Well, that didn’t last long.

This one phrase describes every good feeling I had about Mirror’s Edge.  Over and over, the game was determined to beat every last scrap of enjoyment out of me.  As I played, the feelings of sheer visceral glee I experienced in the first level were replaced by frustration.  Nearly every aspect of the game’s design has fundamental issues that are impossible to overlook.  The levels are obtusely constructed and infuriatingly paced, the combat is awkward and far too difficult for its own good, and the story is incomplete, incomprehensible, and banal.  Perhaps worst of all is that the best things this game does can all be seen in the demo, and you will miss nothing by not seeing the rest.

The biggest problem with this game is how, given its remarkable advances in creating a realistic first-person perspective, it is completely ruined by having some of the most insipid, poorly-designed levels I’ve ever seen.  Each stage beyond the first has numerous areas of brutal difficulty that bring the game to a dead stop.  Whether it be a giant room with no apparent exit filled with a dozen armed guards at a distance or a cramped hallway with a jumping puzzle whose solution is so needlessly complex it takes thirty minutes to get through, you will fail.  And fail.  And fail.  Honestly, the environments are so chock-full of confusing, rigidly-linear paths, I’m surprised anyone playtested this game at all.

Yep, I’m dead again.

I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the broken thinking behind the design than by examining the function of the circle button.  Most of the time, it will snap your view to the current objective in the environment.  Sounds good, except this almost always means tilting your head back far enough to break your spine, and then only to point out a door at the very top of the gigantic room you’re in.  Thanks, game.  How about showing me where to begin climbing, where to go first, instead of where I’ll end up twenty jumps from now?  Better yet, why not take a look at, say, any game from Valve and see how they lead players to their destination using only the environment?  I hear they’re good at that.  But no, instead you’re going to create areas that make absolutely no sense, which require constant and illogical double-backing to get through, and whose only “alternate” paths lead to a cheap death.  Your pathetic where-do-I-go-alizer button is merely the joke of some giggling programmer, thinking of all the times I’ll press it hoping it might actually help me.  Screw you, giggling programmer.

Thinking back, the thing that really drew me in to this game was its aesthetic.  Just from the first trailer, I was entranced with the possibilities of how the developers would take me through this visually distinctive world.  The story trailer whetted my appetite further.  Would I be meeting up with my clients to transport their sensitive information across a vast, detailed city?  Crisscross my way through danger, just in time to deliver my charge?  End up in a web of political intrigue, fighting for the freedom of information?  No, actually.  None of the above.

Duhhhhhhhhhhh…

What we do get is a yawn-inducing murder “mystery”, told entirely between first-person conversations and animated cutscenes.  The in-engine bits work just fine, but the animated portions are startlingly awful, apparently rendered in Flash and whose quality makes Adult Swim cartoons look like classic hand-drawn Disney.  Also, like 99% of videogame stories, Mirror’s Edge commits the carnal sin of beginning in medias res and then promptly forgets to explain anything about who you are or what you’re doing.  This results in the player being expected to fill in the gaps for himself.  Since absolutely nothing of interest happens (apart from the most unlikely and ridiculous “confrontation” I’ve seen in years) why should I bother?  The answer is that I shouldn’t.  And neither should you.

About the only people I think this game will appeal to are masochists and speed-runners, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  The game has a lot of built-in functionality for just that purpose, which I’m sure is already being used by gaming savants to set records I could never come close to beating.  Personally, I can’t stand needless trial-and-error gameplay, especially when it stems from bad game design.  Unfortunately, that’s all Mirror’s Edge is.  So, if you want something to kick your ass, that always makes things as difficult as possible, that outright hates you, you need look no further.  For those of us who prefer to play games, stay far away from Mirror’s Edge.

Fable II is something altogether different from the first one, across the board a more polished and focused effort.  The world is bigger, the scale grander, and the pacing tighter.  Everything about the design and style of the game feels right, as though the ideas have been honed to a point through numerous iterations.  The result is a game that has a quiet, relaxed feel.  It’s neither overwrought with style, nor insufferable with pretension.  Many eyes have seen it before mine, and the game has clearly improved because of it.

My first impressions were not quite so favorable, however.  Technical issues were the first things I noticed after the introductory cutscene.  First off, the control feels amazingly stiff.  I liken it more to piloting a Segway than running around as an agile Hero.  Just moving around showcased the game’s oddest issue, that of a constant frame blur I think is intended to mask lower framerates.  In the high-contrast snowy village you explore during the first part of the game, just rotating the camera resulted in a streaky mess.  I also encountered numerous problems with the audio while performing for the random townsfolk; the game simply could not load the voice samples fast enough so the sound effects and eventually even the music cut out completely until I stopped.  These technical problems turned out to be something that I’m able to ignore after a while, but it created a noticeable negative undercurrent to my entire experience.

The game’s advertised hook is in how the world reacts to you and what you do in it.  Superficially, it sells its concept very well, with villagers talking about things you’ve done and bits of the world changing as a direct result of your deeds.  However, trying to see beyond these things reveals little.  Soon, you begin to see that people are easily influenced to do anything you want in minutes, and getting married to an NPC results in a relationship with less depth than a Tamagotchi.  Seeing my personal interactions accounting for very little, especially in gameplay terms, ended up making me feel the least attached to those I was meant to care for most.

For me, the make-or-break with this game was whether I was able to fully invest myself in the world and people I met, and ultimately, I couldn’t.  It’s hard to make believable people in videogames, I know.  As a longtime gamer I’ve learned to do many things to make me more likely to ignore unavoidable shortcomings, but this game seems to think it’s addressing some of them without actually doing so.  The result is that when something happened to my husband, my dog, or even me, I felt mostly unaffected.  This surprised me given the emotional investment I remember feeling by the end of the first game.

The tone of the game is partially to blame, being a switch between whimsical and destitute with barely a transition between them.  The darker themes (and my favorite parts) are explored almost entirely at the end of the game.  It’s a shame that this portion of the game is also the most hastily-assembled.  It’s in such a hurry to get you through the final sequence and into the endgame that for me, it almost played itself.  After the smoke clears, you’re left to finish any lingering quests along with a handful of new ones.  And yet, since I finished maxing out my strength and skill trees just before completing main quest, I don’t feel the need to do more than I have.  The world isn’t going to change anymore, and neither am I.  It’s a fantastic option for completionists, but I’m ready to move on.

Overall, the game is competently made and can be very immersive, but I found the tonal changes and lack of deep characterization to be a serious detriment to my enjoyment.  Thinking back, the first game had higher highs (and admittedly lower lows) that actually resulted in me caring about it more.  Fable’s identity and character were made by doing more with less, and the sequel feels like it’s doing enough with enough.  It’s hardly a bad game, but I’ll always remember the original more fondly.