Play Diary: Mirror's Edge

I tried it out on the PS3 and enjoyed the experience of linking together moves to run over the cityscape, but was disappointed that the PS3 version didn't let me save multiple games - I'm told that you can do this if you 'log in' as a different user in the PS3 menu. I don't have a PS3 myself so didn't know this was possible, but it strikes me as a pretty bad idea. Is this how most games work on that console? How do you know which user you're logged in as? What's wrong with the traditional method of giving you several different slots to save in?

Anyway, it was cheap on Amazon so I decided to buy it for the PC as I'd heard this was the best version available.

First problem: Saving. On the PC I expected this to be easy (choose a filename, click save) but it looks like they've tried to replicate the console style. First of all you have no option to save multiple games, which is clearly a bad idea! Secondly the location of the save games is hidden (so how do I know what to back up...?) While most games default to saving in their installation directory, ME puts it into My Documents. Unfortunately there's a strict limit on how much data I can put here on my PC at uni as it's on a shared drive. As such I often log in to the computer rather than the domain, in which case My Documents is actually in a different location. The upshot is that the second time I played the game it didn't find my save file. Hugely annoying. As usual the internet had the answer as it seems other people were experiencing the same problem.

Discussed on IGN as Save file location.

An improvement over the console experience is combat and navigation. With a mouse you're able to move and react in a speed appropriate to the game. Looking around the environment with analogue sticks is slow, and trying to aim at enemies is inaccurate.

Personally I really like the use of colour and pixel effects. The enemy textures aren't terribly good though.

Overall impression so far is ok. I think they could have done so much better with a more free-roaming environment, or at least made the game less binary - currently I get the feeling that there's one correct route to take, and if you don't get it precisely right you die swiftly and without negotiation. To me this is pretty dull and breaks up the key aspect of the game: flow. Even something as simple as Prince of Persia's time rewind would be an improvement. Ideally though I'd like to feel like I had much more choice about how to navigate around with much more margin for interpretation and improvisation.

A typical scenario would be: Enjoy running and jumping to location X, take one false turn and die. Wait for reload, repeat the now boring navigation to get to the same point as before, try another option and probably die again. 3rd time lucky. Overall experience: tedious frustration.

An ideal scenario would be: Enjoy running and jumping to location X, take a false turn and have to run / jump / bounce / climb away, try a different option then run / jump / bounce / climb away again. 3rd time lucky. Overall experience: embodied flow.

I've started to watch the cutscenes now. I don't know whether this is because I'm interested in the story or am becoming disillusioned with the game...

Yahtzee's review.

Elevators are basically dull loading screens. Surely they can come up with something better than this? Especially on PC.

Got stuck in chapter 7 (the Boat). Had to read walkthrough.
Chapter 8 climbing the tall scaffolding is so annoying! How many times must I die!?