Your concrete heart isn't beating

Mirror's Edge

Developer: DICE

Publisher: EA

Platform: Xbox 360 (Reviewed), PS3, PC

Price: $59.99 (Shop.Ars)

Rating: Teen

Most video games can safely be filed under male wish fulfillment. Some part of us always wants to have the biggest gun, to be the best at the martial arts, and to be able to solve any problem with brute force. Heck, even sports games fall under this category; who doesn't want to share in the glory of winning the Super Bowl?

Faith, from Mirror's Edge, is a different beast all together. She's adept at hand-to-hand fighting, but each opponent you encounter in the game is a serious threat. The best strategy is almost never to stand and fight, but to run. That's what Faith is, a runner, and this is how she sees the world. Every level is a maze of platforms, jumps, and seemingly impossible feats of speed and coordination; being Faith means never having to worry about traffic or parking or any of the other petty things that infest the lives of the people on the street level.





A rare moment of peace for Faith

You see, in the world of Mirror's Edge, the city is a perfect, clean expanse of glass and steel. The government has made sure that we're all safely watched and controlled in order to stamp out dangerous things like violence, crime, and free thought. There are a few people who have been pushed to the outskirts of the city who don't feel like giving into this unholy trade-off of free will for safety, and of course, every now and again, they need to communicate with another set of people across the city. Phones are tapped, e-mail is read, mail is opened. So how do you communicate safely? You use something better than technology, and Faith is that organic solution. The runners take those messages and rush them across the tops of the city's buildings, running on foot across obstacles that would stop any normal pursuer. Running across an entire city isn't a hard thing when you're moving as the crow flies, and this is the feeling that DICE's Mirror's Edge wants to give you: freedom.

We see Faith in the third-person during the animated cut-scenes, and she always seems slightly unhappy and worried, weighed down by the sheer fact of being in her skin. Hers isn't the easiest life, and, while stationary, she has time to wonder about these things. When she's running, however, when we look at the world through her eyes, it all makes sense. As long as she can make the next jump, she'll be fine. If she can lose the police by sliding under a series of pipes and crashing through a door, she has fixed a very immediate problem. It's easy to live when your existence is counted a rooftop at a time; everything else falls away.

DICE and EA have come together to release something very unique, but while new ideas will get you respect from gamers, the title you release still has to be fun; concepts are rarely worth $60. Mirror's Edge plays well in short demos and while viewing the action in a video, but does it stand up as a full-length single-player experience?

Don't look down.