Mirror's Edge

Finished Mirror's Edge tonight.

How was it? It depends. Overall, the game had some frustrating points. The combat can be annoying, there's a reasonable amount of trial and error, and the animated cutscenes look like absolute shit next to the in-game stuff.

On the other hand, when the game works it fucking WORKS. Running across the rooftops, grabbing ledges, sliding under things, kicking off walls and running up stuff, busting through doors, scrambling to get away from the cops...

When you're running, the game is perfect. It's unlike anything else you've ever seen. Reminiscent, at times, of Namco's Breakdown, though Breakdown focused more on the hand-to-hand combat, and totally fell apart at the end. But no game has had such a "complete" first-person experience that really makes you feel connected to the world. The things you do are incredible - leaping from rooftop to rooftop, jumping off a stairwell that cops are rushing up, and bounding from beam to beam, descending the stairwell by basically leaping down the center column and bypassing the cops... it's awesome.

The visual design is stellar - again, totally unique. The story... eh. The story's alright. Predictable, more or less boilerplate stuff - serviceable. Has some nice moments. All in all, though, what can I say? There's stuff in there that will annoy most people. It's not perfect. But it's trying to do something really, really difficult, and something really, really new. In that respect, it's actually a massive success. So it fails in some ways - they've taken HUGE risks. So, if you want something that isn't your run of the mill FPS/third person cover shooter, this is it.

For me, so far, despite its faults, despite the fact that there are tons of other really extraordinary games out there... I think it's my game of the year.