Stride Review

The idea here is that you're an expert freerunner and in order to get to your goal you've got to run and jump from ledge to ledge. But there's so much more to it than that - to survive you'll have to blast open doors, crash through windows, climb, grapple, wallrun, zipline, and shoot enemies that get in your way. There's a huge learning curve here though - so get ready to die a LOT. For whatever reason the walk button is mapped to Triangle instead of the big comfy Move button. And trust me when I say you'll be sweating in no time because in order to run you need to swing your arms, and to jump you've gotta hit X and raise your move controller. It all feels akward --- until it doesn't. And once it becomes second nature the addiction really kicks into overdrive. Unlike Mirror's Edge which featured a full length campaign, Stride (at least for the time being) focuses on three arcade modes. The first one that hooked me first was Endless - which true to its name feels like an Endless Runner, increases the difficulty the further you get, slowly introducing tougher jumps, mandatory wall runs, and eventually enemies that you can either dodge or just kill. A solid list of MODS can make your runs harder for higher scores or nerf the difficulty completely. Between attempts the leadboard will constantly remind you how much you suck compared to your friends - but even better is a progression system that gradually unlocks upgrades as all your scores accumulate, so you never feel like you're wasting your time, even if you have a terrible run. Time Trials are no slouch either and actually caused me to invent all sorts of new expletives every time I died. There's 12 of them here and SHOULD only take a couple minutes each to beat. But finding the right path and figuring out how to get the best time and get all 3 stars on each will eat up hours of your life. The last mode is called Arena and --- I like it, but the addiction for this one hasn't kicked in quite yet. Unlike the other two modes which feel like obstical courses you run from start to finish, Arena throws you into a more freeform open city and sends you all over the place picking up briefcases, shooting bad guys, and hitting checkpoints in order to add more time to your clock. The better you do at each mode the more skins you can unlock for your gloves, gun, and grappling hook. There's some decent variety to the soundtrack and most of the music has a good driving beat but if I'm being honest it was all background noise - I was just too distracted by the challenge in front of me. The same kinda holds true for the graphics - they're certainly not as sharp as they could be and when you're climbing the framerate studders or looks jittery or something - but again - it's something you'll barely notice while playing. I'm sure a lot of people will be disappointed by the lack of any campaign or multiplayer modes - both of which are in the works and will be patched in somewhere down the line. And I thought that would be an issue for me - that Stride would lack substance and the arcade modes wouldn't hook me. But nothing could be further from the truth. Once I got the hang of Stride I didn't want to stop playing and I probably won't until I 3-star all the time trials and hopefully get the platinum trophy. I have a few minor complaints but Stride is kind of awesome just the way it is. Just be patient - it's not easy to get the hang of.

Score: 8.6/10