YMMV / Mirror's Edge

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Runners. Are they freedom fighters, as they believe, or small-scale terrorists? The story would be the same either way, and would even have a happier ending if the latter were true. Not for Faith, but for the city. Assuming the Resistance would ultimately be better for the City in the long run...
• Americans Hate Tingle: Some Japanese gamers hate the way Faith looks, calling her "ugly" and "narrow eyed", and that she looks like a Western stereotype of an East Asian woman. In response some critics created a more "attractive" version of Faith, with rounder eyes and larger breasts.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • The Final Boss, Jackknife, who you kick off a helicopter.
  • Minor villain Ropeburn is even less climactic, although he makes up for it in sheer frustration potential. Ropeburn charges at you with a metal pipe, and you are supposed to press the disarm button as it turns red (due to Runner Vision). The problem is that you need to actually press the disarm button quite early (just as the pipe starts to turn red). However, the frustration potential is totally subverted when you realize that the game doesn't punish you for pressing disarm before you're supposed to, so you can get through this scene 100% of the time by simply mashing the disarm button.
• Awesome Music: Faith is Still Alive... To emphasize how awesome the song is, if you listen closely to the in-game music, they all seem to subtly build up to the end of the game when the song finally plays in full. In fact, the main menu music is a stripped version of the main melody.
  • The rest of the soundtrack easily qualifies, fitting the game's clean, minimalistic, futurist visual atmosphere perfectly. Particularly the main menu theme.
• Awesome Art: Perhaps the most universally-beloved thing about the game (and its reboot to a degree) is its gorgeous in-game art style and environments, which by the game's design, you practically need to pay a lot of attention to. Just about every corner of the City of Glass is a masterclass of bright cyberpunk atmosphere — minimalist yet never feeling empty, clinical yet vibrant and colorful, very traditionally cyberpunk while being something entirely its own. Even though the game was released in 2008 (and fidelity-wise, some things like character models definitely show their age), it's still really darn pretty to look at.
• Breather Level: One could consider the elevators in the game as this. Also, Faith takes a few breaths, literally as well while in them or when you stop.
• Broken Base: The animated cutscenes. Some like the distinct style and think it adds to the atmosphere, others think it's a waste of a beautiful-looking game engine and that it's a jarring and unnatural shift in art style.
  • Catalyst reboots the entire franchise, meaning that the first game is possibly non-canon. This has led to debates over whether a reboot leaves the entire original game pointless, or if the plot was a small part of the game and not a big loss.
• Cult Classic: Between its then-unheard of Le Parkour gameplay, beautiful art direction, and female protagonist, this was a game no-one had ever played before. Despite an initially mixed reception it quickly became a beloved favorite and its flaws came to be seen as superficial.
• Disappointing Last Level: Chapters 7 and 9 (out of 9). Everywhere else you're gleefully flying around like an amphetamine-overdosed monkey. In these two levels you're a mouse in a maze being chased by amphetamine-overdosed cats. At least in Chapter 9 you can learn to be a sneaky monkey.
• Demonic Spiders: The "Pursuit Cops" are (almost) always avoidable, but the battle rifle-wielding bad guys aren't and can be nearly as frustrating to kill. They actually wear... protection.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Yay, Faith rescued her sister! Nevermind that Callaghan still has an iron grip on the city, the only major political opponent is dead, PK has effectively taken over the police force, and while you did wreck a server room that apparently has something to do with mass surveillance in the city, there's no real expounding on how lasting of an impact you actually made. Oh, and those anti-Runner PKs are still out there to make your life hell later. In fact, how exactly are Faith and Kate going to escape from the Shard, since Kate is handcuffed and assumedly doesn't have Faith's Le Parkour skills, and there's no indication that security has stopped combing the building looking for them? Who cares, time for hugs and credits! Although you could argue that leaving us hanging was deliberate.
• Good Bad Bugs: If you kick a mook off a ledge, they die. Regardless of how high up the ledge is. This is particularly helpful in the last fight, when you can take out one of your ambushers incredibly quickly by running up the stairs, kicking him off the landing, and watching him fall three feet to his death.
• Heartwarming Moments: Every time Faith and Kate hug one another, especially in the Ending.
  • The soothing power of the "Puzzle" themes for the last two levels (warning: possible spoilers) makes up for all those times you've fallen to your doom.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Just like another experimental game, some people complain about its length.
• Nausea Fuel: The camera perfectly follows Faith's eyes, meaning when she rolls to break her fall, you'd better hope that little dot in the middle of the screen does what it is supposed to do.
• Nightmare Fuel: When Faith falls to her death. It's accompanied by very realistic sounds and cinematics, to the point of inducing vertigo. Made even worse if the player is wearing the Oculus Rift, as they would literally see themselves falling to their death as opposed to just watching the monitor.
  • As if that wasn't bad enough, it ends with a very quick fade to black and a disquieting splat sound.
  • This is the sound that plays when Faith is falling to her death. If you think it isn't horrifying enough, look through the comments and read the reports of people who heard this while having sleep paralysis, but louder.
  • Also, another Nightmare Fuel can be the fact of some point of the game, you get chased by expert parkour police, with the same speed than you, jumping from buildings while you hearing behind you.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The game is remembered for its unique gameplay, which broke significant ground in first-person game genres despite it being a small experimental title, as well as its striking aesthetic. The story itself is deliberately minimalistic and not nearly as memorable, though the emotional anchor of a young woman's struggle for emancipation is regarded positively.
• Retroactive Recognition: Rhianna Pratchett has been getting more recognition for being the lead writer of the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot.
• The Scrappy: Jacknife for being a pretty generic, cocky villain.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The trial-and-error nature of the gameplay is a consistent point of criticism, though most find the game fun enough otherwise to overlook or even enjoy it.
  • Combat is another widely-criticized mechanic — first-person She-Fu is hard, and often unwanted. Disarming is particularly difficult, especially more armored Blues who need to be taken from behind. However, the game strongly encourages players to run from Blues rather than fight them; the combat itself is mostly there so you can fend for yourself should you ever find yourself cornered.
  • Wall jumping to a parallel platform is near impossible without Bullet Time. Too bad the hardest puzzles all need it.
• Tear Jerker: Not an outright one, but fairly depressing - in the Maintenan- er, Janitor's "Office" in the subway, he has a hand-drawn and very sloppily-spelled "Diploma" on his wall in crayon, along with a certificate of appreciation in the same style.
  • That's not the end of it, either — in an office in the PK facility, you find a memo about the same janitor calling one of the employees, claiming to be his brother and asking for a "diploma" like the official-looking "employee of the month" certificate the employee has on his office wall.
  • The lyrics to "Still Alive" about a city that's artificially clean and pretty:
    But inside my head so loud and clear
    You're screaming, you're screaming
    Covered up with a smile I've learned to fear
• That One Boss: Celeste, the "white runner" at the end of Chapter 7, is a one-on-one She-Fu match. Disarming her before she can headbutt you away is a major hassle that will likely take a few tries. Many consider it one of the most annoying points in the game.
• That One Level: A few candidates, depending on if you're playing a Pacifist Run or not:
  • The shootout inside Pirandello-Kruger has several guards up on walkways, so you have a lot of exposed ground to cover before you can get a gun. On Hard mode, they can potentially kill you before you even reach the walkway.
  • Opening the door at the end of the parking garage in Chapter 7 before the machine gun Blues get you can be quite difficult, especially since it's a valve door that takes time to open.
  • The lobby shootout at the end of Chapter 8 is fairly tough even with a gun. Doing it with your bare hands will make you pull your hair out.
  • For a more peaceful example, the CRC building has plenty of places where you can accidentally vault over a platform you meant to climb onto.
  • Midway through chapter 8 while scaling the inside of the tower, the wall jumps need to be really precise to get to the top.
• Vindicated by History: When the game initially came out, reviews were mixed and lukewarm. Sales weren't of EA's liking. Now the game is developing into a Cult Classic and the second game was eagerly anticipated. While that came out to mixed reception, this one is still looked upon fondly for what it is.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The PC version comes with Nvidia's proprietary Phys X technology as an optional add on. While it's not really necessary to improving the experience, the environmental physics that it adds still look great more than a whopping ten years later. Special note goes to the cloth tearing tech, which averts No Flow in CGI very hard.

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