Mirror's Edge Review

The clearest idea of its year, executed at roughly sixty percent. DICE built a city out of white with red used as a verb, so a pipe, a ledge, or a door becomes readable at a glance without a marker cluttering the frame, and the first-person body actually exists, with arms swinging, feet landing, and a camera that rolls into a shoulder tumble. When a rooftop route clicks and you chain four moves without losing speed, nothing else in the medium feels like it.

The problem is everything that interrupts the running. Combat is mandatory far too often and Faith is a terrible fighter, the gunplay is clumsy in a way that is intentional but not interesting, and several levels funnel you into arenas with armed police where the whole grammar of the game stops functioning. Trial and error creeps in whenever a route is unclear, and the flat conspiracy plot is told in cheap animated cutscenes that clash with the engine.