‘Mirror’s Edge’ Comes to the iPhone Early 2010

The App Store is no stranger to 2D platformers, with games like ‘Rolando’ having achieved huge success. However, most of the games in the genre are developed by either one person or small development groups looking to make a name for themselves in the gaming idustry. There really aren’t too many 2D platformers from big name companies. Come 2010 that’s going to change when Digital Illusions CE, better known as DICE, releases ‘Mirror’s Edge’ to the public.

That’s the biggest difference between the console and iPhone versions of ‘Mirror’s Edge.’ On both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 the game was played from a first-person perspective, while on the iPhone it will have a 2D style. Well, it’s actually more like a 2.5D style. The game uses dynamic viewpoints to show the world around you while still keeping the gameplay that of a 2D platformer. The system basically breaks up each level into many different areas, and when the player switches between areas, the camera swoops to a new angle revealing parts of the environments that weren’t visible before. It’s hard to explain, but you can see it for yourself in the game’s official trailer almost anywhere on the internet. That being said, while ‘Mirror’s Edge’ will play like a 2D game, all of the environments are completely rendered in 3D. The game still retains the same visual style as its console companion, if not slightly more pixelated because of the iPhone’s reduced graphical capabilities.

Another major difference that comes with ‘Mirror’s Edge’ being ported to the iPhone is the gameplay itself. Though the concept of “sprint through the level as fast as you can” is still the same, the way it’s executed is much different. Because of the game being a 2D platformer, there will be far fewer things for the player to see in detail such as every tiny ledge on a building. Although this does take away from the level of detail in the game, it also eliminates a lot of the guess work involved with the console version. Because there won’t be so many different things that look like stuff you can grab onto levels should be much more straight forward and flow more smoothly.

As far as technical details go there aren’t many. No information on control schemes has been released yet, but judging from the gameplay featured in the trailer they should be intuitive and responsive enough to allow players to pull of inhuman acrobatic moves without any trouble, not clunky and unresponsive like too many other iPhone games (or at least let’s hope right?). No details have been given on the story either, other than that it won’t be the same story from the console version of ‘Mirror’s Edge.’ As far as gameplay goes, the game will be played through a third-person view in a 2D platforming style. Players will rush through levels across rooftops and through sewers with the ultimate goal of reaching the end of each level as quickly as possible while completing various objectives that do very little to interrupt the flow of the game. There will be fourteen levels in all.

Even though the game is due out next month there really isn’t all that much information out there other than the basics, probably because it isn’t a huge title and giving away much more information would give away more spoilers than most people would like to see. Still, from what we know so far and what we’ve seen in the gameplay trailer, ‘Mirror’s Edge’ looks like it’s going to be one hell of a mobile game. For anybody who loved ‘Mirror’s Edge’ on the Xbox 360 and Playstation3 (even with all its flaws) this is definitely the first iPhone game to look out for in 2010.

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