After writing the previous review on Mirror's Edge I finally got the nerve to finish Catalyst after all this time. Started over from a fresh new save and wow I have some FEELINGS about this one.

Like I said in the last review, Mirror's Edge means the world to me. While flawed and with questionable design decisions (because what really is perfect art ya know?) it sits within a very particular place of my memory and my life itself. It's the type of game that feels like a once in a while experience that comes out of nowhere for me like a Gravity Rush or a Sayonara Wild Hearts or something. To me there isn't really anything that hits like Mirror's Edge does for me in the hyper specific way it does.

I didn't play Catalyst when it first released. I was in college and had no money for video games or even systems and I DEFINITELY didn't have anything with me that could run it. I was too busy doing sick ass longplays of Nier Gestalt because I was deep in my Longplay Era and justified it as a way that I was "justifying" my time with games in between classes at the time. Everything had to be for "content" which looking back jesus christ I was bitter and cynical and just not engaging with things in healthy ways at all. Looking for excuses to just engage with things at all instead of just like engaging it for the sake of itself. Like yeah, I write shit for here and for videos these days but I also just like do things for me too more than just some lackluster excuse to churn out "content" through the mill? I feel like if anything these writings are ways I engage with things and I'm doing this for purely selfish me reasons these days which I just feel better about doing for myself. Sorry, completely unrelated tangent lol.

Anyway, I now have the means and ability to play Catalyst and just wanted to finally after all this time. So how was it?

Catalyst is like watching your favorite underground up and coming band who got by on scrappy charm and unique sound water down their sound and identity for "mass appeal". Yeah that's a bit of reductive and slightly up my own ass way of looking at how and why artists will try to do things in order to reach more of a broad audience of sorts, and it's not like DICE is some indie darling studio or anything like that. Mirror's Edge isn't a Cave Story. Hell I'm not even fully against that happening with artists if that's what they wanna do anyway. I actually agree with Kurt Cobain's own words on it, “I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout,” Cobain adds. “I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.” and like Nirvana themselves did it with Nevermind which is a banger and then tried to battle that perception with shit like In Utero that also fucks incredibly hard. The point more-so is that it IS noticeable and it can be an element clearly seen within the art itself when it happens but that's not an inherently bad or even negative thing, it just is what it is.

So for me, while I'm glad that DICE was allowed to make more of the game that they wanted the first time around (no gun combat this time, an expansion of the movement options and mechanics) it also absolutely capitulates to THE OPEN WORLD menace and in this case I don't think it fully helps the game in the ways that I think they hoped they could make it work within.

Now listen, I'm not one of those fuckin people who's all like "OPEN WORLD BAD, AAA GAMES INHERENTLY BAD" if the games good to me the game is fuckin good brah. Like trust me I like exploring a nice open world if its fun to do so. Spider Man PS4/Miles Morales, Gravity Rush, Red Dead Redemption, and Dragon's Dogma are some examples of ones I fuck with heavily. Hell, Catalyst itself does some neat things with its open world structure and design that's really fun to engage with. The dreaded Ubisoft Towers that in one way or another have poisoned this genre of games for a long while at this point now with their normally fairly poorly thought out easy ass decently thoughtless seeming design. But the way that this game makes them all into really fun mechanical parkour challenges is genuinely really fun and rad! Like seriously the Rezoning one is one of my favorite challenges within the game because of just all the shit you can do in there to get up to the terminals.

The problem with the open world of Glass comes from the fact that this world is a pain to navigate. Runner Vision, an option that doubled as a stylistic touch within the first game, is now basically mandatory if you don't want to constantly get lost within it. I swear to fuck I would think I was going in the right direction constantly only to then realize that I'm nowhere near where I'm supposed to be going at all and if anything have made more of a trek for myself trying to just run it. For whatever reason instead of trying to make a more compact city that could possibly be navigated in any which way you want, making the OPTION of Runner Vision an actual OPTION, there are instead certain linear ass points that boringly funnel you in the same ways every single time with no real way to get around them in fun or creative ways. It's an open world that limits how you engage with it which I feel goes against the entire spirit and identity of the series and what it wants to do. Glass is a nightmare city designed by a madman and while yes that IS the text that doesn't make it any less annoying to navigate especially without Runner Vision. It doesn't help that there really isn't much interesting in glass. All of the side missions are delivery missions or races which while decently fun at first, again can be difficult to navigate without Runner Vision and are repeated so often that after the 5th one its just exhausting. Same with the cops and cameras on every corner. Now while I didn't always have KrugerSec on my ass there were points where I'd be trying to go somewhere and then IMMEDIATELY either have to fight or book it to a safehouse in another direction or sometimes even both because some KrugerSec were just around a corner for SOME reason and now there's a helicopter on my ass. Like I could be shit at the game, it's totally possible, maybe my navigating skills are total shit, but I don't feel like I'm alone on this one honestly. The entire place kills flow constantly and at points it was just less annoying to fast travel around than have to really deal with it though I love the parkour so much that I would try not to do it too much.

My god those movement mechanics have been so well expanded though even in spite of that. The animations, the feel of it all, the satisfaction of getting the perfect double wallrun or getting to the peak of a building or tower or construction site is like nothing else. It's a goddamn rush. They really went all out to focus on improving every aspect of how this game feels to play on every level and I wouldn't have it any other way. They even throw in a grappling hook! Though it is limited by like where you can use it which is kinda lame but I can get not wanting the player to fully just spider man their way around everywhere. But I also think having the option to if you were good enough with it could've been rad. Its uses are still fun ways to vary the movement up when needed.

Then problem #2 rears its head for a part of the game. The progression system in this game is complete ass. It's there because it has to be and its so obvious that they didn't want it there. They lock rolling and fucking QUICKTURNING away from you until you unlock them in a 3 tier tree that feels useless as fuck. I instantly put everything into movement because why the fuck wouldn't you in a game about parkour? Instantly the game just feels better and better. But it should've just been the base everything from the first game and then built more on top of that! Like I wouldn't have even cared that much if it didn't lock such basic shit behind the progression trees and its so baffling that they chose to do that even if they were forced to put the trees in.

The levels themselves though? Absolutely sublime parkour challenges. Every level feels like a fun challenge with some a bit more linear than others but all at points encouraging you to figure out where to go within it. I especially love the level where Dogan wants you to go to the top of the building under construction in order to fuck with the owners of the building for not paying their debts. It's such a banger of a level and the view is absolutely perfect once ya get to the top. The beautiful art direction perfectly compliments every single distinct location absolutely perfectly too, whether you're in the run down resistance run underground, the HighCaste rich district or hanging out with Birdman it's all just such a dystopian hellscape of a vibe. The OST by Solar Fields perfectly compliments all of what you're doing too. The melancholy sting of this OST seriously sings to me, it's such a fuckin banger. It funnily enough reminds me of songs from the Manhunter Soundtrack just this ethereal melancholy vibe.

Again I just wish more of it was in service of more! I feel like the few actually different side missions that are there barely help flesh this world or these characters out. I wanna know more about Birdman but ya do 2 missions for him and he's basically fucking gone! Ya do 2 missions for Nomad and same thing! Plastic at least remains within the plot which is dope because she's rad and autistic techy black girl rep is legit sick as fuck. Dogan is cool! He seems like a bastard that kinda gives a shit he's dope!

But I think this is where the story shows its ass majorly (though I'm not really holding it fully against the game as its not like the first games story is really good at all either lol) is in just how fucking underdeveloped it all is. The world is fascinating and interesting! These characters seem really cool! But they all feel to exist and talk as if you're supposed to have context that the game just doesn't give you. It makes parts of the story frustrating because it reminds me of that thing Final Fantasy 15 does where Gladio leaves your party and then comes back and just goes like "YEAH I WENT AND DID SOMETHING BUT I'LL TELL YA ABOUT IT LATER BUD" and its to sell you the Gladio DLC. But here the Gladio DLC or the Final Fantasy XV Brotherhood equivalent is a comic book prequel where characters constantly go "FAITH YOU WENT TO JUVIE FOR THAT THING YOU DID THAT WE CAN'T SAY wink wink nudge nudge" after a while it just becomes annoying as its like hearing characters talk about an episode of television that only streamed on Amazon Prime and you just haven't seen it yet and had no clue it even existed.

So many strange little things like that happen throughout the story too. I feel like everything to do with Faith's parents is kept fairly vague too for no real good reason at all? Characters like Rebecca feel like they're going to matter far more and like do something within the story but then just disappear from the plot entirely in the end after threatening Faith directly. Its just kind of an entire ass mess that at least feels more interesting overall to me than the first game's story fully was. But it never gets where I feel like it wants to go honestly. I do absolutely love some of the character banter though.

I didn't even really touch combat but if I'm being honest with ya I just don't have a ton to say on it. It feels better than the first game's to me. There's a bigger focus on more environment/running based moves and juggling different moves and enemy types and its fine enough to be fun at times but most of the upgrades all deal with being stronger against enemies in general and certain enemy types which is whatever.

This game hits a bit, it does some shit real real well on the movement but kinda flounders in a number of ways that are fairly disappointing. The first game sits in a very personal place to me and while I think this game is still very solid it just doesn't at all hit in the same way that the perfect flow and pace of the first game does for me. It's just a solid mess of an experience that I'll probably replay just because of how good movement feels but I just wish that it didn't kneecap itself at every possible opportunity. Not bad but definitely watered down in ways that make me kinda sad. I guess I should've heeded the Warning Call ya know????????????? ;)))))))))))

Why did you make this game open world when the open world serves no purpose other than to make you run from level to level? Why would you reboot the story after one game just to largely retread the same territory, only worse? Why would you purposefully make your initial controls shitty by delegating basic movement options from the first game to a skill tree? Why did you feel the need to over-explain Runner Vision by giving it an in-universe justification that no one wanted or needed? Why would you follow up one of the most unique and surprising titles of its generation with a game that everyone forgot immediately upon release? Why does every piece of promo art for this game make Faith look way worse than she does in game?!

Oh, right, EA.

Mais do mesmo. A jogabilidade permanece igual a do primeiro jogo, melhora em alguns poucos aspectos, mas, no fim das contas não traz nada excepcionalmente novo e empolgante.

Acho que a direção de arte e a mecânica própria do parkour são os maiores prós desse jogo (e olha que muitas vezes a mecânica do parkour parece meio "mal polida")

Fora isso o jogo consegue trazer um enredo preguiçoso de ruim, com personagens desinteressantes e uma qualidade técnica questionável. Fora a falsa sensação de mundo aberto (você passa diversas vezes pelos mesmos locais durante a história, os cenários se tornam muito repetitivos).

Eu esperava muito desse jogo, mas no fim o "reboot" nunca existiu (reboot precisa ser algo que proporciona uma nova experiência para o jogador. Aqui apenas alteraram a base da história da protagonista e pronto, chamaram de reboot).

The actual standard gameplay of Mirror's Edge Catalyst is very good. Faith controls pretty well for the most part, and vaulting and wall running over everything is a lot of fun. Even the combat in the levels is actually pretty satisfying because you're highly encouraged to vault off of objects and wall run kick enemies, which just emphasizes more of the movement that this series is known for. And there's even a grappling hook for certain portions!

The main problem is everything else that the game adds as layers upon the movement. Most of these are excess junk mechanics that have to be dealt with in the open world environment. There are a ton of basic optional missions throughout the overworld that do nothing except give you XP in exchange for doing time trials. Which are not inherently bad, except the time limits are super tight (perhaps unreasonably so if casual players are having trouble with them) and every optional mission feels the exact same. These could have just been cut out in order to emphasize the Dash optional missions, which are the actual time trials with leaderboards. Also, exploring the overworld is actually quite fun, but getting spotted by the various security cameras located around the overworld (that are not always obvious tells) causes the baddies to spawn and ruin your exploration, and fighting the baddies causes a helicopter to spawn with unlimited baddies until you retreat to a safe house. As a result, I often had to stay out of sight of the suddenly spawned baddies and wait for the cooldown, which really put a bit of the dent in the momentum I had exploring around.

Oh, and the story's kind of generic and feels lacking in emotion (for me at least), but you didn't come to play Mirror's Edge for the story right? The soundtrack isn't as good as the original though, which is kind of a bummer. At least it's a pretty looking game, but super taxing on your system if you go all out with the settings.

I think if they just stripped the game of these unnecessary baddie spawns and dumb optional missions with extreme time limits, Mirror's Edge Catalyst would have been much more well received. As it is though, there's a great game buried underneath; it's a shame that there's so much excess piled upon it though. I'd still gladly play a sequel, and I hope they learn their lessons from this that more stuff is not always better.

First of all, Mirror's Edge did NOT needed a reboot, original was holding up well. Rather than a sequel they did a reboot for some reason. Now everything is shiny like GTA SA graphic mods made by people who think shiny graphics = better graphics. Original matte aged better for me. There's also no gunplay in the reboot which was fun and made sense.

On a positive note, this game had breathtaking heights, nice views to explore. Wind sounds were immersive, play it with earphones and be careful to not fall.

was hoping this would click with me more upon a replay but i think it fell even further in my favor instead. at least i feel better about the original game again in hindsight.

the open world and whether it was a fit for the game or not has been beaten to death as a topic at this point but i genuinely still can't understand why they bothered.

what we ended up with is an empty and confusing to navigate (both because of runner vision seeing a downgrade but also in terms of just overall readability of the environments with the samey color schemes and constant glass) that strings off into more traditional linear story based missions. the issue is most of said story missions were either rushed, not the best quality wise, or both at the same time. the big climax of the game consists of waiting for some elevators you're on top of to rise, climbing some elevator shafts, some shitty combat, and a lot of hands off gadget use more or less. it's almost as bad, if not worse than the combat gauntlet that the first title ended with.

skill rolls are for some reason locked behind a skill tree (not far into it but again, Why?) in addition to countless combat abilities and gadgets that help with your parkour abilities as if anyone ever liked the combat or the movement system wasn't great as is. the level of feature creep is astounding and probably came at the cost of god knows what else.

it isn't like the game is broken or whatever but i struggle to think of a sequel from at least the past decade or so that has been this off the mark. very sad.

constant cutscene interruptions, a terribly realized open world with xp bloat, side quest bloat, collectible bloat, skill tree bloat, an extra emphasis on combat which was one of the worst parts of the original, adds basically nothing to the original's mechanics except a really shallow grappling hook, constant online leaderboard bloat, and the writing is bad.
All in all, a monument to all of the worst design tendencies of the mid 2010s. This game is only good as an illustration of why the simplicity of the original was so superior.

The level-design is quite different in Catalyst as you have one big Openworld, compared to the 1st game where it was a succession of levels.

While the combat is still really basic, it was improved a lot, and you can take advantage of the environment to deal more damage to the enemies. Smashing a soldier's face against a wall or against one of his friends can be fun.

It's kinda obvious considering both games are 8 years apart, but there was a huge improvement in terms of graphics. The characters look great, especially Faith.
The cutscenes looked really sketchy in the 1st game, even though it had its charm. So I appreciated that they put more effort into it, this time around.

I liked how the music became more dynamic whenever I was able to rush through the buildings without stopping or failing a jump. It's just a small detail, but it's a nice reward for being able to do parkour flawlessly.

I've only done a few side missions after finishing the main story. It was essentially timed missions and it was fun. Most of the time, there was only a couple of seconds left at the end, even if I did a perfect run. The short amount of side missions I've done were decently challenging and fair.

I regret using the runner vision during the entirety of the game. If I replay it, I'll try to use this feature as little as possible!

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Played in mid-February 2023]
Playtime: 10 hours
Main story complete.

I was really conflicted on what to rate this game, the writing is easily the most glaring flaw with some of the overworld challenges being too tightly timed for my taste (besides the beats I love those) but at the same time everything else is a class act. The gameplay, music, atmosphere, art direction, level design, setpieces, character design, etc are all homeruns and then some. If the writing and storyline were better I could honestly see this being among my top games but overall was an amazing experience in spite of that and definitely a game I would consider replaying which is really rare for me. I hope DICE gets the opportunity to work on stuff like this again at some point.

Subway Surfing in the City of Glass.

The OG Mirror’s Edge is a bit of a darling to me - this laser-focused parkour action thrilla that limits it’s scope to densely choreographed sequences through rich, hyper-real urb environments. There’s a weightines to Faith’s movement, allowing the player to feel a sense of inertia to the stunts you string together, putting stones in your gut whenever your unbroken momentum ends in freefall. It’s so lean it’s so Mean.

Ultimately I put off playing Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst for yearz because I knew what they did to it. I knew it was an open world game, a sprawling map peppered with waypoints and collectables and challenges and skill trees and XP and shit. This Human Revolutionification of a game I originally adored because it sidestepped that stuff. With a few concessions (I skipped every cutscene and ignored everything that wasn’t a story mission), I was finally able to get over myself and just give the game a shot, and I’m happy 2 share that I think ME:C is Alright!!! It’s OK!

The shift in focus is almost immediately striking as the art direction of Catalyst shifts from heavily stylised minimal realism, to this catastrophic directionless mush of overexposed modernism. It's like every expensive yacht in the world crashed into one another to form a continent. It’s kind of pretty but it really doesn’t inspire awe in me in the same way as the OG… A lens flare fried calamity of white pointy buildings with an accent colour thrown in for good measure. Whenever I replay Mirror’s Edge, I gawk at the level of attention poured into the texture, staging and lighting work - and I just couldn’t find anything to care about here.

The reason for this visual mulch is, of course, gameplay clutter as a result of moving towards an open world. The environment design is stretched thin by taking a very blunt modular approach as a result of attempting to pad out the vast expanses of rooftop between quest markers. The City of Glass is slavishly built for Faith and her moveset, every canopy littered with pipes and platforms and grappling points with the intent to allow the player to maintain an unbroken sprint across vast expanses. I can’t help but prefer the simplicity and muted realism of the prior game’s world, one that felt almost hostile to the existence of the Runners, which necessitated a more thoughtful approach to the moment-to-moment - scanning the environment for ways to use your moveset to reach places you shouldn’t. Catalyst’s city is Faith’s playground - but who can deny the simple joys of swingin on da jungle gym.

I’m not going to shit on the game a whole lot - the core intent is very different, focused on player retention through endless sidemissions and jiggies, but it’s pretty great when you meet it halfway. Brushing aside the fluff content and focusing on the story missions allows something of a rush through what the game has to offer. It’s bigger, it’s crazier, it’s bombastic, Faith goes crazy scaling wacky luminescent architecture that doesn’t even pretend to feel like places built for civvies. Assault course game design. It even follows many of the same beats as the original game, you just can’t help but compare how differently things come across here. The combat buckles very quickly with miserable enemy variants, but I enjoyed the focus on using the environment against baddies by paddling them around/into each other, it's pretty slapstick but a damng lot more dynamic than what was in the original game.

I dunno, I’m middle of the road on this. Catalyst feels like the flipside of the same coin, Mirror’s Edge but hopped up on Ubisoft Juice. You couldn't convince me that Mirror's Edge needed bandit camps if your life depended on it, but the speed and flow and scale is intoxicating but it all rings kind of hollow when it feels like you’re just playing Aesthetique Temple Run. Maybe all I need to be happy in this life is seeing bullets go through Nvidia PhysX cloth & dats why this game isn’t doin it.

the ruinous open world (that removes the possibility for the deftly choreographed scripted chase sequences that were so engrossing in the original), more realistic scenery/lighting design (that dulled The City of Glass's overexposed starkness) and bland CW-show storytelling that's "more cinematic" (but also way more intrusive than the OG's hilaribad and brief disney channel cutscenes) perfectly illustrate why developers should never listen to fan demands and should only ever listen to ME!!!!!!!! why would you EVER put a skill tree in something like this?!?!?!?!

at least the Solar Fields ambient ost is still ace

O parkour nesse game tá até melhor que no primeiro e é gostoso de usar ele no mundo aberto, apesar de eu preferir a linearidade do clássico. A cidade tem uma identidade ainda mais futurista que a do primeiro jogo, isso eu não curti tanto, mas também em vários momentos passamos por cenários que lembram bastante o mesmo.

Falto mais habilidades no sistema de rpg, chega um momento que vira só atributo pra desbloquear e tem muito objetivo secundário pra encher linguiça, mas não são obrigatórios.

O combate teve umas melhorias, mas ficou faltando muita coisa ainda, tinham que ter colocado mais formas de enfrentar os inimigos mais fortes, porque eu só consegui derrotar eles dando vários chutes e voadoras (eles aguentavam umas 10).

Já na história eu não prestei atenção, até tem alguns personagens legais como a Plastic, mas eles ficam falando no meio do parkour e meus olhos não conseguem acompanhar a legenda. Iria dar 4 estrelas pro jogo, ia depender do final, mas ele me broxou. A ultima missão até foi legal, mas podia ser bem mais extensa, entregando mais fuga e parkour.

i didn't think much of the original game but since this game sucks mondo dick it actually made me appreciate it more

this game is so mind-numbingly fucking boring and it never ever picks up any steam

despite being a whole console generation after the first game it still plays like an early PS3 game and in some aspects downgraded itself

the parkour is still just as jank as the original but made even worse since there's a grappling hook now and half your playtime will be running to your next mission instead of playing the actual fucking mission

this games open world is so lifeless there's nothing go on aside from the dullest side quests imaginable

and the cherry on top is the games abysmal combat system its easily one of the worst that i've seen with stiff as fuck movement and Smash Bros tier hitboxes

they had almost 10 years to make this its unacceptable

some time between 2008 and 2016 game designers, particularly 'western AAA' ones, started thinking gameplay abstractions were no longer cool (cinematic). this game is the prized child of that line of thinking.

the original mirror's edge is a pure expression of freedom, its sterile white urbanity contrasting with faith's relentless movement that literally through the stark reds of runner vision colours the environment. runner vision was instinctual, a result of faith's rebellion against the vaguely present corporate dystopia - a natural evolution and animalistic resistance to the machinistic order of the city she existed within the margins of. a gameplay abstraction guiding the player that mechanically and thematically contributed to the game's consonance. in catalyst, runner vision is a technological crutch explained in generic corporate dystopia worldbuilding, annoyingly contrived, magic ruining - the first thing i would recommend a player do is go into the settings and change runner vision from 'full' to 'classic' - it is no longer a sign of faith's individual expression but a forced assimilation of her character into the collective of runners, into an order as it were. that wild freedom the original game meant to me is cut the moment you begin running in this game in its attempt at contextualising a gameplay abstraction. only one example among many such issues i hold with the game here, another is the sheer amount of visual noise.

once again, the original's sterile whiteness slashed by stark reds provided a true sense of freedom - no UI elements or waypoints, just a natural instinct to move, run and jump. here open world busywork and button prompts and experience notifications and skill point notifications and new mission notices and in-game achievement systems litter the screen, clogging it beyond reason. right before you gain control the game shows you a hint of the noise that a regular citizen connected to the grid is subjected to, and one must wonder whether by the time you unlock all the systems faith herself is any different?

some positives. once all movement options have been unlocked the main missions are as or even more fun than the original game. the core systems here are excellent and its a great shame that a sequel will probably not happen. while the main narrative is a messy word salad with enough meaningless proper nouns thrown around to make a young adult dystopian novelist blush from embarassment, i really liked faith's characterisation as strong-willed yet vulnerable. 'big' games with female protagonists are not usually ones to show them cry for fear of them coming across as too emotional or weak but not this game and i greatly appreciated that.

ultimately it was worth the £3.59 i spent on it in a PSN sale, also super impressive that a game of this scope and visuals runs at a fairly consistent 60fps on a base ps4 for sure

There is fun to be had here but it's a disappointment after the long wait for a sequel to the first Mirror's Edge. Catalyst feels unfinished. You do side missions to earn 'credits', but there is no shop or dealer or anyway to spend said 'credits'. The combat is boring and repetitive, a step down from the previous game. The parkour is tons of fun though, but the open world feels wasted and not particularly well designed or populated with anything meaningful to do. Probably worth playing just to mainline the story missions and not bother with the other chaff.

This review contains major story spoilers

After playing the original i thought i would come back to this game again since i played it through years ago and remember liking it a lot. However after completing it i am left very torn on my thoughts about it.

Start of with what i liked. I think the parkour is as good as ever. Very fluid, improved from the first game and i had lots of fun running around. The combat is massively improved with it being much more involved in the story, however they did remove being able to use weapons which i do think actually works better in this game due to their only being one ranged enemy. I enjoyed most of the characters but none are anything to write home about. Visuals looks great and it also has a pretty good score.

Now for what I didnt like. This game did not need an open world. Now i think them expanding from a linear gameplay loop would of worked ok if the open world was for anything other than collectables. Also when you are running across the same 4 buildings all the time the open world ends up not feeling like one. I was extremely confused by the story, i originally thought it was a sequel to the original due to the futuristic tech, then i looked at the game info and it mentioned "Faith's origin" so then i thought it was a prequel, then to google it and find out its a reboot. The story also handles major plot points very poorly. There are two major example so SPOILERS AHEAD. My main problem is that they reveal that the main villains daughter is actually Faith's sister, not through a cutscene but through a stray line of dialogue said by one of the side characters, for the reveal of the games largest plot point to just be tossed out there like that seems like a massive waste to me. Secondly they have you believe one of the side characters Noah was killed about a quarter of the way into the game, only to reveal he is alive, to then kill him instantly, just seems a bit pointless.

While i think Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a good gameplay experience, with some amazing parkour and way more forgiving combat encounters than its predecessor. I think its step's to take on a more narrative experience failed handing out a half baked story with nothing that memorable really happening.

A disgrace to the original Mirror's Edge!
Most of those who liked the original game, actually did because of the parkour experience that it presented in a linear semi-cinematic gameplay.
In this installment, however, they tried to expand what Mirror's Edge could be, but those expansions just made it a messy game with no particular focus. They shoved in so many unnecessary elements to make it follow the 'newer' gaming standards like open-world and online multiplayer, these aren't bad things for sure, but for the original genre of the game, they were factors to make the experience less parkour-ish and more just random running and online-interactivity kind of game. In this installment, they also introduced an idea of weapon-free combat, which makes more sense than the original to be frank, but they added a new dilemma by making some fighting sequences in certain missions too annoyingly challenging, it felt like playing a first-person perspective Mortal Kombat game but with a mouse, that wasn't fun at all, that's not how a parkour game is supposed to be either.. I lost interest mid-way through and dropped the game, because even the story wasn't that enticing to keep me in.

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst feels like it never gets talked about except for through lamentations of it being open world instead of level based like the original Mirror's Edge was, or people complaining about how it has a couple movement abilities locked behind a skill tree, or people talking about how EA doesnt make original games anymore. And I get that position on paper, since Mirror's Edge: Catalyst came out right in the middle of the ps4 generation when open worlds were everywhere in AAA and every game seemed to have an obligatory skill tree regardless of whether it added anything of value. I can't blame people seeing a sequel to a really tight, linear, level based game going open world and throwing up their hands about Trends and Bandwagons.

But here's the thing. This game is barely an open world in the Ubisoft sense or the GTA sense. Rather, I think it has a lot more in common with the Metroidvania genre.

Mirror's Edge is about parkour, or free running, in a dystopian future. Everything about the gameplay and theming is centered on these two ideas. What this means for its "open world" design is that you have several decently sized but not huge sections of city, largely rooftops, interiors of buildings, some infrastructural installations, and a construction site, that is all there to facilitate free, expressive movement, often while escaping from The Cops. No matter what route you take, you are always pushed to engage with the detailed and active parkour mechanics. This isn't like the other big Parkour game, Assassin's Creed, where you just hold a button and occasionally another button while moving and your guy does it all automatically (not a knock tho, I love AC). Its stick-shift platforming and it's a ton of fun. The mechanics have been slightly refined from the original game and provide more ways to enter a state of rapid, flowing movement, or recover it if you fuck up. Every route you take becomes a chain of vaults, slides, jumps, wall-runs, impact rolls, and swings off pipes and flagpoles. New to this game is a shift move that works both as a dodge and a way to build, rebuild, or maintain momentum, that I found myself using in a way that almost simulated the rhythmic, controlled breathing of distance running. Tying it all together is the absolutely unparalleled design of full-body presence in its first person viewpoint, where it not only shows your body when you look down but actually makes it feel like you're inhabiting and moving in it, with the weight and momentum and grace of an athlete in motion, instead of just a floating camera with arms like so many other first person games. There are honestly very few AAA games that care about detailed, flavorful movement mechanics to this degree.

The combat is vastly improved from the first game, where clunky fighting or shooting segments often brought the game's beautiful momentum to a screeching halt. In this one, you can no longer use guns, thank god, so its all punching(light attacks) and kicking(heavy attacks). The new shift-dodge means you can more easily avoid damage, and also get behind them to do extra damage or kick them off ledges. But the key to combat is traversal attacks, which is when you attack while doing parkour. Light ones do less damage but preserve your momentum, so they're good for getting enemies out of your way while escaping, or for setting them up for a knockout from a stronger heavy traversal attack. These attacks are snappy and well-animated, and the combat is actually quite satisfying once you get the hang of incorporating parkour into it. There are several enemy types that all require slightly different tactics, so it keeps things from getting stale. The combat is also very frequently optional; you can often simply bowl them over and get the heck out of there instead.

The game does contain a skill tree, but it is honestly quite unobtrusive. It has 3 parts: movement, combat, and gear, and 80% of the movement tree is unlocked already at the start of the game, with the majority of the rest of the actual parkour mechanics easily unlocked in an hour or two of play. The rest of it is all combat skills, damage or defense upgrades, and new gadgets. The gadgets you actually just get from story progression, and they give you new movement abilities that open up new paths and new areas as the story progresses. Its not quite as free-form in its exploration as traditional Metroidvanias, and there's no sequence breaking due to the mission-based story, but it still has that feeling of the world gradually unfolding as your abilities grow. The map contains some of the typical open-world collectables and busywork missions, which are usually time trials, timed deliveries, or small combat challenges followed by escapes. They're fun enough to do, but can be safely ignored without consequence if you aren't interested or just want a more tightly paced game. The story missions themselves, and the character-given major sidequests, are all very solid and bring you to a variety of more linear, contained levels scattered around the city. This stuff is classic Mirror's Edge, and where the game shines brightest. I especially liked the Art Museum level and the under-construction skyscraper you have to sabotage for the mafia.

Like the original game, Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a real looker. It paints its world in splashes of vivid color against stark, sterile white and polished glass. The use of color is a bit more restrained here compared to the first game, but its still very effective. Sometimes you slam open a door from the blindingly white rooftops and are blasted with the most incredible shade of green you've ever seen in a game as you sprint through an office corridor to the closest exit. Huge video billboards or displays cover buildings, with constantly shifting advertisements or news reports lighting up the night. It feels lightly futuristic and dystopian in a way that balances mundane believablility with stylized hyper-reality really well. There are some really lovingly crafted service corridors, corporate office buildings, and infrastructural facilities; mundane places transformed and made stranger by the context of how you move through them and why, which is something I always love to see in games (see also: INFRA, for the ultimate perfection of this aesthetic in games). The sound design is quite immersive, and makes you feel the speed and physical exertion involved in everything you do. The music on the other hand is only OK, as it serves the atmosphere and action well, but isn't especially memorable. They commissioned a pretty solid CHVRCHES song but bafflingly, don't even use it at all other than in a jukebox in the hideout. It doesn't even play over the credits! Why even commission it then!!

The narrative is fine. It's not like poorly executed, but its nothing new either. Kinda feels like a middling TV show from that time period. It provides a solid enough framework for a bunch of cool levels, so I guess it did its job. It is at least, better than the absolutely atrocious storytelling from the original game with its e-surance cutscenes and barely sketched characters. The characters here feel like people with a history in this world, and the presentation is solid, it just lacks a certain extra spark. Even so, it's well-paced and doesn't overstay its welcome by any means.

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is a seriously underrated game. It doesn't quite hit the transcendent highs the original does, but it also comes nowhere near that game's very low low points either. It is simply a good time, and it really deserved better than the low sales and critical dismissal it seems to have gotten when it came out. If you like deep first person movement I highly recommend it.

Generally, this is a more polished version of the first game. Everything has been refined and made better, with interesting new abilities and tools at your disposal. The one area that just fell off was the level design, which sucks because that's what made the first games of parkour so great. A lot of the time, there is only one real path to take to get to the objective, unlike the first game. This makes you take the same path every time, making the game a lot more stale than it should be. It really hurts the whole experience especially as it's an open-world game, where you expect it to be a lot more creative with its path taking. The story still isn't anything special and that's expected, but all the atmosphere is still there and in full effect. Although still a fun experience and more great Mirror's Edge, the lack of a great map takes the experience down a notch and makes this game a worse sequel.