“That was quick” was the first thing my woman said when the credits started to roll at the end of my digital parkour experience: Mirror’s Edge. And she was right, it was a short game. Also, it was an extremely difficult game that found me constantly plummeting from the rooftops to my death or getting beaned by cops… also to my death.

Then there was the issue of the 2D cutscenes seemingly rendered in Flash by an intern during his lunch breaks. Why no full CGI cutscenes? Or at the very least, in-game? Was Dice trying to make a stylistic point? Or, as it felt while playing, did they run out of money?

Those two big issues aside and your left with the real reason I bought the game: the art direction. It’s fantastic. This is the most stylish and beautiful game I’ve seen in a long time. Making the decision to render the city in subtle light blues over white with high saturation accent colors… then actually sticking to it, was very brave and worked wonderfully. The runnervision which turns items in your path red worked great. Plus the soundtrack added quite a bit to the presentation. So, on the occasions when I was making quick progress through the rooftops, it looked and felt wonderful.

Unfortunately, the genius of the presentation doesn’t completely save the game. Not when it has one of the most unsatisfying endings I’ve witnessed in a game for a long time. I don’t remember when developers started writing their stories as though every game will become a massive franchise, but it sucks. A little closure would be nice.

Anyway, the bottom line is that despite some major flaws, I really loved playing this game when things were going well… I’ll remember to look out for the next one.

I guess it had to happen eventually… Since I started running this Summer (though sporadically), I was bound to run in an official event. And with my woman being the woman she is, she was bound to sign me up for one sooner rather than later.

That’s how I found myself among a couple friends and quite a large crowd of folks in Prospect Park this morning getting ready to run 5 miles.

I have to admit, the Turkey Trot was a lot of fun. I finished in around 39 minutes and hopefully I’ll remember to do something like it again… although I imagine my woman will remember for me in case I forget.

Update: Turns out I finished 258th out of 1288 runners! Pretty good for my first race, I think. Official time was 39:41.83 with a pace of 07:56.4.