It was a little incredible that Mirror’s Edge came out at all back in 2008. A brand new IP from EA that had a unique premise and innovative gameplay. It came out towards the end of what seemed like a gaming drought, and in some ways it was obvious that it was a labor of love for DICE. This is behavior that is not really associated with EA games any longer. And it wasn’t a perfect game by any means. Mirror’s Edge runs out of tricks way too early which really causes the second half to be a bit of a drag. But overall it was a game I enjoyed a lot, and that feels strangely innovative even by today’s standards. The impact is there, to the point that I am disappointed every time I play a first person game and I don’t see my character’s body when I look down. I never really expected to see a sequel to Mirror’s Edge, so I was surprised when I saw Catalyst being announced. What a golden opportunity to take advantage of the more powerful platform and lessons learned to fulfill the potential the original game had! Sadly, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst wastes that opportunity by giving in to some popular design trends that get in the way of the fun.
The game starts with our hero Faith being released from jail, and immediately being contacted by Icarus. Icarus is a new member of the Runners, a group of clandestine couriers that mostly uses the rooftops to make deliveries that undermine the super oppressive corporate government. Icarus does not like Faith, because of her relationship with her ambiguously adoptive father Noah, I think? The game isn’t very clear. Far from rehabilitating, Faith immediately asks to get back in the swing of things, mostly because she owes money to some important criminal and she has to pay her debt. Although it seems that she’d go back to being a runner even if there was no debt just because. This drive to pay this non specific debt drives Faith to make a few bad choices that ends up with her getting involved with foiling a plot by the corporate supremacy to stop all free will.
The story, setting, and characters make no sense. It is hard to tell what the rebellion is rebelling against. The conflict involves freeing the minds of the “employs”, every day workers for the corporations that now control this fictional nation, and exposing the truths of that rob them of their freedom. The problem is that you never see this evil. The implication is that behind the pristine walls of the city people are miserable. Some of the courier missions give you sound logs to listen to, which are meant to show you their daily toil. But the truth is that there is very little that makes me think these people have it particularly bad. They talk about going on vacation, and their romantic issues. They seem like every day people. There are no ghettos with people toiling and living hand to mouth in filth. They make allusions to a horrible place where dissenters are sent (which sounds like a manufacturing plant of some sort) but we never see it.
The skill tree is one of the worst new mechanics introduced in Catalyst.
We do at some point briefly see a clandestine prison, which is evil enough, but for the average person living a day to day life, the overall situation doesn’t seem to be a bad deal at all. It kind of makes the runners seem like the entitled welfare seeking millennial possible only in the most cartoonish of political propaganda. The other faction, Last November, the Marxist rebel group that are somehow connected to the runners, is more dangerous. They actually seem to have no qualms with murdering innocent civilians, and its hard to not see why The Man goes after them so hard. The game does try to frame itself as being caught between two bad choices, but it just handles it poorly. Its attempt at smart world building fall flat and instead we get too much telling and very little showing for it to be effective.
Characters and their relationships with each other have some pretty big issues too. Most characters are tired and boring cliches. A Machiavellian villain with no believable motivations? He’s there. An remorseful scientist? She’s there. An old, black mentor? He’s there. An unstoppable hacker with what can only be described as Asperger’s Syndrome? She is there, and way too often at that. Of all these characters, I can really think of only one that has any real development or arc at all, and it is not Faith. This is a problem, because such is the nature of these stories that world shattering truths are revealed during its course that should fundamentally change Faith and her relationship to other characters. Maybe if they characters were likable, it wouldn’t matter much, but they all come off as aggressive and dour, and are either unremarkable or annoying.
Faith’s own relationship with Noah seems flirtatious, and I initially thought it was romantic in nature despite Noah looking like he’s at least 20 years older than her. However, during a loading screen that was trying to sell me the prequel comic, it claimed that Faith had actually been let out of juvie. Much later on in the game you find out that Noah actually raised Faith after her parents died, which justifies why they are so close, but the characters are so poorly handled, it is very easy to misinterpret the relationship as being something more creepy. There are also characters that seem to have no purpose and no resolved character arcs. The game just kind of forgets about them. There is even one character that appears just to give you one mission, and is never heard from before or after that mission finishes.
Thanks for that exposition, cause I have no idea who this woman is.
I could spend an entire article speaking of how badly Mirror’s Edge Catalyst bungles its story and setting, but how is the gameplay? Initial impressions were good. The game looks awesome and handles really well. The game is divided by specific levels that you have to make your way through during missions, but everything is connected by a semi open world hub made up of connecting rooftops and interior areas, including a handful of people’s apartments. I feel I jumped off a particular’s person bed way more than is acceptable. Runner’s vision is back, which will give you a path to wherever you are going, highlighting in red the path where you are going. This is not the only path, and most of the time is not even the fastest path. This means that an experienced player with a fully upgraded faith can use their imagination and tools to find better paths, and keep the usual travel between points fresh.
The game is at its best, when it allows you to free run with no interruption (and when you’ve unlocked all of Faith’s move, more on that later). And while it does feel somewhat repetitive to go over the same areas by the end of the game, it can still be a lot of fun to figure out different ways to navigate the maps. Missions, both side missions and story missions can be a lot of fun as well, and they usually involve navigating to an objective. The gameplay in these segments is great, and it feels like this what the game was supposed to be. There just aren’t many of them. If you just do the side missions and the main missions, you can probably clear this game in about 10 hours. There are a lot of small side activities, but much like other sandbox games, you will find a map loaded with many, many icons. Most of the side activities, are really different version of timed courses, masquerading as deliveries.
It looks like a lot of content but most of it is boring
These side activities have different coats of paint, they are labeled as dead drops, fragile deliveries, etc… but they are all the same thing, get from point A to point B in a specific amount of time, and man are they frustrating. The game’s platforming just doesn’t seem to be built for the time trials. Clearly they expect you to use the environment to find short cuts, but the game doesn’t have a good indicator of where you are supposed to go or how far you are from the goal. This means that the only way to do these things is to play through them a few times to realize where you need to go, and what shortcuts you can use. But it is not fun. It doesn’t feel great to have to start over and over from the same point, as it completely robs the game of its fluidity. All of these side activities are alike, and you will need to do some in order to unlock all of Faith movements, which are inexplicably locked behind an upgrade tree. The other reward they give you are cosmetics for a companion app/social media platform I didn’t use and as far as I could tell, no one else did either. So the upgrade tree is the only compelling reason to do it. The inclusion of this system makes the game worse. Without the movement upgrades, Faith feels much clunkier and harder to control. Not something that you want in this kind of game. The combat upgrades are even worse. The developers clearly never adjusted the enemies to account for the power of the upgrades. The poor AI of the enemies, makes an upgraded Faith feel unstoppable. There is a point in the game where I turned a corner to find a group of enemies. The game clearly wanted me to run away from them, but I just decided to fight them instead, and well, just watch:
A few years ago I would not have believed you if you’d told me that we would get a second Mirror’s Edge game, and for the fact that Catalyst exists I suppose I should be grateful. But it is such a waste of potential. The core gameplay is solid, and there are some truly excellent moments in the game. It is all wasted by layers and layers of bad design decisions on top of the gameplay. Why is there a skill tree? why is are there so many boring side activities sprinkled through the map, and why is the reward for completing them a tie in to a social media mobile app? It reeks of design decisions made for the sake of what an executive thinks a AAA game should be. It’s a shame. If the game had focused on it strengths it could have been great, but with all these strange choices it is merely mediocre. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst isn’t a terrible game, and it can even be fun occasionally, but it is so mediocre that I can’t recommend it at full price. If you are really interested in picking up this game, wait until its on sale for less than $20. I have a feeling that should be soon.
