Mirror's Edge Catalyst | Xbox One

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Never being the most active person, it’s quite easy to see the appeal of free-running (or parkour, as the kids are calling it these days). Flying across rooftops, leaping gaps in a single bound and scaling walls without breaking a sweat - none of these things are possible in the real world without a lot of hard work and training, but, thankfully, you can take the easy way out and get an approximation of the experience with Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.

​by James Michael Parry

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​@James_Parry

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Platforms: Xbox, PS4, PC
Developer: DICE
Publisher: EA
Players: 1

Rather than being a game about movement, as you might assume, this instalment of Mirror’s Edge - which sees protagonist Faith released from prison and begin piecing her old life back together - is actually about running in a more metaphorical sense. Faith runs not to get to somewhere, but to outrun her own past.

Caring about Faith’s story is crucial to the narrative of a game like this, as otherwise missions feel a bit like a series of unconnected challenges, getting to and from certain places in the City of Glass. Fortunately, developers DICE have injected more than their usual dose of humanity into the game (not least because, let’s be honest, most of their games centre around killing people), and so you latch onto Faith’s character quite easily. It's harder work to be drawn into the fairly bland central story missions, partly because the game simultaneously does its best to distract you.
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Throughout the game’s open world are time trail challenges called Dashes, which players can set for their friends (and, in fact, anyone else playing the game), as well as fragile packages to deliver, bags and audio recordings to collect and more. Thankfully you can limit the Dashes to display just your friends’ and bookmarks, which cuts down on the clutter, but overall there are still quite a lot.

The gameplay from the first Mirror’s Edge had something of a difficulty spike - if you couldn’t get the knack of some of the complex strings of movements, you’d struggle fairly quickly to progress through the game. In Catalyst, the experience is a bit more gradual, tailoring progression through an upgrade system.

You start with 11 of the 19 available movement upgrades already unlocked, and it still feels like one vital basic - the landing-comforting roll - should be unlocked by default as well, making the system feel slightly off. You do get a distinctly Batman-esque grappling hook after a while which changes up the traversal a bit, but the places you can use it feel a little limited by comparison.

​Combat is at least a lot easier to master this time around; there’s no failing to pick just the right moment to grab an enemy’s gun or being repeatedly kicked off a building here. In fact, Faith doesn’t use firearms this time around, and wouldn’t even if she could, a know-it-all loading screen tells us. Sadly this element of the backstory is limited to a companion comic, which isn’t included with the game, so many will never know the fully fleshed-out story of why Faith was in prison.
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The other characters are fairly one-note, particularly compared to the cinematic presentations we’ve seen in other games since the first game’s 2008 release. For many this won’t be an issue though, as they try that Dash just one more time in aid of beating their friend’s best time, or scratch their heads trying to work out the best way to get to a far flung ledge.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a project many have been looking forward to since the first game achieved cult status. Though not an actual sequel, it’s taken eight years to get back into exploring this world, and it does feel long overdue. Some elements are improved over the first game, whilst others seem to have backtracked, which is somewhat unsettling considering the industry’s advancement.

Obviously the map looks fantastic, though perhaps a bit too clean, and the movement is still fluid and addictive once you’ve got the upgrades you need. It’s a shame in a way that the game hasn’t been released in tandem with a VR version, as it’s always felt like exactly the sort of experience which would work well in that medium.

As a passion project, which it surely must be compared to the Battlefield and Battlefronts of the world, it hits the notes it needs to to be a game which DICE can be proud of, and for players, while it might not bring a lot of new elements to the table, it does what it does extremely well and is absolutely a game worth playing.

Pros

• Super shiny world looks pretty
• Gameplay hits the mark… eventually
• Faith is a character you’d like to grab a drink with

Cons

• Not a lot feels like a brand new, must play experience
• Load times feel pretty long
• Story hits a lot of familiar beats thanks to other franchises

Score  8/10
 
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