Dice must deliver Akira

Mirror's Edge makes many long-needed changes to the first-person genre of video game. It swaps gunplay for disarmament, fight for flee and creates a palpable sense of being chased. My palms haven't sweat like this since Half-Life 2.

But the parkour acrobatics work only most of the time. The game demands too much player accuracy, especially in the moments when the player has to fight or repeat a difficult platforming section needlessly. I've been working through each chapter by degrees, tempering my frustration with the play control against the game's beautiful (though lifeless) world.

Anyway, it just so happens that I'm playing this game while re-reading Otomo's Akira graphic novels. For those who don't know, Akira, the film, takes many liberties with the manga's original plot to create a more digestible feature. As a result, we have one of the few instances where both the art and print version of a work are both quite different and neither seems preferable.

But what I've noticed is that Otomo's manga features several Mirror's Edge-style chases, with the poorly-armed protagonists resulting to unconventional means of survival. That is: climbing, running, jumping, disarming and occasionally firing guns at enemies, which constitutes most of the manga's plot. If developer Dice uses a sequel or two to iron out Mirror's Edge's gameplay annoyances and lifeless environments, then maybe they can implode the geek realm by crafting a five star Akira video game.