The Triforce of Disdain

After finally tracking down a rental copy yesterday, I'm ass-in-the-middle of Mirror's Edge. Now, my greatest challenge: I am going to write my impression of this game without using the word "frustrating."

I constantly face situations where I'm stuck in a room full of people (who shoot me) and need to detect the exit before they're done shooting me. The game directs the player, early in the first chapter, to always avoid enemies. This is good advice, because Faith (the protagonist) can take about two hits before she goes down. Whenever I try to use the limited combat arsenal against more than two enemies, I die. But when I'm stuck in an enclosed space, being continually perforated by stormtroopers, it's often simply more expedient to kill them all so I can have enough breathing room to complete my jumping puzzle.

The jumping, sliding, and climbing are the best part of the game, but they're muddied by control choices and unresponsive environmental objects. Common scene: I'm running across the skyline, getting up to an exhilarating speed. I take a gigantic leap from one rooftop to another, aiming to catch a drainpipe and shimmy my way down to street level ... but, even though it looks like I've hit the pipe dead center, my character doesn't grab it, and I get to experience the very pretty death sequence yet again. I try the jump six more times before I finally get it right, but I throw the controller down and storm off ten minutes later when the whole situation repeats itself. It's really frustrating.