Mirror's Edge

Some games bleed out into the real world after playing them for a while. Katamari makes me look at objects and wonder how big my Katamari would have to be to pick them up. Mario 64 changes the way I look at corners and I think about triple jumping onto buildings. Grand Theft Auto grants me immunity to traffic law and encourages me to drive on the sidewalk, slaughtering as many pedestrians as I can before the cops show up.

Mirror’s Edge is one of these sorts of games. After playing for a while, you’ll start to look at buildings and wonder how you too can get up to the roof and then leap across to the other building to get up to the balcony of your apartment so you don’t have to unlock the front door. You can imagine how it’d play out in Mirror’s Edge, and besides big pads that let you survive infinitely high jumps (and assuming you’re in pretty good physical condition), odds are good it probably COULD work out like that.

As for the game itself, the time trial mode in it is particularly sublime. It takes bites of the levels you’ve run through in Story mode and makes you really refine your run through them, demonstrating the absurd level of craftsmanship they’ve used. Areas often have alternate routes that you’ve not noticed, accessible based on your momentum. This is done everywhere, even the training area you practice in the beginning of the game.
Later this year (maybe after Christmas) I’ll probably post my top 10 (about as worthwhile as anyone else’s, probably). This is the sort of game that would definitely be on it.