Occasionally, stress can be fun. When I feel my heart racing, adrenaline pumping and my body is mirroring the on-screen action, I know I am experiencing something special. Dice, the game's developer, overhauls the first-person shooter genre in one of the most exciting games of the year: "Mirror's Edge" for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

When you think of a first-person shooter, you picture a gun in front of you and an endless supply of alien or world war scenarios. In "Mirror's Edge," gunplay is strongly discouraged since you are a "runner" in a futuristic, corrupt society. You implement a style of freerunning or "Parkour" to climb over fences, vault over obstacles, leap long distances and perform death-defying stunts. Without the barrel of a gun as a reference to your view, you are looking at your environment as if you were there. There aren't obstructive menus, status screens or head-up displays to take you out of the experience.

With this perspective, the feelings of motion are enhanced. I felt myself leaning into jumps and lurching back as I landed. Observers felt a little motion sick. With out the benefit of controlling the action, the vertigo from the heights and the dizziness from the jumps were more intense. I didn't feel nauseous from the game, but I did need a break from the stress after I made a series of leaps that were out of my comfort zone.

Mark my words, you will die frequently. A wrong step or button press will make the difference between life and death as you miss the end of a ledge or fail to disarm you attackers. Luckily, the game takes only a few moments to reset back to an easy checkpoint. Flawless runs will take practice, and the achievement will be exhilarating.

The game will feel a bit on the short side. Experienced gamers might finish well within eight hours. For fun, there is a time trial mode to see how fast you can make it through a level for a speed run. For added difficulty, you can try to not use any firearms or shoot as it is possible to do the entire game without fatally wounding anyone. You can also turn off "runner vision" removing the guiding effect provided when items that indicate your path turned red. Some of these red landmarks are challenging puzzles in the game when you wonder to yourself, "How am I going to get all the way up there?"

"Mirror's Edge" takes the modern platforming concepts of "Prince of Persia" and "Tomb Raider" to new levels with its first-person view. If you could blend the Parkour running of "Mirror's Edge" with the melee system of "Condemned: Criminal Origins" and add the polish of "Half Life 2," you would have the finest first-person video game experience ever conceived. "Mirror's Edge" is very good at what it does, but it feels like it is missing something from making this a "must-have" game. In this desolate world, your enemies do not offer enough interactivity or challenge to truly catapult "Mirror's Edge" out of the realm of platform gaming, although it is an excellent platformer. The story, voice-acting and action sequences are very good; this feels like the first in what could be a very successful franchise.

I look forward to the next installment of "Mirror's Edge" since Dice has done a wonderful job with this game. I consider it a sure-fire rental, if not purchase, and the sequel will most undoubtedly knock me off of my feet — or sofa.

Marcus Anderson is a freelance writer and video game reviewer.
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