REVIEWS GAMES
We begged her
not to look at her
401(k) statement.
SOUNDTRACKS
DANCE DANCE
REVOLUTION
Mirror’s Edge is just one game
boasting the latest tie-in
craze in a remix heavy CD

Mirror’s Edge:
“Still Alive” Remixes
ELECTRONIC ARTS
The game’s main theme, Swedish pop star
Lisa Miskovsky’s “Still Alive,” gets worked
over here by a team of clubland all-stars,
including Benny Benassi, Junkie XL, Paul van
Dyk, and Armand Van Helden. The Eurodisco
may not be for everyone, but at least it’s a
step beyond that plinky Nintendo music.

Might as Well Jump

The BioShock EP
2K GAMES
The omnipresent Moby retooled three
tracks from the cult hit BioShock for
a special-edition EP, highlighted by an
’80s-inspired electro remix of “Beyond the
Sea” (unfortunately using a soundalike,
not the Bobby Darin original) and an
appropriately down-tempo take on Billie
Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”

MIRROR’S EDGE: A VIDEO GAME INSPIRED BY A SPORT INSPIRED BY A VIDEO GAME

The French pseudo-sport of parkour—also known as free-running—should be familiar even if the name is not. It’s become an increasingly popular technique in movies and on TV, enabling practitioners known as traceurs to jump between rooftops and scale walls with their bare hands, not unlike long-lost Mario Brothers come to life. Casino Royale, Live Free or Die Hard, District B13, Heroes, and the video for Madonna’s “Jump” showcase gravity-defying stunts requiring no special equipment beyond a decent pair of tennis shoes and a better-than-decent pair of brass balls. In addition, amateur videos of l’art du déplacement made the rounds on You Tube, generating millions of pageviews and earning parkour a rep as the ultimate hipster workout.

One can imagine the pitch meeting for Mirror’s Edge (★★★; Electronic Arts for Xbox 360, PC, PS3), where after the creators carefully explained how the acrobatic antics could be translated into an engaging, zeitgeist-capturing gaming experience, a suit probably stood up and asked, “Okay, but shouldn’t we have some guns and bad guys and stuff? And maybe a hot Eurasian chick?”

Said hottie is the game’s main character, a courier of sundry illicit goods, vaulting and climbing across the city’s skyline to elude police helicopters and several precincts’ worth of angry cops. The stuntwork remains firmly rooted in real-world physics specific to this martial arts discipline of sorts, and once the controls for ascending and descending obstacles become second nature, you scan

the rooftops for pipes to climb, ledges to hang from, and ventilation shafts to squeeze through. Look fast, however, because the nonstop shoot-outs and chases mean there’s barely a chance to take in the ultramodern landscape of gleaming glass towers and construction sites that wouldn’t look out of place in Singapore, Dubai, or Paris’ La Défense business district.

At their best, games co-opting street culture provide a set of tools and a playground to use them, as does the excellent and largely plot-free Tony Hawk skateboarding series. Mirror’s Edge has an elaborate plot involving political conspiracies and murder frame-ups, when really you just want to fluidly bound from building to building without breaking a leg. And while superpowered game heroes like Spider-Man (also known for hotfooting it between skyscrapers) risk no such consequences, a gruesome death here is always just one misplaced step away, making hard-earned success that much more fulfilling.

But if it were up to us—and it isn’t—we’d rather the game skip the contrived fuck-the-police shenanigans and instead concentrate on its one original idea: taking an activity clearly inspired by decades of high-jumping video game characters and turning it back into a video game. In an age in which titles like Little Big Planet and Guitar Hero let you create your own levels and songs to play, respectively, a little more license to explore the stranger-than-fiction possibilities of this freaky practice will go a long way toward connecting with a gaming culture that generally favors reality over realistic sci-fi. DAN ACKERMAN

Liberty City Invasion
ROCKSTAR
New York club staple DJ Green Lantern
created this mix-tape album of “music from
and inspired by Grand Theft Auto IV,” with
guest spots from Busta Rhymes, Wyclef, and
others. It’s an impressive roster, although
the bigger career coup for Green Lantern
may have been landing a role as one of
G TA4’s in-game radio show hosts.

NBA 2K9 Soundtrack
2K SPORTS
The hip-hop-heavy albums that regularly
accompany this NBA-licensed basketball
series would put most mix-tape DJs to
shame. This year’s entry includes the usual
suspects (Beastie Boys, Gnarls Barkley), as
well as an original, brand-touting track by
the Cool Kids titled “2K Pennies.” D.A.