Integrating an open world into a parkour game was a great idea, but in reality it gets old fairly quickly. Catalyst doesn't quite have the razer sharp pacing of the original but I still don't think it's as bad as people originally made it out to be. Just make sure to turn off runner vision, makes the game a whole lot more interesting trying to find ways to traverse rather than just following the red. Hopefully dice takes another crack at it, or maybe they'll be stuck in the endless cycle of making battlefield.

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

It's been a while since I felt that rush of adrenaline while playing a game. The Mirror's Edge's sequel is quite exciting to play, has well implemented physics, and is overall so much fun!

The environments are gorgeous and they kinda keep the aesthetic from the previous game, although they are pretty empty. There's a mission where you climb and go through several homes within an apartment complex and there's absolutely no-one there, not a single soul. I wish they could make the city feel more alive without sacrificing the beauty of it.

Also, the collectables are fun and easy to collect! (not gonna go after them tho, i fucking hate collectibles).

The unique selling point for Mirror’s Edge may have been its free-flowing parkour gameplay, but the minimalist aesthetic is what really stuck with people. Clean white buildings highlighted with guiding streaks of red, the only sound being footsteps and the wind rushing by, it was a beautiful thing to experience in spite of the clunky level design. It makes sense that the idea for a sequel would be rooted in expanding the city, and giving players more ways to enjoy free-running outside the constraints of linear stages. This new open-world version of the City of Glass is filled with race challenges, user-created trials, and sidequests, rewarding players with XP they can use to unlock new skills and bonuses. The story has been expanded so every area could be featured, and the production value has been increased across the board from the AA feeling of the first game. If that all sounds great, then it’s easy to sympathize with how the developers completely missed the point with Catalyst. Mirror’s Edge had a minimalist aesthetic, but that didn’t just mean the buildings were clean, it extended to the entirety of the design. The player’s moveset was a small but tightly designed set of functions, removing some of them to reintroduce as unlockable skills impedes flow and introduces unnecessary clutter. All the popups for challenges, missions, and collectables, the constant dialog in your ear, they’re completely contradictory to the focused simplicity that made the first game memorable. It’s not like having more content or skills to unlock is necessarily a bad thing, but a focused challenge with a precise difficulty curve and unifying aesthetic will always be more memorable than a lower-quality endless buffet. The core gameplay may remain intact, but when that’s just one piece of a compromised core experience, the design falls apart regardless.

Played the game on the Series X and will say for a game 5ish years old it's starting to show it's age graphically, namely lots of pop in occured when moving fast between areas which broke immersion. The game itself is fun when you're darting between rooftop to rooftop, sometimes being chased by the security goons, other times just trying to shave a few seconds off of a speed run. But when the game sets that down and makes you do combat it loses me completely. There are parts of the game that won't let you advance without fighting people(as in you're locked in a room with them). Overall art style was cool and soundtrack was one of the best ambient beats i've heard in years but this game is just a mess of high highs and low lows.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a reboot/prequel to the original game and changes the linear or challenge run focus of that game to create an open world city. With the change to an open world environment comes just about every negative aspect of that that this game could fit in. Repeated need to run through bland environments that never change, a pointless progression system with very little real upgrades and that locks some behind story missions, areas where you can get stuck in the environment, dull side missions, and collectibles that aren't fun or interesting to collect but will give you small amounts of experience and eventually unlock short text or audio information on characters or the game's world. The game can still be fun if you are chaining together moves but due to the larger environments it can be easier to get lost or to just run into an issue with movement, the jumping itself seems to be stiff at times where Faith either won't jump or won't wall run when she should. Side missions can have issues thanks to the open world nature of the game, you might shut off a fan with an ability you have and start a mission on the other side that makes you go back, after failing it due to the slow and poorly used waypoint system I had to retry, after restarting it turned the fan back on causing me time in an activity that allowed almost none to be wasted. You can find time trials around the city and compare your times with other players but none of it is as strong as the areas made specifically for time trials in the first game. Combat is frequent and dull, dodges don't even seem to work properly as you can clearly avoid attacks but still find yourself taking damage from them, enemies will also wait their turn and won't help each other when you are in the middle of an attack combo. Enemies can take additional damage by being kicked into each other or into objects which just looks funny because pushing them into each other or having them tap into a low pillar should probably cause them to take less damage. The story itself is nothing interesting and game's world is a dull and cliche setting, the story missions offer the best gameplay content but the game also isn't very long. I had issues with the games framerate that frequently felt more like it was briefly loading something, which I shouldn't have been experiencing with my computer and continued to experience even after changing the settings to medium. A new gadget you get to swing from things, having more women than most games would and having them interact with each other is always a welcome sight, and not allowing you to use guns are the only positive changes to come with this new entry in the series.