'Mirror's Edge' has sharper-than-glass images

When "Mirror's Edge" was announced, gamers paid attention. Everything about it felt like a gaming revelation: the stripped-down display, the splashes of color on the eggshell cityscape, the fact that somebody was finally developing a game based on parkour (a physical discipline all about overcoming environmental obstacles quickly and efficiently). Now, "Mirror's Edge" is on shelves, and while it takes a bold leap in the right direction, it stumbles on the landing.

In a city under iron-fisted totalitarian rule, information has become heavily monitored. You are Faith, member of an underground community of acrobat couriers (called Runners) who sticks it to the Man by carrying messages for their underground clients across the sterile, white city. After her sister is framed for murdering a politician, Faith must put her skills to the test, and her life in peril, to find the true culprit.

The story is trite, but the HUD-less interface and inspired art design combine to create a more believable world than narrative ever could. It's a real shame that such a seamlessly cohesive system is hardly ever used to significantly progress the story. Instead, we must rely on cheap, choppy cartoon sequences to fill us in between levels (think low-budget Esurance commercial and you're halfway there).

It's worth noting that the writing is pretty sharp, and the voice acting ranges from tolerable to genuinely endearing (although some of Faith's comments are pointlessly snarky). Unfortunately, the story is handled clumsily and with such meager exploration of the characters and their cause that we're given little reason to care for anybody at all.

Thankfully, the story's offenses are minor, especially since most of the game handles like a dream. Left bumper is your "up" button, left trigger your "down," and both are used in conjunction to handle every flip, roll and twist. It feels impulsive, instinctive and it's simply sublime when it works; within minutes you'll be able to pull off acrobatic feats of stunning bravado, watching the city mold to your will as it passes submissively beneath you. It's during these moments, when the path forward opens continually, that the game truly shines like the gem it should be.

It's lamentable, criminal even, that these moments are rare. In order to pad out the experience, "Mirror's Edge" frequently yanks you out of the moment and forces you to wait in elevators (thinly veiled loading screens), or shoves a bunch of gun-toting military goons (perfect marksmen, all of them) in your face, or conjures up some other hackneyed distraction that stops you dead in your tracks. None of these segments are unplayably awful, but for a game whose purest, most original thrills lie in its undeterred speed and immersive athleticism, Faith takes the elevator an awful lot.

There would be less to complain about if the combat system worked properly, but it manages not to. Faith is supposed to be able to disarm anyone with a weapon and use it against them with a timed button-press, but it's clunky in action. So clunky, in fact, that most altercations feel decided on luck. Of course, you can choose to run from foes, but unless you're going for a real challenge, you'll have to shoot somebody eventually. And it feels so wrong, especially when running feels so right.

And that's the biggest problem with "Mirror's Edge": it can't leave well enough alone. By tacking on some half-baked combat and awkward interruptions, its exhilarating parkour mechanic never feels fully explored. It would have been amazing if the game's challenges were based more strongly on the element that makes it fun in the first place: stringing together and pulling off unbelievable stunts. Instead, "Mirror's Edge" is best in bursts that don't come about often enough and are over far too quickly.

It's a real buzzkill to report that "Mirror's Edge" is not the neon scream of gaming innovation we were hoping it would be, but for all its growing pains there is plenty of game here, and it's plenty of something that must be played. It's a safe rent - you could beat it in a day (although time trials are sure to keep fans hooked), but if you do choose to take that leap of faith ("Aha!" you say) and add "Mirror's Edge" to your collection, don't worry about the fall: you'll find something there to hang on to.