MIrror's Edge (continued)
Not sure why I forgot I had more stuff to talk about:
UI
Mirror's Edge has no HUD at all (almost -- you have a crosshair which is alway visible by default but you can turn off entirely, or you can set it to only appear when you are holding a gun. Player health is represented by screen effects (first the screen gets desaturated, then red haze appears on the edges, then you die.)
Also the health regenerates. If you wait 5-10 seconds after getting hurt, you will heal back to full health. So as long as you at least survive a gunfight you will be as good as new in short time.
Finally, the other stat you need to worry about is your "bullet time" mode, which is a one-use ability that regenerates after some time has passed (or you run a certain distance, i think.) Once again, no HUD for this, you just remember if you used it or not.
I would say that this is one of the areas where the UI could have been better. There is no sound effect to indicate that you have entered bullet time mode, no obvious sound/ambience change during bullet time, and no sound effect when attempting to use it when it has already expired. Those little changes (plus maybe a screen blend when in bullet time) might have helped polish this feature a bit more and make it nicer to use.
Finally, there is a "disarm" mechanic where you have to hit the "grab gun" button at a certain moment during an enemy's armed-melee move (enemy will attempt to hit you with his gun and you can grab it and disable him with a special move.) It's timing based and your clue is that his gun turns red at the split second when you should hit the button. Good so far, but probably an audio success cue and failure cue might have helped reinforce this mechanic.
These are minor complaints though, overall the gameplay UI is really good.
Trademark Dispute
Another thing that's great about this game is it gave EA a reason to sue that
Edge Games guy and win. In case you're not aware, there's this guy who makes no games himself, but spends his time suing anybody who has the word "Edge" in their products. This includes the excellent iPhone game "Edge", "Mirror's Edge", EDGE Magazine, and others. Anyway, EA went after him and he lost his trademarks.