The Combat of Mirror's Edge.

This is Part 2 of a little 3 part ditty on the game Mirror's Edge. Check out Part 1 - The Flow of Mirror's Edge.


I really like Mirror's Edge. I think that it is kind of like an updated version of the platformer. Everything is about precision jumping and the proper execution of simple button commands. I'm more stressed playing this game than just about any other game I've played in the past few years. So it does lots of things right.

Combat, however, is wrong.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Mirror's Edge is about the flow - that feeling of a continual hurdling over obstacles. The feeling that nothing can slow you down and you adapt to your surroundings to make sure that's true. Merc, the in-your-ear, tell-you-what-to-do guy, even tells you to run away from any "Blues" (cops) you run into.

So that's what I did. I knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. The game designers knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. And yet, I came to a room in the seventh chapter where the only exit was a door that takes about five seconds to open guarded by four soldiers with machine guns (and uncanny accuracy...). I think I tried thirty times to do it without killing anyone - just be confusion and misleading - but every time, I got shot dead at the door (if I made it...).

Combat is a real problem in this game. In some ways, it suffers the same problem as certain parts of the parkour system do: a zero margin of error. When I run and jump-kick a guard, I had better have lined up that kick just right and he better not be swinging his arm to hit me. If that's true, I'll sometimes land a hit. Forgive me for having this opinion, but I think first person melee combat should have at least a little bit of a margin for error.

The combat verbs are remarkably limited, too. My "attack" button triggers a right punch, a left, and then some kind of shove. It's very difficult to interrupt any of these commands should your opponent have moved or fallen quickly.

The Disarm action is especially infuriating. If you can hit the button at the exact moment the weapon flashes red, Faith will do some cool flippy moves to both knock out and disarm the opponent. If you miss, she flails forward with her arms both getting hit by the opponent and taking forever. If you're particularly slow learning (like I tend to be in games like this), you often end up hitting the button in the same moment of the opponent's attack cycle, thus opening yourself up for attack again. (Side note: Can someone explain to me why I can get hit by three bullets before dying, but I can only take two hits from a rifle butt? What sense does that make?) It's all very frustrating.

How it could be better: I think a little leniency could go a long way in how frustrating it is to damage the enemies in this game, but what Mirror's Edge really needs is some kind of target lock system. If we are supposed to take out enemies one at a time, then a single-enemy target lock system, combined with more contextualized actions, would be very effective in reducing player frustration with combat.

The real problem with the combat, though, is its very existence! This game is not about an awesome secret agent infiltrating the government and taking out an army of soldiers. It's about the Flow! Why on earth did DICE ask the players to stop the Flow to experience crappy combat?

I really can't think of a reason why the designers seemed to put so much emphasis on it in later levels. In fact, at the end of one of the final levels, there's what amounts to a boss fight against a ninja assassin! This brings me to my Game Design Maxim of the Day: Focus on your core gameplay experience. Anything else is tangential and should not detract from that core experience. Clearly, the combat detracted from the parkour. But boy. That Flow.... It's a good time.