I first played Mirror's Edge a couple years ago and despite having its issues I loved it. With so many hours spent in that game and a long break afterwards, I decided to come into its sequel with tempered expectations, knowing its mixed reception but excited to judge it for myself as a fan of the first game.
There's a few things in this game I absolutely loved, and many more that left me confused and frustrated. What better place to start than the game's open world design.
This is a world that feels very linear and yet I so frequently got lost in, which I didn't think was possible until I played this game. I don't mean getting lost in the positive sense like you do in Hollow Knight, I mean repeatedly hitting dead ends and having to detour back on to that one path™ that will get you where you need to be, because this game connects all of its fairly open rooftops with what are effectively hallways, leading to SO much backtracking. Not just on the paths between areas themselves, but within the more open areas as you find yourself at the edge of them and having to turn around to go back to that one path™. Catalyst has an open world that's like the opposite of what Zelda and A Short Hike are. Instead of nudging you to explore and rewarding your curiosity, it requires you to go out of your way to see the world and makes it frustrating to do so, especially when much of the space goes underutilized.
And yet, despite the open world design being fundamentally flawed, I ended up choosing to spend most of my time in it. Why? The best things in the game.
The first is the game's movement, the core of the gameplay. Just like in the original Mirror's Edge it is excellent! There a things I can nitpick about it, like its animations in comparison to the first game or the fall deaths and damage feeling inconsistent, but overall it is very fun. It is improved with things like the ability to springboard off of almost everything and instantly gain speed back, which give you a lot more options in the open world. There's nothing like pulling off large combos (springboard jump into a wallrun into a wall climb back into wall run) to forge your own path and trim down your time.
Which leads to the next thing: time trails.
I love these, to get 3 stars they require you to optimize your movement and creatively invent shortcuts in a much bigger way than the first game given the open world they're put in and the new movement options. But what's even better than this is the online content.
I love these features so much. There's the Beat L.Es you can place anywhere, which is basically a flag you can put down when you get to somewhere interesting and out of the way, challenging other players to get there too.
And then there's players being able to create their own time trials anywhere they want which plays into all the best aspects of this game. The underutilized and out of the way areas become the route for an awesome obstacle course, and the paths you know the most are flipped on their head with checkpoints arranged in a unique way. The excellent movement system is pushed to its limits in leaderboards where it's more obtainable to reach the top due to being unofficial content. Players will climb over previous leaders by following their movement and adding their own innovation to cut time, later to be dethroned by someone else going through the same process. Eventually you get a run that looks nothing like what the creator originally expected. Keeping up with who played my own time trails was really exciting because of this.
I remember going to bed after achieving a first place spot, then woke up to find myself at third. I found new time saving methods but the other player always seemed a bit faster than me...
Enter the skill tree. This is the antithesis to what's great in this game. Thinking outside the box and optimizing your execution of moves can't get you to win against the person who can climb faster with an upgrade I wasn't aware existed at the time.
You find a cool shortcut? Too bad you can't take it without the double wall run ability. A player can create a time trial that is actually impossible to complete with your current abilities and you might not know it.
Thankfully, it doesn't take long to max out the movement skill tree if you play a good amount of the story and side objectives, but I was playing races the most from the get go due to how fun they were and it got in my way.
I've noticed the game being at odds with itself as a common theme. The linear open world, the skill tree thing I've just explained, the combat which I'll get to, and one more thing: the obligatory open world collectable that's everywhere, electronic chips. You have to walk up to them and wait for an animation to play out to collect them, which totally kills your flow. Makes no sense for a game about running. What's even more confusing is that GridLeaks, floating orbs you run into to collect that guide you to cool places in the same way rare Mario coins do, already did the collectable thing right.
It's strange how many things in this game feel like they're only there because "that's what other games do" when they clearly go against what the game is good for. This is especially frustrating when the original Mirror's Edge is remembered for being such an original, innovative, and creative game. Hell, this game even abandons a lot of that with the new city and combat.
Even though the combat couldn't be more different mechanically, it ends up being just like combat in the first Mirror's Edge with how its used in the game. The mechanics CAN be fun and satisfying despite its issues, issues that the level design just highlights.
Knocking around, sliding through, and trampling enemies is satisfying and works with the environment and movement that are core to the game. When you're taking out enemies in your way, on your way I like it. Enrouchment and Family Matters do this well, but then there's moments like in Savant Extraordinaira and Flytrap where the game just gives you an enemy gauntlet you're forced to deal with in a small arena. Either you clumsy beat the enemies to death or run around in circles, desperately trying to keep tabs on them and hit them with an attack using your speed and hope they align with what little environment you're given to work off of. Either way it's clunky, repetitive, and extremely goofy. It's frustrating to see the developers fail to fix what they did poorly in the last game, waste their time reinventing things that didn't need to be, and introduce a new slew of issues with their poor design decisions. But I can't even fault the developers for everything because there's one more thing that I felt strongly playing the game.
This game feels really rushed. So much repetitive, uninspired content juxtaposed with very high quality and fun stuff. This is shown in the side content, with the rare good side quests like Exit Strategy and Top of the World compared to others that are variations of the same complete race and run from cops stuff over and over again.
But it especially hurts the main campaign, you have levels that are just as excellent as the best from Mirror's Edge like Benefactor and Family Matters, so many boring and forgettable levels, and some that fall in between. Playing the nothing burger of a final level made it super apparent that this game was not given the time to be as good as it should have been. Mirror's Edge had distinct environments and level design in almost every level to constantly create memorable moments, and Catalyst has just shards of this. But it had it! This game has some of what made me love Mirror's Edge in a new flavor, just held back by the variety of things I discussed. And in the end, the best thing in the game ends up being what the game developers never had time to create, so strangers online did. My memorable moments in this game came from the very inventive ways of traversing parts of the open world you otherwise don't give much attention to, which feels very in the spirit of parkour.
Ultimately this game failed to be great, but it was still 30 hours well spent, and I can see myself revisiting it just to enjoy the movement and open world races. Perhaps this review is a bit much, but I felt the need to get all these lingering thoughts organized and out of my head.
TLDR: The game is mid, self sabotages itself in several areas, has awesome online features that add a ton of value to the open world. If you loved the time trials in Mirror's Edge, you'll love this.
There's a few things in this game I absolutely loved, and many more that left me confused and frustrated. What better place to start than the game's open world design.
This is a world that feels very linear and yet I so frequently got lost in, which I didn't think was possible until I played this game. I don't mean getting lost in the positive sense like you do in Hollow Knight, I mean repeatedly hitting dead ends and having to detour back on to that one path™ that will get you where you need to be, because this game connects all of its fairly open rooftops with what are effectively hallways, leading to SO much backtracking. Not just on the paths between areas themselves, but within the more open areas as you find yourself at the edge of them and having to turn around to go back to that one path™. Catalyst has an open world that's like the opposite of what Zelda and A Short Hike are. Instead of nudging you to explore and rewarding your curiosity, it requires you to go out of your way to see the world and makes it frustrating to do so, especially when much of the space goes underutilized.
And yet, despite the open world design being fundamentally flawed, I ended up choosing to spend most of my time in it. Why? The best things in the game.
The first is the game's movement, the core of the gameplay. Just like in the original Mirror's Edge it is excellent! There a things I can nitpick about it, like its animations in comparison to the first game or the fall deaths and damage feeling inconsistent, but overall it is very fun. It is improved with things like the ability to springboard off of almost everything and instantly gain speed back, which give you a lot more options in the open world. There's nothing like pulling off large combos (springboard jump into a wallrun into a wall climb back into wall run) to forge your own path and trim down your time.
Which leads to the next thing: time trails.
I love these, to get 3 stars they require you to optimize your movement and creatively invent shortcuts in a much bigger way than the first game given the open world they're put in and the new movement options. But what's even better than this is the online content.
I love these features so much. There's the Beat L.Es you can place anywhere, which is basically a flag you can put down when you get to somewhere interesting and out of the way, challenging other players to get there too.
And then there's players being able to create their own time trials anywhere they want which plays into all the best aspects of this game. The underutilized and out of the way areas become the route for an awesome obstacle course, and the paths you know the most are flipped on their head with checkpoints arranged in a unique way. The excellent movement system is pushed to its limits in leaderboards where it's more obtainable to reach the top due to being unofficial content. Players will climb over previous leaders by following their movement and adding their own innovation to cut time, later to be dethroned by someone else going through the same process. Eventually you get a run that looks nothing like what the creator originally expected. Keeping up with who played my own time trails was really exciting because of this.
I remember going to bed after achieving a first place spot, then woke up to find myself at third. I found new time saving methods but the other player always seemed a bit faster than me...
Enter the skill tree. This is the antithesis to what's great in this game. Thinking outside the box and optimizing your execution of moves can't get you to win against the person who can climb faster with an upgrade I wasn't aware existed at the time.
You find a cool shortcut? Too bad you can't take it without the double wall run ability. A player can create a time trial that is actually impossible to complete with your current abilities and you might not know it.
Thankfully, it doesn't take long to max out the movement skill tree if you play a good amount of the story and side objectives, but I was playing races the most from the get go due to how fun they were and it got in my way.
I've noticed the game being at odds with itself as a common theme. The linear open world, the skill tree thing I've just explained, the combat which I'll get to, and one more thing: the obligatory open world collectable that's everywhere, electronic chips. You have to walk up to them and wait for an animation to play out to collect them, which totally kills your flow. Makes no sense for a game about running. What's even more confusing is that GridLeaks, floating orbs you run into to collect that guide you to cool places in the same way rare Mario coins do, already did the collectable thing right.
It's strange how many things in this game feel like they're only there because "that's what other games do" when they clearly go against what the game is good for. This is especially frustrating when the original Mirror's Edge is remembered for being such an original, innovative, and creative game. Hell, this game even abandons a lot of that with the new city and combat.
Even though the combat couldn't be more different mechanically, it ends up being just like combat in the first Mirror's Edge with how its used in the game. The mechanics CAN be fun and satisfying despite its issues, issues that the level design just highlights.
Knocking around, sliding through, and trampling enemies is satisfying and works with the environment and movement that are core to the game. When you're taking out enemies in your way, on your way I like it. Enrouchment and Family Matters do this well, but then there's moments like in Savant Extraordinaira and Flytrap where the game just gives you an enemy gauntlet you're forced to deal with in a small arena. Either you clumsy beat the enemies to death or run around in circles, desperately trying to keep tabs on them and hit them with an attack using your speed and hope they align with what little environment you're given to work off of. Either way it's clunky, repetitive, and extremely goofy. It's frustrating to see the developers fail to fix what they did poorly in the last game, waste their time reinventing things that didn't need to be, and introduce a new slew of issues with their poor design decisions. But I can't even fault the developers for everything because there's one more thing that I felt strongly playing the game.
This game feels really rushed. So much repetitive, uninspired content juxtaposed with very high quality and fun stuff. This is shown in the side content, with the rare good side quests like Exit Strategy and Top of the World compared to others that are variations of the same complete race and run from cops stuff over and over again.
But it especially hurts the main campaign, you have levels that are just as excellent as the best from Mirror's Edge like Benefactor and Family Matters, so many boring and forgettable levels, and some that fall in between. Playing the nothing burger of a final level made it super apparent that this game was not given the time to be as good as it should have been. Mirror's Edge had distinct environments and level design in almost every level to constantly create memorable moments, and Catalyst has just shards of this. But it had it! This game has some of what made me love Mirror's Edge in a new flavor, just held back by the variety of things I discussed. And in the end, the best thing in the game ends up being what the game developers never had time to create, so strangers online did. My memorable moments in this game came from the very inventive ways of traversing parts of the open world you otherwise don't give much attention to, which feels very in the spirit of parkour.
Ultimately this game failed to be great, but it was still 30 hours well spent, and I can see myself revisiting it just to enjoy the movement and open world races. Perhaps this review is a bit much, but I felt the need to get all these lingering thoughts organized and out of my head.
TLDR: The game is mid, self sabotages itself in several areas, has awesome online features that add a ton of value to the open world. If you loved the time trials in Mirror's Edge, you'll love this.