Mirror’s Edge is one of my favorite games of the last generation, despite mediocre reviews. The gameplay and visuals were amazing, and the premise had a lot of potential, but there wasn’t much of a story and the character was one-dimensional. The comic tries to alleviate that by delving deeper into Faith’s backstory.
The comic actually takes quite a while to pick up, as the first two issues are complete filler. I almost gave up after the first issue had nothing going for it. It’s not until the last three issues that the story picks up, but it becomes a little predictable and continues to remain slow-going.
We are learning about Faith’s personal childhood, how she grew up in the city, and what her role as a runner is all about. At the end of the series, it all makes sense and becomes clear, and I felt more connected to Faith, but it takes forever to get to the point. I also didn’t like the art style here, as it was blocky, void of detail, and barely captured the beauty of the game.
Overall, if you’re a huge Mirror’s Edge fan, then read the series. It’s short, and the only thing we’ll get to really give us more story in this game.
Remember Me is a brand new IP from Capcom. I always welcome new IPs because you never know when you’re going to get the next Assassin’s Creed. Once I started to remember me, I instantly fell in love with it. The art style is fantastic, the story is engaging, and the characters are memorable. This will be a game I talk about for years to come—at least the story anyway.
You are Nilin, a memory hunter fighting against M3morize. M3morize is a corporation that invented technology to let you forget any memory you want and gain memories. As you can tell, this leads to civil war because everyone eventually becomes Leapers, who are completely corrupted and bereft of memories. It turns out that there is some sort of new world order to wipe out everyone’s memories and make them all mindless soldiers. That’s the gist of it, and if I say any more, I will give too much away. The story is fascinating and really plays well with the art style and atmosphere.
The problem with new IPs is that the developers concentrate on just one aspect of the game, and the rest gets left behind. This is apparent in Assassin’s Creed 1 after playing AC3. You can see the difference. Remember Me has an amazing story and characters, but the gameplay is just lacking; it just feels useless and unnecessary. The tools you have to play don’t really mean anything in this game, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The first thing is the combat system. While it’s unique, it is very limited and actually holds the player back. Nilin has four different combos she can do over the course of the game. You fill these combos with two different attack buttons called presses. These presses can increase your health, decrease S-Pressen cooldown timers, give you more powerful attacks, and cause a chain reaction. This seems really interesting—gaining health during combat? It’s more frustrating and limited than you think. With just four combo chains, you have to memorize all four of them and also remember what presses are in each one. I had one as a focused cool-down combo, then one for health, and the third was for power. The further in the combo the pressen, the bigger the effect. With just four combos, combat gets really repetitive and super boring; it just never picks up.
Once you unlock S-Pressens, things get a tad bit interesting, but only during boss fights. These are powers that can let you attack really fast, stun everyone, place a bomb, and even turn invisible and get a one-hit-kill on an enemy. You can use two different ones on robot enemies that will attack you. These S-Pressens are key to winning tougher battles later in the game. That’s all there is to combat, and it is so limiting and repetitive. I actually only kept going because of the story.
Another part of the game that is never fully developed are the puzzles. There are only four in the entire game. These allow you to remix people’s memories to make them think something happened in a different way. You watch a cutscene and then rewind it, looking for glitches that can change the scene. You have to set off the right glitches to change the memory. The problem is that there are no multiple outcomes. You just keep retrying until you get it right; there’s no fun in that. If I mess with someone’s memory, let me decide how it goes. I also wish there were more of them. There are also memory puzzles that you interact with in the world. They are usually really easy, and the answer is given to you after just a minute. I hate how these things were so underdeveloped; they are great concepts. There are a couple of move-the-stuff puzzles using your arm’s special powers, but I felt these were useless. You unlock a gun-type thing that can blast enemies and move things. Why do I need to unlock this throughout the game? Honestly, the moving and blasting open doors just felt like pointless filler.
Lastly, the exploration is very linear. The controls respond well, but the best part is just viewing everything. You get taken from the slums to the richest areas of the city. The journey is fascinating and breathtaking. Remember Me feels like a mix of Mirror’s Edge, Steven Spielberg’s A.I., and Blade Runner. I ate it up, and the characters are very memorable. I just wish it had better gameplay to complement it.
After you finish the game, you will be talking about the amazing story for a while. While none of these mechanics are bad, they are just underdeveloped and feel like they need more work. The combat is interesting but very limited and repetitive; the same five enemies repeat often; and the puzzles are underdeveloped. I hope Remember Me comes back because I love Nilin and her journey through this breathtaking world, which just gives us better tools to explore it.
For one, I rarely buy games like this on day one without knowing that I’ll at least want to play them 2 or 3 times, and Mirror’s Edge was a great buy, but I wish I would have waited for a price drop first. Now don’t get me wrong, go spend $60 on this and you’ll have one hell of a time, but for the length and content, ME cuts it a bit short. ME is a parkour/free running/building jumping/limber skinny people running around like monkeys on rooftops game and is very well executed.
The first thing I’d like to mention is the warming soundtrack EA created for this game. EA has finally listened to the fans and got rid of the horrible EA Trax, a bunch of wannabe punk and metal bands mixed with lame hip-hop and R&B that everyone with half a brain and decency turns off. EA’s new IPs (Dead Space and ME) have an original, rich soundtrack that fits the game very well. ME has a slow, soothing OST with lots of low basses and some poppy techno thrown in. The game’s main theme by Lisa Miskovsy (ironically titled “Still Alive”) is a charming song that really gets the feeling of the game across. A woman and message deliverer for the resistance named Faith, who’s sister was framed for murder, must find the killer of the person her sister, Kate, was framed for, and must bring all of this to an end. In a rebuilt city corrupt and full of backstabbers, Faith must scour the rooftops to find entrances into buildings to find her targets.
Scouring these rooftops is both fun and beautiful, thanks to the game’s amazing graphics. EA’s next-gen engine (used and updated from Skate.) makes ME one of the best-looking games ever made. Everything is highly detailed, with buildings as far as the eye can see, reflections off of windows, and everything is just highly detailed. The game looks similar to Portal (hmmm…just mere coincidences here?) with lots of HDR lighting and lots of blinding whites, blues, reds, and oranges. The art style really helps the game’s feel and works brilliantly. The cut scenes, however, are a bit different and detract from the feel of the game with cell shading similar to those Esurance commercials (with that hot pink-haired Esurance chick that has tons of porn available everywhere). While this style works, it really is a detraction from the actual game. The voice acting is really good here, and the characters are decent except Faith, who is the only character you get attached to thanks to the game’s absurdly short length (6–8 hours, depending on how you play).
Now back to how the game plays: it plays well and feels well, with a few flaws. The game’s control scheme has its plate full of lots of different button combos that take a little while to get used to, let alone master. You have all of the parkour moves available to you, such as building jumping, wall running, pole swinging, zip lines, three-step jumps (LB, RB, LB), wall climbing, shimmying, etc. Additionally, you can make runs faster by pulling your legs up instead of double-stepping jumps or hopping over rails. This makes time trials go faster and keeps your speed up. Finding your way in ME is fairly simple since you have “runner’s vision,” which makes certain items turn red, and you use them according to what they are. Boards leading off buildings usually mean to jump down; small objects in front of a larger object mean you double-step your jump and vault to a ledge; you can crawl in vents; and a lot of the time you must climb poles attached to walls and even jump to them! The game is fast and very smooth, and you don’t have to be afraid of sluggish controls. The whole game is responsive and reacts to your commands.
The biggest flaw in the game, however, is the combat. Most of your enemies have guns, and you don’t. This always proves a problem. Most of the time, you just run away, but when you’re forced to fight, you must take on 5+ enemies in one room using melee combat, jumping kicks, sliding kicks to the nuts, etc. The combat itself works well, but actually using it against enemies with machine guns, shotguns, etc. doesn’t work out too well. Try taking down five guys in one room with shotguns just with your fists—not too easy. This requires disarming (timing is a must, of course) and either using their guns against other enemies in classic FPS action or just being very fast and outsmarting the enemy with kicks off of walls and all that. While the combat is manageable, it’s flawed and makes up most of the trial-and-error in the game. The game has little trial and error outside of combat since most of the deaths are on the player. Try finding out where to go without a runner’s vision while 10 guys are shooting at you; that can be very tough to do, and in some spots, I had to try 20+ times just to get it all right.
With that flaw aside, ME proves to be an amazing game and should be played by all FPS fans, Parkour fans, or just action-adventure game fans (PoP fans can come out of hiding now!) With ME’s wonderful soundtrack, graphics, art style, story, and gameplay, you will stay busy with the time trials and speed run. I hope ME2 improves upon all of this, and I will be there when it comes out.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.