A few years ago, upon the disturbing realization that I’d hand-imported a PSP from Japan just so I could have it in white, then bought a bunch of games for it that I hadn’t really played, I embarked upon what I called the PSP Appreciation Project, a rather fanciful way of saying “hey, I ought to play some of these games.”

My recent foray into tower defending, then, would mark the start of the iOS Games Appreciation Project, which is at least ten times cooler than the PSP Appreciation Project in that it has a better acronym.

Electronic Arts, for all that I’ve been harboring a 25-year-old-grudge against them, does put some effort into their iOS efforts, and – even better – seems to put them on sale regularly.  It’s how I came to own Mirror’s Edge for iPhone, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair but one with a surprising amount of style.

When the console version of Mirror’s Edge came out, in 2007 or so, it was a terrible seductive world, all stark white and splashes of red, scored with enthralling ambient music, wrapped in a promising story of fractured future utopias, and – for me, at least – mind-bogglingly difficult.  That is to say, I downloaded the demo, utterly failed to complete the demo, and put it aside as something I could never possibly appreciate.

The iPhone version has the same design style going on but, well, is something that I was actually able to play.  The shift in perspective from 1st-person to 3rd-person is, I think, largely responsible for that, though the frightfully intuitive touch controls help a lot.

At an hour or so to play through, it’s almost more tech demo than actual game, but you can always replay levels if you want to try collecting all the collectibles or going for speed runs.  Even if you don’t, it’s an hour that I found well worth the 99 cents.