Mirror's Edge is being delisted, except it's not. While EA announced yesterday that it would be delisting several of its games, with both 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mirror's Edge and Mirror's Edge Catalyst included, there was an update shortly after that confirmed they were present by mistake. We don't know if this was really a mistake or a quick reaction to the backlash, with everyone's surprise and criticism aimed squarely at the removal of the two Mirror games, not at the act itself. But in an industry that faces huge problems with preservation, a major studio deliberately pulling its history from storefronts to save pennies deserves to be called out. Still, now that Mirror's Edge is back in the spotlight, it's worth highlighting how special these two games are.
For the record, the other games being removed are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Battlefield 1943, Battlefield: Bad Company, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. While I can sort of see the justification for 1943's removal as it's an online game (although I remain wary of delisting and shutting down servers in general), the Bad Company games are best loved for their offline campaigns. I'm still not sure what I believe about Mirror's Edge being included and then cut, but that means the official announcement included four out of five offline single-player games EA was just going to throw in the bin because it felt like it. Even after criticism, it's still going ahead with the Bad Companys, and we shouldn't let our celebration over Mirror's Edge distract us. Nevertheless, I will take any and all opportunities to talk about Mirror's Edge, so I'm going to snatch the mic while it's briefly in the news cycle.
Whenever studios talk about photorealism and the hundreds of worker hours spent crunching away on making the latest games have pixel perfect detail, right down to the soft hairs/t-shirts/horse testicles, I think of Mirror's Edge. It is 15 years old this year, and it looks better than many of the big budget games 2023 will bring. That's because it has a loyalty to its brightly coloured, impeccably lit artstyle. It's realistic in that it seeks to recreate a version of reality rather than a cartoonish world, but has a sleek, minimalist approach that makes it timeless. It's similar in that regard to the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wind Waker or Okami, but Mirror's Edge has managed to pull off the feat while still looking realistic.
In Mirror's Edge Catalyst, the sequel that arrived eight years later, the lighting was a little sharper, reflections had more clarity, and the cityscape had a few more details, but mostly it was just as it was. Mirror's Edge hadn't aged a day back then, and still hasn't. The distinctive artwork is part of the reason it has endured (and deserves to for longer, despite EA's possible intervention), but it's not the only reason. Mirror's Edge’s first-person gameplay is phenomenal, and no game since has even come close.
I don't usually go for first person games, preferring to see not only myself in the world, but my surroundings themselves. In first-person games, you can sometimes fall off a ledge because you didn't look down, which acts as a counterpoint against the argument that they are more immersive - this would never happen to a real person unless they were a descendant of Wile E. Coyote. But Mirror's Edge's frantic freerunning style gives you set routes to parkour through at speed while still leaving your options open. Because everything moves at speed and the solution is always right in front of you, Mirror's Edge brings you into the world. Titanfall 2 is the only game that has attempted to replicate this with any real success, and even then, things are complicated by the shooter mechanics and HUD. Mirror's Edge is clean. It's just you against the world.
Mirror's Edge's running mechanics were influenced by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:James Bond and Jason Bourne's chase sequences, and you feel the ferocity in every footstep. It looks spectacular, and not in that usual video game 'this looks expensive' kind of way, but because it feels distilled down to the perfect look for the tone and gameplay approach. Combat could be wonky, but I'm not arguing that it's the perfect game and no one should ever play anything else. Only that it feels uncomfortable for EA to even consider delisting a game so vibrant and unique. It's an important time capsule of how studios could rebel against technological restrictions placed upon them - everyone deserves the chance to play it.