I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my Xbox lately, most of which has been sunk into Mirror’s Edge. I pulled the demo off Live about a week before the game released, and it wasted no time digging it’s claws into me.

The first thing you notice when you load up the game is the unique visual style. When you’re outdoors, it look like they took a real city and rotoscoped it into a pristine environment. There’s a lot of white and primary colors, and while it’s not always realistic it doesn’t seem cartoony either. It’s refreshing to see a game actually go for artistic style instead of just trying to overwhelm you with details.

The interior spaces are a little more detailed, but still not distracting. Inside and out the whole city reeks of utopianism, and if you’ve seen Equilibrium it’s very easy to imagine that you’re flinging yourself across the skyline of Libria.

The cutscenes are animated, and I find myself on the fence as to whether or not I like them. The plot itself is very basic, in a softcore porn kind of way: It provides just enough story to explain why we’re there and keep things moving. It’s a typical “lone wolf has to prove their sibling’s innocence” story, but with anti-utopian undertones. In the near future, data and communication are heavily monitored, forcing people who need to move illicit information to go old school. You control Faith, a Runner that spends most of her time in the world of the chimney sweeps, transporting information by foot stories above prying eyes.

The controls are mostly solid, though using the occasionally-unresponsive Left Bumper of the 360 controller for jumping resulted in running straight off the side of a building a few times. The combat is simple enough that you can fight if you have to, but difficult enough to encourage fleeing if at all possible. You have the option of picking up the weapons of fallen opponents, but you can’t move nearly as quickly, and you get an achievement (Test of Faith – 80 Points) for beating the game without firing a shot at an enemy. I went for it on my first playthrough, and I’m glad I did… Taking down one “Blue” then shooting up a room isn’t nearly as exciting as trying to weave your way through at top speed.

Speaking of achievements, there’s a hilariously-named secret one… I, uh, dropped in on an unsuspecting Blue, saw the achievement pop up, and promptly laughed my balls off. I’ll leave you all to find that one yourselves, though.

The story isn’t very long, and that’s a mark against it, but it’s still got a fair bit of replay value thanks to the Time Trial mode… Find your way through the levels of the game, through a series of checkpoints, as fast as you can, and see how you stack up against the rest of the world on the Leaderboards! This is one area where the new ability to “install” games comes in handy, as it eliminates the pesky “loading areas” like elevators that can sink you time trial runs in a hurry.

I’ve always said my favorite thing about the Xbox is being able to download demos, and this game is one you’ll either love or hate. I highly suggest getting the demo. If you enjoy it, the story mode is definitely worth the cost of a rental. If you got the demo and then spent three days trying to find shortcuts through the two levels it offered like I did, go out and buy it.

Here’s a taste of the game’s first chapter… Enjoy!