FANBOY FEASTING

If you’ve seen the trailers (above) for Electronic Arts’ new first-person action-adventure game “Mirror’s Edge” (Xbox360, PS3) you’ve probably come to expect a stunningly pristine environment, but probably don’t know much else.

“Mirror’s Edge,” despite all its innovation in the presentation of free running/parkour , at its core is a dressed-up, modern version of the good ol’ fashioned platformer, in which you’re meant to play and replay (sometimes annoyingly so) sequences of jumps, grabs, slides and wall scaling until you get them perfect, or at least perfect enough to continue (a fancy, more kid friendly term for “survive”).

As a super agile courier named Faith — who’s usually being chased by bad guys — players can run, walk, leap, hop and slide across rooftops, within warehouses, through sewers and inside office buildings. Focusing more on evading the bad guys rather than beating them up, Faith’s goals are never more complicated than getting from Point A to Point B. How she accomplishes that is where “Mirror’s Edge” comes alive.

Throughout the game, objects and surfaces that Faith can bounce off of or use to her advantage glow a distinct shade of candy apple red and are usually easy to spot within her sterile urban environment. This keeps up the pace of the game, theoretically encouraging easy pick-up game play.

While the beauty of this game is found in its emphasis on speed and momentum, the game, along with its heroin Faith, falls flat when the player gets stuck dealing with a wealth of tedious jumping puzzles and sometimes-unclear objectives.

Beyond some of the games more annoying puzzles and level design challenges, “Mirror’s Edge” also suffers from a flat story line, which is only hindered by the use of wannabe anime cut scenes.

Regardless of the game’s shortcomings, this is still a game very worth picking up, at least as a rental. There is a true sense of accomplishment when you see yourself jump around like a somewhat feasible superhero, overcome obstacles and string a number of moves together in rapid succession. Once you’ve found the best route through a particularly tricky scenario, it’s exhilarating to rush through it without a care to weigh you down.

The AP and Tim Wong contributed to this review. Happy hunting!

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