EXT. SKYSCRAPER ROOFTOP - DUSK

DAVID
You know, Faith, from this height… you could really hock a loogie on someone. (V.O)

FAITH
… [Rolls eyes and shakes head]

If from 39 floors above ground looking down at the scattered groups of pedestrians sends chills down your spine then imagine bounding from rooftop to rooftop without the luxury of harnesses, wires or a safety net and having bullets whizz by your head. You’re running because it is your duty, your job; you are a Runner, and this is Mirror’s Edge.

Earlier this month Electronic Arts invited Dark Diamond to join them on the 39th floor of the Marriott hotel in San Francisco, CA to unveil the Time Trial mode for their upcoming first-person action-adventure title, Mirror’s Edge. In Mirror’s Edge you play the role of Faith, a Runner on a mission to free her sister from a corrupt totalitarian government. After her parents were killed in a heated government protest Faith was forced to live life on the streets and was taught not to trust conventional methods of communication, and as a result became a Runner; delivering unfiltered messages to various underground parties. Think of her as a rebel courier of sorts. This in turn would take her to the tightly woven city rooftops and into the underground canals of the vast monolithic city.

The single player story-driven campaign aside, the newly unveiled Time Trial mode allows players to run across 20 different locales while striving to achieve, you guessed it, the fastest time possible. A minimalistic HUD keeps the attention focused on the lay of the land and depicts the total running time and best overall time in the upper right portion of the screen which works in conjunction with a thin, segmented, progression bar that runs vertically up the left side of the screen. Each segment on the progression bar will be colored either green or red depending on your current run versus the best overall time already set for that particular stage (where green represents under par and red, over par). The sheer addiction to the Time Trial mode lies with within the ability to post your fastest times to an online leaderboard, And if you’re feeling overzealous and certain that no one will ever beat your fastest time you can even enable a “ghost” that will act as an in-game pace setter for opposing Runners. Marked by the game’s staple shade of red, the ghost will leave behind like-colored footprints in its path as it navigates its way towards the finish line which is annotated by a glowing pillar or red light. It is all about becoming the fastest Runner and dominating the online leaderboards. I can already see myself tossing controllers in the air as I attempt to shave off a mere tenths of a second in order to outrun my opponents. However, I contest as I must first learn to walk before I can run.

The game’s controls, while seemingly quite simplistic, are very intuitive. Like most first-person games, the use of the thumb sticks will serve as a means to navigate and look around while the shoulder buttons are used as action buttons that allow Faith to jump, slide and perform other acrobatic maneuvers. And while this may sound like it would be easy to run a mile in Fatih’s shoes, it sure as hell isn’t. Sure it is easy to pick up, but it is definitely a challenge to master as there is always room for improvement. With a streamlined control set up like this it would appear that Mirror’s Edge developer, DICE was following that age-old acronym: K.I.S.S. After all, who wants convoluted, hard to memorize controls in a game like this: I’m talking to you Breakdown and you too Rainbow Six, don’t think I forgot about you.

Now get up off of your couch and practice running laps from your house to your local videogame vendor because Mirror’s Edge releases on November 11 which is less than a month away, and you don’t want to be caught without a copy do you…? That’s what I thought.

So keep on running, and for the love of all things holy…do NOT look down!

Well you can look down at the screens but…oh nevermind.