What are you playing at the moment?

[Belmit]

Been playing Mirror's Edge after a long gaming hiatus, thanks to Leo!

This could have been one of the greatest games of recent times except for a few minor niggles that really put me off. Plus points for me were:

- Innovative game style. It lies somewhere inbetween FPS and sneak-'em-up with its free running aspect - you'll never come off best in a full on fight but have far superior speed and agility to get you out of trouble.

- Amazing yet simplistic graphics which give a sandbox feel despite pretty much constraining you to the set routes. Obvious setups for routes can be forgiven as using them is so much fun.

- Decent-ish story with nice animated comic-book cut scenes.

- Minimalist HUD and control system gives good flexibility and makes the game flow well.

But the bad:

- Pretty short. OK, so the levels are usually fairly big as you do a lot of running about but it would have been nice to have a bit more substance and/or more of the same fleeing across rooftops. Some of the best bits were just the parts where you're a couple of steps ahead of the enemy and making split-second decisions. These were the least complex bits with just obstacles on roofs (rooves?) and they could easily have added a few more.

- Combat. If you're up against more than one enemy, forget it. Disarming them is just too hard to do when there's another enemy shooting at you, and the fact that they're spot-on accurate unless you're moving and never run out of ammo just makes it nigh-on impossible. I would dearly love to have been able to run up to an enemy, disarm him and instantly use his weapon on the next, but the combat just has no flow to it and you'll either die or get punched down as you mis-time the disarm. There was one great bit where I slid along the ground and kicked an enemy off the rooftop, and more of that kind of thing would have been amazing. Instead you're either resigned to running away and getting shot in the back, or trying to machinate a situation where you isolate an enemy to get his gun then systematically take the rest out by trying to line up the reticle in cover and darting in and out, which sucks. More instances of using the environment against the enemy would have been great, but aside from that one piece of rooftop awesomeness there was simply none. Oh and once you get a gun you have about 6/7 shells or a clip of about 15 bullets before you have to discard it. Bloody double standards!

- Pipes and shimmying. In a world where speed and decision-making is key, why make it so unbearably slow to climb a pipe or shimmy across a ledge? Everything else is so quick and counts on timing your leaps, slides etc. so that you don't lose momentum. Then you have to climb a pipe like you have one wooden leg and no thumbs. With people shooting at you it really is a kick in the teeth when fighting the enemy isn't an option and running away is equally likely to get you killed.

- Precision. Having to redo parts you've already successfully finished because you just walked off a ledge is infuriating. There really ought to be more of a Tomb Raider style fall-prevention system where getting too close to the edge causes the character to scuffle and regain balance rather than just fall emotionless off the edge like a sack of zombie potatoes. Other times I found the controls oddly sporadic. Sometimes jumping off a pipe will cause you to spring gazelle-like through the air and cling to the next... and sometimes you just seem to let go and plummet. Occasionally I'd just get stuck on the edge of an obstacle and stop dead, which in this kind of game is unforgivable.

Overall I really liked the game, and will be going back to get achievements, but these things will continue to annoy me. Especially on the hard difficulty, where getting shot by multiple enemies is going to present a very big problem. My controller may be heavily dented by the time I'm finished!