The guns in Mirror's Edge

King of Posters
1

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst sucked. I could go on for paragraphs about how it ruined the first game’s incredible sense of momentum by placing you in a boring open world which necessitated back-tracking, repeatedly interrupted you with its collectables, audio-logs and side-missions (some parts of the game even make you hide, slamming the game’s momentum face-first into the ground). How it switched out the joy of running and climbing through the first game’s visually-stunning employee-only hallways, malls and subway stations and replaced them with boring, glossy eyesores and other garbage. How it took out the first game’s micro-story told through cute animated cutscenes, television screens, and background radios and placed its bloated mess of a story front and center. Instead, I’d like to focus on the thing that disappointed me the most: the removal of guns. It’s mind-blowing that they could get it so wrong.

A lot of people thought the guns in Mirror’s Edge 1 sucked and subtracted from the parkour gameplay. Some people suggested the only reason they were put into the game was to appeal to a mainstream audience. Here’s the thing though: the guns are actually incredible. They’re one of the best things in the game. They take down enemies fast, they’re loud, have no ammo indicators, and are huge and cumbersome (almost unwieldy), like how a gun should feel. Using them is a treat. They’re an addition, rather than a subtraction, to the game’s sense of momentum, making for some incredible gameplay situations.

For most of the game you’re running and climbing, but sometimes you have to deal with enemies who are against your youthful parkour ways. At the beginning of any combat encounter, the odds seem stacked against the player. You’re up against a bunch of armed guards, and because you were too busy climbing around, you’ve got nothing but your fists. But your character is fast and agile, and these armed guards are slow, so you pick your target, close the gap with speed, kick their ass and disarm them. Now you have a machine gun (ho-ho-ho), and something amazing has occurred: now these slow enemies are sitting ducks and you’re now both armed and fast. There are a few sections in the game where you’re up against snipers who are firing at you from above, but once you use your parkour to make your way to one of them, it’s payback.

Towards the end of the game you’re chased by a bunch of enemies who are invulnerable to melee attacks, just as agile as you are, and can take you down fast with tasers, but cannot be disarmed, so in this situation you have no choice but to run from them. You’re backed into a corner, and it seems like you’re screwed. Then, a cop busts down a door - he has a gun. He has unwittingly doomed his friends. These combat encounters allow the player to climb this power hierarchy and make for such an incredible gameplay mechanic.

People may not know it, but Mirror’s Edge also has the greatest vidcon version of the lobby scene from The Matrix. On the last level of the game, you enter a large lobby. Your destination - the elevator - is at the end of the lobby. Guards swarm in. You make for the first guard, a weakling who goes down easy. You take his weapon, and start emptying the clip into the next more armoured enemy further down the lobby. You toss away your empty gun, dash towards his body while avoiding gunfire, take his gun, and repeat on the next target. You’re now chaining together kills, until you get to the last guy who holds a large machine gun. You take him down, slam the elevator button and pick up his gun, pondering why the game would treat you to such a huge weapon in an empty lobby. Then you hear backup entering the lobby from the rear.

I wish more games would treat guns this way. So far it’s just this one, Breakdown and Alien: Isolation.

8 Likes
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Disagree strongly about basically everything you wrote about the first game. Here is the problem with the guns. They are actively less engaging to use than finding a way to run away. When I played I even avoided the melee combat as much as possible because the run-and-jump was literally the only engaging part

The story was also only any good because you could mute the dialog and skip all cutscenes and not feel like you are missing anything.

3 Likes
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Nope.

I am not feeling super enthralled with the new game, to be honest; not entirely sure why. It’s still got some juice in it, though. Mirror’s Edge + Open World is a deeply compelling idea. The single choke-points between areas and the way stuff is visually presented make it sometimes annoying to traverse with Runner Vision disabled; enabled it starts to feel something like a very expensive iOS runner. Combat is The Worst in this game, as well. Every time one of these Urban Outfitters Workout Collection street toughs open their mouths I am sad.

I feel like with some overworld map tweaks and more of the heavily-designed vertical sections this could have been a stunner; I haven’t seen it through to the end yet but I plan to, when it’s good it’s still good in ways that no other games are.

1 Like
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Ya I know what you’re saying, outrunning the popo in this game is still cool and usually the better option, but I’m specifically talking about the unique gameplay situations the guns provide in this game.

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So, I can’t actually speak to the experience of using guns in this game. I wanted that cheevo for getting through the game without shooting anyone so I doggedly stuck to fisticuffs (and probably worsened my experience of playing the game, tbh!). But I do like the thought process they had with guns, i.e, treating them kind of like “power-ups” and I really do wish more games would treat them as such especially outside of military settings.

Think GTA, for example. Your average person doing some concealed carry (legally or not) is going to have one magazine, so maybe like 10-15 shots total depending on the weapon. Starting a firefight, especially against multiple foes, is probably a terrible idea! Making players really sweat every shot like that (outside of survival games) is I think a really good way to inject some variety into the proceedings. It’d be good if limited ammo was also enforced on enemies (along with people actually carrying a variety of weapons with potentially incompatible calibers) so that easy reloads can’t be had in the field.

I’m going to play Catalyst at some point, maybe after that I’ll go back and play the original and freely use the guns and see how I feel.

1 Like
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Disarming guards then tossing the gun was a satisfying thing. I’m playing Catalyst right now and really enjoying it for what it is. The combat is actually worse but the open worldiness, however token, suits the series. Just make sure you don’t get burned out on side missions

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The later Uncharteds are very good at this. Your max carryable ammo is pretty limited and ammo drops from dead enemies are small, so if you stay behind one piece of cover and plink away you will run dry pretty quickly. It’s the game’s way of telling you to move around, which is a tactically superior way to play.

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this is so disappointing, I was really hoping they would get the human cannonball thing down

I’m kinda interested to play through #1 using guns now though

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Yeah, muting all voice acting is the secret true way to play the original Mirror’s Edge. There is not even any place in the game where you can get stuck because you missed useful information. Every single word of dialogue is stupid and useless and the game is strictly better without it. I did it on my first playthrough and the game felt nicely infused with shutupitude. In the quiet sections, I could search for paths in peace and it had an atmosphere and pacing a bit like HL2’s environment traversal sections.

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I remember that I was going for the pacifist run or whatever when I played ME, but the last level was so hard. I ended up dying so much that I tried the using the guns for the first time out of frustration and it was really cathartic lol.

2 Likes
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This is the premium mirror’s edge one experience.