Alright!  I'm excited to see the first submitted run of Mirror's Edge to SDA.  So let's get crackin'. I usually run this on "easy," so it'll be interesting to see if "normal" changes things or not.  Generally speaking, enemies are much more random on normal, especially with the amount of damage they do.  I'm gonna be really nit-picky.

Prologue: I'm gonna forgive you for not doing curl jumps.  They are annoying, especially to begin with.  However, runs in the future may pass you because they perfect the curl jump.  There's a faster way to climb up the first building that saves about a second; if you jump using the right solar panels, you can get a faster animation to boost yourself up.

One trick you could look out for in the future is a short fall.  When you fall, you get a speed boost.  There are various boxes around that you can jump onto and fall a bit, giving just a little bit more speed.  Over the course of a run, it could save a decent amount of time.

Jump to the pipe -- you can completely skip that pipe, and once you practice the trick, it's not hard at all.  If you catch the pipe, though, you should at least jump from it up to the platform instead of climbing.  This probably costs you a good 5 seconds.

You can get into the vent by wall-running and crouch jumping.  This again could save a few seconds.

Great job in the stair well.  I'm not sure if the left choice along the cliff was the fastest; the difference is probably negligible.  Also, the pole vault towards the blue stairs isn't the fastest way; if you instead jump a bit to the right, land on the electrical box, and jump up the building using that, you can save a second or two.  And that helicopter.  I hate it.  I really do.  Good job not going too fast.

Highlight: The stairwell.  I can't tell you how many times I've messed that up.  It doesn't look impressive to many, but it takes practice to do right.
Saveable time: 10-15 seconds.


Chapter 1: The vault near the beginning over the fence is 100% safe, but it slows you down a second or two.  You go to the billboard to get across; there are other ways that are a bit faster, but this is fairly reasonable.  Oof... didn't get the roll.  Lost about 3 seconds.  If you land on the fence right before, the roll isn't needed, but that's very unpredictable.  You can do the wall boost on the left walls in the green hallway in order to speed you up.  Good use of the spam-use glitch.

After the cutscene, you can go left instead of right.  There's a good chance of dying if you do, so I understand not wanting to.  However, this can save about 10 seconds (however, this might only be practical when playing on easy).  You take the ground route instead of wall-running to the upper office.  It's slightly slower, but it probably wouldn't save more than a second to go up.  Good up through orange land until you get stuck on a pipe that costs you a second. I like the route after skipping the platform.  Seems better than mine.  Entering the room with the cops, you can save a second by jumping over them.

After the elevator, you do the wall run a little late.  If you do it earlier, you can start the kick-glitch lower and thus not have to roll.  Nice wall boosts through the yellow glass corridors (by the ghost people).  And I'm gonna insist -- all future speed runs must have you jump over every cop in the way! No exceptions!!

Okay... climb up the ladder.  Again, you can jump off the ladder and climb up the ledge to the right.  Not doing so costs about 3-4 seconds.

Highlight: Through the orange buildings.  Except for that one pipe in the way, the section was smooth and probably better than my route.  I'm stealing it
Savable time: 10-15 seconds (20-25 if you can pull off going to the right after the elevator)


Chapter 2:  I love how she grunts when you skip the cutscene.  The trashcan is hard for me to get, so I always go with an easier skip; messing this one up costs about 6 seconds.  I've always had a hard time getting all the wall boosts while the snipers shoot at me; you do it very nicely.  Jumping from the first to second pole -- if you jump lower, the game raises you a bit without costing you time.  This can save half a second.  Didn't quite get the quickest animation to climb into the vent, but it's still better than the most common one you can get.

Dancing on the red platform, and then falling!  Augh!! Oh, you're not dead. Good.  Very nice green room; I love that you do the spam-use on the button even though there is no way to speed this part up.  I like to jump on my back and lie there until the door starts to open.

Running into the next room, you could use the pillars throughout to wall boost until you get to climbing.  Ooh... I didn't know of that way to climb up the wall and get onto the platform above.  I'd been doing it differently, but that seems much better! However, you waste a little time walking sideways before running to the next platform; I understand it was to get the boost, but the next platform is so short that I don't know if it's worth that time.  However, that's my opinion. Vault to the ladder, and you lose about 2-3 seconds by not jumping to climb up the platform instead.  I'm gonna say, though -- you treat stairs really well. Much better than I.

After sliding down the zipline, you can save a couple of seconds by jumping over the edge to the button.  However, this is very risky, so I understand not wanting to do it.  You slide down the water and choose to take damage there; on console, this is alright because it's a load screen.  Your computer loads much faster, though, so this choice costs you 3-4 seconds.  I can understand not wanting to do the wall run there, but if you slide down on the left side and move towards the right wall, the run is much, much easier.

Very nice climbing section.  Again, climbing up ladders instead of jumping to grab the platforms costs about 6-8 seconds total.  Damage from cops on normal is very random, so you chose a different route from what I normally take.

Jacknife is a jerk.  Running with leather and all.  Instead of taking the first vault, you can run to the wall at its left and climb up it.  This would save about 1 second.  No side boost after doing your roll; I'm not sure it'd actually help much there, though, since you don't run very far.  After the second slide, there's a skip where you can vault over the barbed wire fence; if done right, this saves 5 seconds.  However, I've been so frustrated with that trick recently that I might cut it out.  Stupid Jacknife.  With the route you have, this seems great to me.  Very nicely done.

After Jacknife, you didn't go for the barbed wire glitch.  I know this works on PC, and choosing not to do it costs you about 30 seconds.  If I'm mistaken about this working on your PC, please let me know; the game can be finnicky depending on how you run it.

Highlight: Chasing Jacknife.  Everything felt well executed.
Savable time: 50sec-1min10sec


Chapter 3: The start feels a little rough; seems like you didn't know where you were going, causing you to lose a second or two.  Fun use of the wall-run kick there; I usually don't do it, but I think it actually saves time. I gotta check it out later.  No side boost after crossing to the solar panels.  I found this odd; it would probably speed you up a bit.  Jumping to the vent on the side of the building, you slow down a bit, losing a couple seconds (it looks like the pigeons flying away scare you, but it might have just been a bad angle).  Otherwise, well executed jumps there.  And, ooh!  That wall run you did to grab the pole is something I never thought of.  Nice.

Man... there's a huge skip in the room after the cutscene.  If you go to the right instead of a left, there's a camera on a pillar; you can do a vault to land on that camera and jump off it, skipping about 12-15 seconds worth of climbing.  If you practice it enough, it's a very doable trick and even worth messing up once.

Ooh, messed up the wall runs in the green room.  I have a rule -- if it's a green hallway after the 1st chapter, I don't do wall runs.  Whenever I break this rule, I lose more time than I would have gained.  This costs you 3-4 seconds.  You lose about 1-2 seconds after doing the zipline, but then you do something that seems to save a lot of time (from my route, anyway).  However, climbing that pipe all the way loses you 3-4 seconds.

When you get to the fight, do you need to kill the third cop?  On easy, you only have to kill 1.  You might be able to get away with killing the first 2 on normal (though I'm not sure).  Again, you lose 3-4 seconds by not jumping from the pipe to climb up the platform to the side.

Very nice scaffold climb.  Punching the cop is funny but costs 1-2 seconds.  When you jump off the crane, you can do a flip-off glitch to skip the landing animation.  It's hard to get just right, though, and it kinda looks like you were going for it.  If you spam the flip-off button like mad, you're a bit more likely to get it.

Highlight: The scaffold. Definitely the best part of the chapter.
Saveable time: 25-30 seconds


Chapter 4:  Now that's an impressive way of getting up the side of the building.  I imagine it'd be a lot easier with a mouse than a controller (and it might not even be possible on console; I'll try).  Why back up so much before the next jump?  With good timing, you could probably jump straight over there with little to no backing up.  You can get down to the door without rolling; however, it's difficult, so I accept rolling this far into the run. 

You get a little caught up at the wood pile.  I hate that pile of wood.  I've gotten stuck there so many times, it's ridiculous.  Still, you could save 1-2 seconds with perfect luck in that stupid room.  After falling from the vent, you can save 6-8 seconds by doing a fairly complex trick.  It takes a lot of practice but is fairly consistent once you get it down.  Good wall run next to the ladder, but you can crouch jump into the hole instead of climbing in.  I know you said no crouch jumping, but this saves 3-4 seconds in one move alone.  Weird way to get down; I don't think it's any faster than rolling.  You hesitate with the wall run, losing about 1 second.  Instead of climbing the ladder right away, you can do a wall run right behind it.  This saves about 2 seconds.

Good Ropeburn fight.  You have served me proud by kicking him in the nuts (even if it's scripted).  There's a slightly faster way to go into the red door, but since that whole thing is a load screen, it wouldn't save time anyway (you made it by the time the load started). The way you get to the vent is probably a bit faster than my route; I'll have to check that out. Bad luck catching onto the ceiling tile and missing the side boost; I'm guessing that cost 1 second.  Also, you don't need to go that high on the stairs; you can do the wall run just fine a bit lower.

Nice wall boosts on the pillars in the subway.  Again, you lose 3-4 seconds by climbing the ladder all the way.  You can skip most of the swinging poles if you wall run on the left; it's about 1 second faster and is very easy.  Oopsies for missing the first wall run, losing 2 seconds or so.

You wait for the train right at the beginning, but if you wanted, you can usually start running down the track and hide in the first hole.  If you do that, you can make it to the end by the time the second pair of trains comes by.  This would save 8-10 seconds.  It looks like you get stuck by the wall before getting to the fans, but the fans would slow you down anyway if you got there too early.  Nice vault over the right side; I didn't think of that before.  Very nice job at landing next to the red door.  The way you did it looks much more reliable than when I do it.

Highlight: The subway.  I love that part, and much of what you do there is well executed.
Saveable time: 20-25 seconds.


Chapter 5:  There's a way to get down that skips both pipes.  I haven't timed it, but I think it saves about 5-6 seconds.  Also, there's a trick here using the wall-run-kick-jump glitch that could save about a minute; I can't get it down, though, so I can understand not doing it at all.  That trick should probably be saved for segmented (unless someone awesome can pull it off regularly).

Good job at not running in front of the train and dying.  I'm always, always tempted to do that, and I usually do.  I'm gonna advertise crouch jumping here, though.  If you use them, you can slide down the rope before the second round of trains comes by.  This is a significant advantage.

I'm just now realizing that you're not taking advantage of a boost -- side stepping after a roll.  If you do this, you retain a lot of your initial momentum.

You run onto the boxes to jump up onto the vent and on top of the building.  If you do a vault instead, you can save about 1 second.  Nice part skipping the cops.  There's a slightly faster way to get the pipe in the elevator shaft, but I probably make it 1/5 times; doing it your way is fine.  Too much hesitation when trying to jump from the pipe, and you don't make it straight to the doorway.  This costs about 3-4 seconds.

And I see you're not going for death abuse.  Fair enough.  Again, poles cost 3-4 seconds.  If you go straight to the left after climbing the pipe, you can wall run on the building and make the jump that way; it's a bit harder, but it saves 2-3 seconds.  Very nice section climbing up the outside of the building.  All of that is very smooth.  You need to dance more in elevators.  Show them how to shuffle!

New Eden Mall.  I hate this place.  Seriously.  You do a good mouse-only trick to grab a swinging pole.  And yay for taking advantage of the skip to the vent!  New Even is actually going very well for you.  There's a small skip right before the machine gun that you can use near the paint cans; it can be frustrating and only saves 4-5 seconds, and messing it up once can slow you down, so I don't mind that you skipped that skip.  Ooh, you almost fall at the machine gun.  Good save, but costs 2-3 seconds.  Miss the crouch jump into the vent for another 2 seconds.

Highlight: Pretty much all of New Eden.  Very, very nice job.
Savable time: 22-27 seconds


Chapter 6: Beginning starts out smoothly.  After swinging, there's a way that you can entirely skip the ladder as well as the jump over the fence.  This would save 7-9 seconds.  Very good job with the snipers.  I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate them!  If I were you, though, I would have jumped right onto the lowering platform; even with death, it would have been faster.  However, you were going for a deathless run, so it's alright, I guess.

Wait, what the hell just happened?  Did you just trigger the button through the wall?!  I'm pretty sure that's a PC-only glitch (correct me if I'm wrong), but that's pretty friggin' awesome!  Saves a buttload of time.  Vaulting over the fence after that, you get stuck on top; it's bad luck that costs about 1 second.  Right after that, though, you have a skip while decending that I didn't even know about.  I'm pretty sure it's much faster than the way I've been going.  Faith runs a bunch and heads to the ninjas.  Ooh... the console version can freeze if you skip that cutscene too fast, so I'm always careful there.  Not sure if it does on the PC.

Very good ninja section.  Basically, very nice up to the end.  You missed one side boost, but it wasn't too important.

Highlight: Most of the level.  I've seen tricks here that I didn't know existed.
Saveable time: 8-11 seconds


Chapter 7: This freakin' boat is slow!  And then... you go for death abuse?  Man... if you use it here, you gotta use it elsewhere.  Either go with no deaths or all the right deaths.  I still love the skip, though

After the death abuse, instead of shuffling along between the walls, you can actually jump through them.  It's not always accurate, but even trying is worth it.  You can skip a good 3-4 seconds if done right.

In the stupid climbing room, there's a way to get through it that would save 8-10 seconds.  It's a bit more difficult but is worth doing even if you mess it up once or twice.  The way you do it goes smoothly, though.  After going up stairs, you fall through a hole and catch onto a ledge; if you walk in sideways, you miss catching the ledge.  It saves just a little bit, but I think it's worth it.

There!  You didn't climb to the top of a ladder!  That's exactly what you need to do with (almost) every ladder or pipe.

The fight with the (wo)man goes a little rough.  Gotta get the pattern down for her.  This costs about 3-4 seconds.  I love that you can see him/her frozen in a sort of glitch.  Good job catching that.

Very nice chase.  Couldn't be much more perfect.  Second fight goes much better with only a small miss.

Highlight: The chase.  It was as smooth as butter and ended with a nice fight.
Saveable time: 15-20 seconds


Chapter 8:  Nice skip during the part with the ninjas.  I didn't even think to go that way.  Looks like doing that actually avoids one of the ninjas.  And then... the elevator with the strangest music.  It's so weird...

Nice route after the elevator, as well.  I think you could probably let go of the pipe right after grabbing, though, instead of sliding; I'd have to test it out.  when you go for the pipes on the wall before the "scary" jump, you climb up the second one.  If you do a wall boost right before grabbing the first pipe, you'll be high enough that you don't need to climb that extra bit.  This would save, uh... 1 second or so.

Ooh... missed the second use-glitch in the elevator, resulting in a 3-4 second loss.  Interesting choice in an atrium route.  I'd go a different way that I feel is faster, but this place is scary enough that I'm not even gonna comment on it.  You must be terrified at this point in the run, and you do it smoothly and deathless.  Kudos to you!

And more death abuse. Yay for killing Faith. By the way, if you shoot the van as soon as it appears instead of waiting for it to turn onto the road, the door will turn red earlier. This can save 3-4 seconds.

Different route near the cops. Works for me.

Highlight: The atrium.  You are extremely smooth through it and don't hesitate much if at all.  The first time I climbed it, I probably died more times in that one climb than all the times I've made it through without death.  Nice, nice, nice.
Savable time: 8-11 seconds


Chapter 9: Didn't quite get the use-glitch.  Oh, wait, you did.  What?  Wait... I thought it was a deathless run.  I am way confused.  Did you just cause glitches I don't know about?  Uhh... let's find out... from continuing, I'm pretty sure it was a mistake, but way weird sounds and such happen because of it.  Shame that a death came this late... Costs, uh, 10 seconds or so.

Catching onto the pipe is easier in the elevator shaft if you walk to the side rather than straight off the elevator.  Ah, you were going for a roll!  That was actually pretty cool.

Golden shaft, you can save about 10 seconds with some skips.  They're easy to do, and I'd probably do them this late in the run.

Killing the sniper is probably a good idea.  There's a faster route, but it's much more dangerous (as I'm sure you know).  This late in the run, it's alright to go the way you went.  Elevator to the server room... Unfortunately, you lose 3-4 seconds from failing to shoot the 3rd server.  You can get to the final jump a bit faster, too, but I think you were probably trying to avoid excess damage.  That's fine.


Highlight: The roll after grabbing the pole in the elevator shaft.  It's a small thing, but it really impressed me.
Savable time: 23-25 seconds.




Total savable time (from what I've marked here): 3min11sec-4min9sec.  This includes route changes, improved execution, and jumping up from poles and ladders. 

Additional things that could save time: Crouch jumping.  I used to not think it was worth doing, but I am a changed man.  It takes a lot of practice, but after doing it for hours during your practice, you will see the change.  This isn't just in open spaces, but it helps almost everywhere.  I'm guessing you could shave off at least a minute just with that.

This game is a beast.  I was impressed to see that this run was submitted because I knew you had been working for a deathless run, and it's very, very easy to die on this game.  I would let a run with one death slide, perhaps, but there are enough other things to improve that I feel like a little more work can be done.  You can probably save 30sec-1min with the ladders and poles alone, and those are extremely easy to do.

Here's the deal.  I'm going to reject for now, but I want you to keep working on this game.  Six months may feel like a lot, but another month or two will give you time to learn those other tricks and time savers that you didn't know about; other runners have spent years working on a run before getting it onto the site.  If the other verifiers accept, I still want you to keep working on this so you can stomp your own time into the ground.  You've got some great moments, but I want the whole run to shine.  I know you can do it.

Considering how much disappointed I was by the run at SGDQ2011, I was very afraid of watching a bad run here and therefore SDA still not having any Mirror's Edge run. I'm happy to say this sentence is past tense

Nothing in particular about video quality, as long as the 720p version is avaliable. Framerate is smooth, keeping the incredible speed feeling of the game intact.

About the speed feeling. Unlike the run from SGDQ, it's totally there. IMO, with this game, the smoothness of gameplay is almost as important as the speed itself. Running in a constant rush, without interruption, with continuity in the character's movements. Helped by typical glitches (and probably the PC controls helped too), and with an obvious load of practice, this run gets an A+ on this criterium. Gameplay quality is incredible for a single segment.

Of course, there are mistakes. I almost cried when Faith died in flames in Chapter 9. This mistake clearly ruins the run (second place is the missed mainframe). But I think this can't justify a reject given the overall quality.

Of course, this is not IL. This run lacks most of the incredible tricks/glitches from the best players in the world who play with the ingame timed mode (they seem to have a micro-community running on Youtube especially since the leaderboards were taken off). I think the runner has made a very good compromise between safety and speed. This is what allows the run to maintain this smooth feeling I was talking about.

As the first reviewer said, there is plenty of room for improvement. Crouch-jumping, easy route optimisations here and there (with the first reviewer's comments and through some research on more of the best players' youtube channels, including time trials), death abuses (like the first reviewer I did not like the single death abuse, it felt out of place), and hopefully more (and harder to perform) glitches. I think that if adrenelize (or any other player with such records) finds the courage to make a single segment as he hinted on the forums, he should largely outperform this one.

But still,

1. This run has incredible gameplay quality considering the subset of glitches the runner chose to use (which is a quite realistic subset for single segment, I would have done the same)
2. Single-segment Mirror's Edge is very hard and intense, this run is clearly an achievement by itself (too bad you turned the wheel!) and hopefully can motivate people to try beating it once it's online (I would, if speedrunning did not prevent me from sleeping :()

So it's an ACCEPT for me.

If this run is not accepted because it can't stand the comparison with IL runs, I think someone at SDA should try to motivate some of those people submitting ILs on youtube to submit here instead

When I started watching the run it felt a little sloppy, but the run got better.

Verifier 1 nicely pointed out any improvements. He didn't mention this shortcut though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyqqaycC2I

Well, not much more to say except yeah, the unintentional death near the end was a bummer :/

I agree with the verdict of verifier 2, though. Single-segmenting Mirror's Edge is pretty tricky to get an entire solid run out of it and I think this run is of acceptable quality and might indeed motivate others to try to beat it, including you! I would also like you to keep trying to improve it!

Accepted

This is verifier 1. I've thought about the run a lot, and while it's not perfect, the runner has put amazing effort into it.  Getting a deathless run with this game is insanely difficult (maybe even up there with Battletoads), so I honestly would change my verdict to accept.  If the run goes up on the site, it definitely will inspire others to perfect a run.