All you need is a keen sense of balance and a lot of faith, both of the spiritual and human kind. Faith is the central character in the new IP from EA and Battlefield developer DICE and it is a melding of the first-person shooter genres and platformers. That alone sets this game apart, but while it has some kinship to the FPS genre, you are actually rewarded more if you don’t shoot at your opponents. To understand the reasoning behind that, you have to understand the game concept behind Mirror’s Edge for the PS3.

The game takes place in a futuristic world that has become a tightly controlled authoritarian environment. The police, or Blues, are the strong-arm of the establishment, which is watched constantly. To express any form of dissent means to be punished by the government. There are those who still believe in freedom of speech. However, they couch that freedom with a certain amount of secrecy, which is where the Runners come into play. Runners are an elite and very athletic group that plies its trade across the rooftops, scaffolding and other normally inaccessible areas of the city. They are delivery people, carrying satchels and leaping across chasm where the slightest miscalculation results in a painful (and often mortal) plunge in excess of 10 stories.

Faith is a member of the Runners. She is just coming back from a bad fall and injury time, and the game begins with a tutorial that will show off the platforming elements of the game while pushing Faith across rooftops, under or over piping, tightroping over long drops on thin rails or pipes, jumping and then grabbing objects in mid-jump … all the elements that one would find in some of the death-defying action of Prince of Persia or Assassin’s Creed title.

The game, which mixes intriguingly stark environmental elements that have a real-world feel with stylized cut scenes, takes a turn for the mysterious and entertaining side when Faith hears about an incident in a high-rise and realizes that the Blue involved is her sister. She hurries to the scene, just ahead of the SWAT force to find her sister in the room with a dead lawyer – one that also happened to be running for mayor. Her sister tells her that she was in the office, at the behest of the victim, everything was fine, then she was knocked unconscious and when she came to, the lawyer was dead, shot through the head with the officer’s gun.

Faith promises to look into it and see what she can find out. Her sister, certain she will be arrested, tells her that if she finds anything to contact her sister’s superior with the information. With Faith’s ear-piece buzzing with the voice of her boss, urging her to get out of there, the SWAT teams swarm the building. They are packing weapons and ready to blast anything that moves.

Here is where the game cranks it up. You can, of course, try to disarm a member of the SWAT team, then use his gun on other police officers, but that is a no-win situation. There are more of them, and they have more weapons. Because you are agile, nimble, and capable of doing what few others can, the other choice is to beat feet and try to outrun the SWAT team. This proves to be quite challenging, and a fair amount of fun.

There are three difficulty levels, and these truly factor in to the way the game plays out. On both easy and normal, your path across the skylight of the city is marked with red objects – doors, beams, pipes, launching platforms, et cetera. Easy tones down the combat a bit. Hard, however, removes the red and you have to figure it out for yourself.

In addition to the story mode, you can compete in Time Trials, which is essentially finding the fastest way from one place to another and competing against the clock. It’s fun but doesn’t have the depth of the single-player game.

The world of Mirror’s Edge is pretty stark, with the live action seemingly blanched to an almost uniform whiteness that emphasizes the muted pastel shadows and allows the red pathways to really jump out. But even though the pathways are clear, it doesn’t mean you will move along them effortlessly. If you have trouble grinding a rail in a Tony Hawk title, this game will present some challenges – even though the SIXAXIS controller does come into play for balancing and rolls. The control scheme, though, is reasonably intuitive and while players may have to hunt and peck for the right way through an area, you shouldn't struggle too much with the controls.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to the game is that while you have a great sense of a living, vibrant city (the game’s sound track really emphasizes life on the streets below), you have a defined path through the game. You have some latitude in how you get from point A to B, as well as how much you wish to fight, and how much you wish to simply run, but the game is somewhat linear. That said, Mirror’s Edge is a still an intriguing game that redefines two genres simultaneously – the FPS and the platformer. This is truly a fun game that has a lot of potential for sequels, with a lot of depth yet to be explored. For the first title in the IP, though, this is a very good step forward.

Gameplay: 8.7
Somewhat linear, with some minor load times, this is a game that still provides an exciting challenge. The controls are easy to learn (the SIXAXIS roll does not always seem to work but this is more a personal timing issue and not a control issue) and use and the environment designs are intelligent.

Graphics: 9.0
There were times when it might have been nice to pull the camera back out for the third-person perspective, but the first-person look works. The contrast between the game world and the cut scenes works very well.

Sound: 8.7
The city sounds alive and the musical score is well done. Voice acting is also solid. Could have done without the constant grunts, though.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 9.0
DICE did a great job melding the two genres together to create a worthy hybrid that does not require players to run ‘n gun, but rather to move quickly but with purpose of movement. It is reflexive in some ways (a lot of timing is involved), but you are required to look before you leap.

Overall: 8.8
The game does a terrific job in both challenging and entertaining. The story is solid enough to hold the elements together and the world that the game is placed in supports all the elements. This is a well-designed game. Sure, there are things that can be improved, but generally speaking Mirror’s Edge will hold players in their seats and keep them involved.