Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (beaten)

Really cool, really beautiful game. Miles better than the original Mirror’s Edge. I’ve been playing this game for a long time, pretty much since it was released. It got overshadowed by other games I was playing, but I finally picked it up the other day and decided to finish it.

The world is beautiful, and they did a great job with it, but they did screw it up a bit. It’s soulless, and it breaks the cardinal rule of open world games: Don’t make the world revolve around the player. The world is almost exclusively on the rooftops, there are very few NPCs, and the ones that are there stand on the rooftops in one spot for the entire game, just waiting for you to accept their delivery mission. The world is huge, but you’ll often find yourself taking the same routes over and over again, which gets boring quickly. Despite all this, the open world environment was one of my favorite parts of the game, and I often found myself just running around and exploring because it was just so pretty. Each district is distinct from one another and very cool to explore.

The story is not great. It’s fairly short, but they try to pack a huge amount of characters and lore into 15 story missions anyway. The new world and the story had so much potential to be great, but it was ruined by the fact that we didn’t get to see the majority of it. They put a lot of effort into it as well, the mirror’s edge website (along with the secret documents and recordings in game) has a huge amount of lore and background into the story that show if it was included in the game, it could’ve created a massive universe with a really great story. Instead we got undeveloped characters, unexplained subplots, a mediocre main plot, and a villain with a motive that was never all that clear. All the makings of a mediocre story. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, even though it was a bit shit (much better than the original game’s though, at least they tried this time around). It helped that all of the main missions were very fun and well done.

Sorry completionists, this game is nearly impossible to 100%. Well, not impossible, but it would take you a very long time to do it. There are a large amount of collectibles in this game, but there is only a map for one type, called GridLeaks. Secret documents, recordings, and electronics parts (of which there are many) don’t have a map, and they can sometimes be very hard to find. Since it’s a rather big open world, getting all the collectibles would be a very difficult task.

The parkour is amazing. After playing this game, I went back to the original ME a while back to compare the freerunning, and honestly I don’t know if I could go back to the old game again. It’s so fluid, precise, and fast paced, the original seems clunky and slow in comparison. Some of the deaths felt cheap in the first game, but in this one whenever I died, it was 100% my fault. I honestly recommend playing the game for the parkour alone.

The combat isn’t bad at all, and can sometimes be very satisfying, but I for the most part was not a fan. It’s somewhat difficult, but it actually works really well and if you got good at it, I imagine it would be good fun. If you get your combos right, sometimes you even get rewarded with a very cool looking 3rd person takedown scene. The environmental moves you can pull are very cool as well, and don’t break the flow of the game. My biggest complaint is that in the original ME, you could go through the whole game without killing anyone. I usually liked to avoid combat, so this was great. In this game, I guess they really wanted to showcase how much they improved the combat, because there are a few times where you’ll be placed in an enclosed area, with no escape, and be forced to fight hordes of enemies. Unless you’re really good, you will die. A lot. You also can’t use guns, which is fine with me, but I know it pissed a lot of people off.

Side missions are mediocre and very repetitive. You have a couple different activities to pick from: deliveries, distraction missions (lure guards away from a point), dashes, and user created time trials. I loathed the distraction missions, and didn’t finishing some of the dashes or deliveries because I got bored after a while, and they can be very frustrating at times. Some other side missions are not as plentiful, but they’re great. Grid nodes were probably my favorite part of the game. They’re like big, dangerous puzzles with lazers. They have a healthy dose of platforming, timing, precision, and puzzle elements. Security hubs are fun, they go back to the roots of the original game. You shut down a hub, and get the police after you, and you have to lose them to complete the mission. Hackable billboards are similar to the Grid nodes in that some of them are very challenging to get to. Lastly, there are a few side missions related to the story. Most of them are great, a few of them aren’t. Overall the theme with these side missions tends to be quality over quantity.

Overall I really enjoyed this game despite its issues. It’s funny, almost all of its problems were complaints in the original Mirror’s Edge too.

Would I recommend this game? If you enjoyed the original or you like fast paced games, yes. If you’re only in it for the story I’d give it a pass.

The Beginner’s Guide (completed)

I’m editing this into the bottom of the post, because it’s not worth making a separate post. This game is very thought provoking, and after finishing it I don’t know how I feel, or what the meaning of it was. I suppose it’s up to interpretation.

Would I recommend this game? Yes