If there's one thing you definitely can't accuse Mirror's Edge of, it's being unoriginal. Ever since this game popped up on the radar last summer we've been chomping at the bit to get a good look at it, but the opportunity didn't arise until this year's array of game conventions. Firstly at E3 and then at Leipzig GC, EA DICE offered the first hands on opportunities with the title and unleashed a new heroine onto the gaming scene called Faith in the process.

With scars that run much deeper than the tattoo of a circuit board on her arm, Faith is embittered with a seemingly utopian (but actually dystopian; think Demolition Man) government for framing and imprisoning her sister on counts of bogus crimes. Not only that, but this government also killed their parents for protesting against the regime - sounds like a pretty justifiable gripe to us. Anyway, Faith grew up on the street where she learnt the art of free running (which is used in the Mirror's Edge universe to transport private messages away from the government's prying eyes), and now she must use these skills to evade a regime bent on her elimination. As far as back stories and lead characters go, that's a pretty good one.

Shelter From The Storm

Our preview picked up the game in its second level, where Faith is bogged down in a complex of storm drains. It starts out with a fairly basic puzzle: vaulting from a wall onto a ladder before getting up to a high ledge by swinging from a horizontal pole. This serves as an introduction to the game's hint system that illuminates the next object in a chain which takes you to the following objective. For example, during this early section both the ladder and pole show up as red against otherwise grey and bright green surroundings. As the game progresses, EA DICE will gradually reduce these hints until there are only a few over an entire level, increasing the difficulty by challenging gamers to figure out the root using their ingenuity (it's also possible to turn off the hints completely at any point if you want to).

It's a system that works well and becomes even more valuable during the game's action sequences. As our preview continued, Faith opened a barrier to the storm drains, but it quickly became apparent that the Feds were onto her and a couple of snipers had taken up positions on either side of the underground complex. Your goal is to get to the other side of the storm drain by jumping to high bars from piles of crates, tight-rope walking across metal girders, throwing in a bit of wall running for extra vaulting power, before exiting the drains by sliding down a guy-rope. Of course, the fact that the snipers are bearing down on you means there's a time limit on your movements. You can't just dilly dally around trying to carefully figure out a route or judge your jump correctly - everything must be done on the fly, true parkour style. Hopefully Mirror's Edge retains this kind of pressure on the action as the game continues, breaking up these feverish sections with increasingly brain taxing puzzles in-between to slow down the pace where appropriate.

Given all the fancy free running moves that Faith pulls off in Mirror's Edge, we've been keen to find out how EA DICE has grafted them onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 control pads, particularly given the game's first-person perspective. Prior to seeing the game, we'd speculated that the trigger buttons could be used as controls for each leg and bumper buttons for arms etc. (as well as a few other harebrained ideas), but thankfully EA DICE has opted for a much more simple and effective way of controlling Faith. While the left trigger button pulls of low moves like crouches or slides, the left bumper button commands high moves such as jumping, climbing, or wall vaulting. You can then combine the two buttons for a mixture of each move depending on the kind of obstacle you're trying to overcome (e.g. pressing both buttons while approaching a fence prompts Faith to swing her legs over as she jumps).

Genre Re-Defining

Mirror's Edge may be played out in the first-person perspective, but it's no FPS (at least, not in the traditional sense). Although guns are in the game and Faith does get the opportunity to use them at various points, EA DICE has gone out of its way to make sure that they play a relatively minor role in the gameplay. As you traverse the storm drains in level 2, for example, you have to cross paths with one of the snipers. Using some nifty karate moves, Faith can disarm the sniper and leave him incapacitated before taking the gun herself. She can then choose to either take out the other sniper with her newly found armament, or ditch the gun (as it slows down her parkour skills) and continue with a tracer on her for the duration of the section. What's more, Mirror's Edge isn't a game world with ammo packs hiding around every corner. Once a magazine is dead, the gun is useless.

In order to ease the difficulty of these disarming moments, EA DICE has integrated a Reaction Time (read: bullet time) feature that slows down time for a brief period. We saw it used after Faith had judo-chopped an enemy NPC, catapulting their weapon into the air, which she could easily grab mid-flight to finish off the bad guy in one smooth transition. This Reaction Time feature will also come in handy with some of the trickier free running sections, giving the player more time to judge when they should push off from their wall run to vault horizontally across a 10 metre gap and nail the 5 inch wide girder beneath them (just an example - the game's full of that kind of stuff). It may not be the most original feature to grace the game, but it does suit the gameplay pretty well. If a game's least innovative feature is bullet time then it's doing pretty well.

As our preview wrapped up, Faith slid down a small man made waterfall leading into an open topped cylindrical edifice. It was pretty imposing, kind of like a hollowed out gas storage tank big enough to supply a city borough. At the top of the structure a crane dangled a large metal beam right in the middle of the hollow and it was illuminated in red. After fooling around with some of the pipes on the side of the edifice and jumping between some service platforms, Faith eventually found her way to the beam and escaped from the structure. Of course, there were only more enemy soldiers waiting for her on the other side.

All of this thoroughly original gameplay has been put to a game world that probably demonstrates the most impressive usage of the Unreal Engine 3 outside of an Epic game. Technically, the lighting effects bounce off the game's sanitised metropolis beautifully. The world is full of metal and concrete, but still looks pure, owing to the precise details on each texture and the way they react to different types of light, both natural and unnatural. Stylistically, the game veers on peerless. This is a dystopian world masquerading as a perfect society and the simple blend of white and light greys for the cityscape, mixed with vibrant greens and reds for the objects you traverse through it, reflects this conflict superbly. Bravo, EA DICE, bravo indeed.