Back in 2008, Mirror’s Edge was a cult classic; a game that was big and popular but never seemed to grasp the mainstream attention it deserved, even though it was completely different to any game of the time. Fast forward to 2016 and Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst looks to rekindle the flame of free running to an entirely new audience… but does it succeed?
Mirror’s Edge has always been an interesting prospect for me, the original came out at a time when most other games were dark and muddy with an air of heaviness and clutter to their persona. In contrast to this, Mirror’s Edge felt bright and breezy with its minimalist and yet bold colours and its heavy use of white. Coupled with gameplay focused on building and keeping momentum whilst free running, with a first-person perspective, and Mirror’s Edge was a game that I kept going back to over the years as there was nothing else quite like it.
Fortunately Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst falls into the same niche as the original, with a similar feel in colours and minimalism, but instead offering up an entire open world city for you to have fun in instead of the more linear design of the original. Weirdly though, instead of being a sequel they’ve decided to go for a reboot, which in essence isn’t a bad thing but it isn’t necessarily a good thing either, making the two games both exist in a confusing timeline with neither having anything to do with the other apart from the protagonist, Faith, and the general idea. I may be nitpicking here but for me, if they’d have changed the protagonist, this could’ve all been avoided. But alas, now we have two games with the same character which don’t exist in the same universe but are in the same game series. Great.
Confusing timeline aside, Catalyst does take the original control scheme (which was quite clumsy and clunky) and tightens it up a little, but at the same time in certain instances feels like it’s been slowed down slightly, not so much that its game breaking but just so much that I notice a slight dip in momentum. This, of course, could just be my memory of the original leading me to believe that it was faster, but even then my brain still perceives certain movements as slow and certain jumps as far too gravity defying and not enough of an enhancement of speed.
World-wise, the open environment does start off as a playground full of opportunities and ideas but slowly devolves into a rather lonely and empty vast box of nothing, with your eyes merely following the red beacons that guide you along your way. You can venture away from these but when it’s up to your own mind to differentiate between which white walk is reachable and which will drop you into a chasm, you kind of lose the will to adventure. This may sound like I hate the game, but that’s not the case. I think for me personally, a more grounded and linear path more akin to the first Mirror’s Edge works better at focusing your mind on an objective. Much like your first attempt at literally anything, a path that requires study, patience, and practice will always beat one where you just try everything all the time.
So for me, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is a decent enough game, and if you never played the original you should try it as games like this don’t really come along too often, and honestly I may just be jaded by memories of the original because up until the point I started critiquing the game I was actually having a lot of fun larking about on the rooftops of a dystopian society.
Auther: Hal, Plymouth store
