If COG Commander-In-Chief Cliff “Dude Huge” Bleszinski likes a game that isn’t Gears of War, it’s hard for me not to take notice, let alone assume the best about the game. At We Rate Stuff we’re regular people too, so when game demos are coming out earlier than the games themselves, this is a perfect way to inform people about the early demos, and give my ever so valued opinion about the game.

Whilst that was joke, the uniqueness of this game isn’t. It’s an innovative First-Person Action-Adventure. The game revolves around free-running, aka Parkour, in a very Half-Life styled future, except much brighter, and with out aliens and science and junk. The future government has gone all Big Brother and placed a giant magnifying glass on society. While the prologue of the game states that most were fine with that, some revolted, like one should. These people were faced with some hard times from the way-too-powerful government, and sticking to the running theme of rebels being badasses (Star Wars anyone?), the “runners” are sided with the freedom fighters. While in my 15 or so plays-thru the game, I still know very little about the story, but it’s packed with enough story to make two already confirmed sequels after this, which is very exciting news.

The game starts out with the aforementioned prologue with an illustration style I have only seen in the esurance.com commercials. It cuts very well from there to the stunningly beautiful 3D world. It also does a much better job explaining it’s story than I. On the 360 you’ll be jumping with LB, and crouching with LT. On first play, Matt immediately commented on how unorthodox the controls of the game are. To me this is just another innovative feature of the game, because once you master it you’ll be flying all over the map, with moves that would make Spider-Man jealous. The first person view in a game that involves so much jumping produces quite an awesome feeling. So convincing is the gameplay that the first time you over-shoot something and fly off a roof, you’ll be cringing the whole way down. To counter that, there’s a feature in the game called “runners vision” which is a system that makes important paths more noticeable by turning them red, which will greatly help you from often taking a Tom Petty-esque Free Fall.

The action-adventure feel of the game is much more Portal than Bioshock. In fact your character, Faith, is much like combining Portal heroine Chell and Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu Hayabusa, netting you a strong woman who can wall run, swing on bars, and jump on, around, or over just about anything. You have a partner, a boss that’s looking out for you, and some pissed off military dudes after you. With the skills you learn in the tutorial, you can take advantage of every possible rooftop path, and even fight said dudes in the first level, which entails the entire demo. The demo is a perfect sample of the game, and constantly kept (and keeps) me wanting more. It 100% convinced me to pick up this game, out November 13th. Get the demo now and see what you’ve been missing.