Mirror’s Edge looked fun when it first came out, but it also didn’t quite look worth paying new release prices. I mean, it’s a game about running, how complex can it be? I noticed the other day that it’s down to $20 for PC now on Steam, so, as I mentioned in my Twitter, I picked it up. I think I was right in my initial decision to wait for the price drop, but I was also right in thinking it would be fun. It’s so addicting! The story takes place in a future city where the government controls all. People who want to stay “under the radar” employ freelance “runners” to deliver messages and packages around the city. Runners use the rooftops as their highways and consistently do the most crazy stunts you could think of at high speed on their routes (or don’t do them, and fall to a gruesome death on the pavement many stories below, as often happens to me). Add to that the fact that our heroine is being chased and shot at by cops intent, for a reason as yet unknown, on taking her down, and you have an pretty darn exciting game. To get from one area to the next is a constant high pressure puzzle, as you need to negotiate pipes, railings, air vents, and even swinging cranes, often while being shot at from a machine gun out the window of a chopper overhead. It’s really fun to play a game where you have to run away from the bad guys; if you get cornered by more than one or two at a time, you’re toast, so you try to avoid them as much as possible.

Despite the free-for-all feel of rooftop navigation, the game has a lot of built in hints that make it far less frustrating than it would be without them. For one thing, you get “runner vision” which highlights useful objects such as pipes and ramps in red. Unlockable Hard mode lets you turn that off, but it’s a lifesaver for me. You can also hold down the left Alt key (PC) to point your camera at where you should be headed, a useful tool as vaulting across city roofs sometimes means backtracking, and bolting away from firing cops can be disorienting.

I’ve found myself frustrated a few times when I’ve gotten stuck at a particularly difficult jump and had to restart a section over and over again. It’s a familiar feeling from old 2D Mario games – right before the halfway point there’s one little jump platform that you can’t reach no matter how many times you try, and you get sent back to the beginning over and over and over again until eventually, frustrated and ready to chuck your controller through your TV screen, you start missing the simplest jumps back at the beginning and you know you need to just go to bed already. So you do, and then you pick it up the next day and BAM you fly through the whole level with ease and vow never to return to that jinxed, vindictive little platform again. Know what I’m talking about?

Occasional frustrations and user error aside, however, it’s a very fun game. Due to its fast-paced nature it’s also very hard to put down! Oh, and don’t think it’s just a glorified mailman gig; the plot is stringing me along with the best of them – murder, intrigue, and set-ups carry the game along in a most gratifying way. Overall I give it two paws up, waaay up!

Mirror’s Edge graphics are the property of EA Games. Mario belongs to Nintendo (no duh).