger swipe motions to tell faith when to jump, slide under an obstacle, deal with an enemy or clamber up a wall.
The game even utilizes the WP7’s built int gyro to utilize tilting the device to balance Faith out when sliding down ramps or crossing narrow beams which adds a little to the strategy. This all works nicely during the slower paced portions of the game but when the action starts to ramp up it almost seems like the game forgets how to interpret your motions. There were several frustrating moments when Faith simply wouldn’t do what I told her to do like perform a jump kick into a guard shooting at her or when she’s clambering up a wall and totally missing the jump. For all the action in the game it does get a little monotonous after awhile as the levels go on, the variety of obstacles starts to dwindle down and it starts to lose your attention. The game only features 14 levels so it is fairly short but for a mobile game that isn’t too bad. As for replayability, each level features messenger bags that can be collected in each level and not all are easily found. The game also features a Speed Run mode which allows you to either beat your own times in the levels you have cleared or go against others times on the leaderboards.
All said and done the game could have offered more and it falls a little short of being all that it could of been. Should you check it out? Definitely, but expect some frustrating moments along the way.
| Verdict: | |
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You may or may not recall the release of Mirror’s Edge on consoles back in 2008 but it featured parkour style acrobatics, stunning and interesting artistic style and a strong female lead that wasn’t over sexualized but still alluring all in a first person viewpoint. It certainly was not a typical run and gun game of the genre as the protagonist known as Faith didn’t use guns at all, in fact she had moves to disarm enemies that did. Flash forward to 2010, a 2D platformer version of the game is released for the iOS platform which brings us here to it finally being ported to Windows Phone 7 in 2012. While not as flashy and as graphically intensive as its console big brother this game has quite a bit of charm but not without its flaws which we will be covering in this review.
Graphically the game is pretty well rendered on the smaller screen and hardware of the Windows Phone 7. This version of Mirror’s Edge would be considered a 2.5D games as its displayed as a side scroller but utilizes 3D models to represent the world. We have well designed character models and the brightly colored backgrounds and saturation of the console version but in terms of overall geometry of the backgrounds the lower polygon count does become apparent but its nothing that detracts from the experience as where the polygons need to be they are. The animations of the character models are pretty fluid and do not look rushed or robotic which I’ve noticed with lesser mobile games utilizing a 3D rendered engine.
The game features some good tunes including the single “Still Alive” by Lisa Miskovsky featured in the console release. The sound effects are generally crisp including most of the vocal effects from Faith and the enemies she faces in the game. However some of the vocals for the enemies just come out muffled and low quality which just seemed odd considering the other sound effects didn’t suffer this same effect.
As for how the game plays? Well, the controls are fairly simple utilizing finger swipe motions to tell faith when to jump, slide under an obstacle, deal with an enemy or clamber up a wall. The game even utilizes the WP7’s built int gyro to utilize tilting the device to balance Faith out when sliding down ramps or crossing narrow beams which adds a little to the strategy. This all works nicely during the slower paced portions of the game but when the action starts to ramp up it almost seems like the game forgets how to interpret your motions. There were several frustrating moments when Faith simply wouldn’t do what I told her to do like perform a jump kick into a guard shooting at her or when she’s clambering up a wall and totally missing the jump. For all the action in the game it does get a little monotonous after awhile as the levels go on, the variety of obstacles starts to dwindle down and it starts to lose your attention. The game only features 14 levels so it is fairly short but for a mobile game that isn’t too bad. As for replayability, each level features messenger bags that can be collected in each level and not all are easily found. The game also features a Speed Run mode which allows you to either beat your own times in the levels you have cleared or go against others times on the leaderboards.
All said and done the game could have offered more and it falls a little short of being all that it could of been. Should you check it out? Definitely, but expect some frustrating moments along the way.
| Verdict: | |
|---|---|
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