Mirror's Edge Catalyst

[spatular]

I've already played the start of the game a few times now, and with all the average press i was starting to get a bit down on this despite having been looking forward to it for ages.

 

anyway so far i think it's a bit like the first game, awesome but flawed, maybe a bit of a missed opportunity to make it all amazing.

 

i just did a level that i loved, the view was amazing, there was some nice running away from people, finding the right route up a tower, some nice jumping to find some hidden stuff, it was really great.

 

combat is a bit of a mixed bag, jumping over something and smacking a dude in the face as you land and running off is great fun, but sometimes you have to stop and fight which is much less fun. the directional kicks so you can kick people into each other or off buildings is cool.

 

other mixed stuff is the some of the side missions are too difficult imo - they need a 3 star rating like the timetrials to avoid frustration - i tried a delivery one and had to retry it maybe 20 times to finish it, you have to find alternate routes to complete it in the time as far as i could tell - this isn't really a bad thing but at the start of the game i just want to have a quick go to get 1 star or something then later go back to it to try and do better. there was a similarly annoying distraction mission that's basically impossible without many retries and finding shortcuts, again not really a bad thing if you know what youre getting into. i actually had a good sense of achievement and ended up enjoying these missions when i knew what i needed to do, but they were really frustrating at first. anyway i know to avoid them unless until i'm in the mood for that sort of thing now - i'll probably enjoy them after finishing the main missions.

 

the main mirrors edge gameplay of parkouring about the place is still there and is generally great fun imo.

 

it looks great, runs nice and smooth, well except for a bug i'm having on pc where the cutscenes stutter and the audio is completely out of sync.

 

so there you go.

[illdog]

I still cant decide if I prefer the linear format of the first game or not. They've done a good job with the open world of this, all based on rooftops for max parkour fun. I think my problem may stem from the fact that I think i'm sick and tired of sandbox games. I dont feel like I have the energy to run round everywhere, picking up all sorts of shit and doing all sorts of challenges and time trials and the likes.

 

I am in the mood for running around though, so I might just hardball the main story and save the rest of the shit for another time.

 

But it looks bloody lovely, very pure with lots of whites and bold colours. The script and story can fuck right off, it's full of unlikeable idiots and obnoxious associates and I dont give two fucks about any of them. I just want to run! And I can. So I will. And that bits great.

[Sambob]

Kind of glad I didnt get it for a bit then, I will definitely get this eventually but your impressions are exactly the same as I thought mine would be, and I cant justify full retail price on that at the moment. Ive read that it picks up a lot once youve finished and you can just run about.

[illdog]

This game, man. I'm in real turmoil. I'm pretty much strictly playing the story missions. These are fine because I'm using them as a chance to just enjoy the core mechanic of the game which is obviously the running. This is great, love me the running.

 

Not much enjoying anythng else is the problem. I'm struggling with the side missions which involve mostly running from from point A to point B within a time limit. The time limits are very strict and look like they require multiple attempts to perfect. These become not so fun when you've pegged it for 2 minutes straight over all manner of obstacles for the third time, ony to miss out by a second or two. I guess you can bypass these, they arent integral to the plot of the game but as an extra thing to do in a sandbox scenario they seem overly hard to me.

 

And the story is utter bollocks, i mean terrible, rebel faction againts the evil megacorp bullshit done in the most stereotypical of fashions. The characters are about as unlikable as they come which results in me skipping all cut scenes so I can get back to running. Love me the running.

 

So yea, in a bit of a bind really. I cant recommend it despite enjoying the 7 hours I've put in so far.

[Sambob]

Such a shame to read, fingers crossed for the post game, if anybody makes it that is...

[spatular]

1 hour ago, illdog said:

I'm struggling with the side missions which involve mostly running from from point A to point B within a time limit. The time limits are very strict and look like they require multiple attempts to perfect. These become not so fun when you've pegged it for 2 minutes straight over all manner of obstacles for the third time, ony to miss out by a second or two. I guess you can bypass these, they arent integral to the plot of the game but as an extra thing to do in a sandbox scenario they seem overly hard to me.

 

yeah they seem...oh yeah i already said what i was going to say here. carry on.

 

i'm still playing it and enjoying (some horrible combat bits aside) the story missions, and doing the odd timetrial.

 

 

[illdog]

31 minutes ago, spatular said:

 

(some horrible combat bits aside)
 

 

 

Yea, the fighting is bad. And the fact that it's necessary is pretty shit. You're supposed to keep moving and attack in bursts but I'm really not good enough to do that OR the controls aren't good enough to let me do it.

[DisturbedSwan]

I've played about 2 hours or so now.

 

I'm not bowled over by it, but I think if you enjoyed the first game you'll like this really. It seems to be instead of taking the last game as a template and then expanding on it, adding a rich narrative, loads of great side missions etc. DICE have almost made the same game (just with a superfluous bunch of new characters) just with a few collectables and shallow side missions thrown in for good measure really.

 

It seems to be like they were just going to make a linear sequel and EA stepped in halfway through and was like 'guys, can we make this open world?' and DICE were like 'Er, yeah? I guess?'

 

The map is tiny, all the collectables don't really feel worth picking up or bothering with and the side-missions/races are all quite shallow. The story is complete bollocks as well, I've just tuned out for all of it, I may start skipping cutscenes if it goes on in the same vein (which I pretty much never do) but the Parkour is still bloody fun and that's what'll keep me playing.

 

Unfortunately it's not going to be like a Ubisoft open world game or an RPG where I'm compelled to pick up everything and get lost in the world, I'll have a lot of fun just doing the story missions and call it a day there I think.

[spatular]

yeah the collectables seem pointless. the map expands later, but it's still not massive i guess, i don't think i would want it to be mind.

 

i finished it the other night, mostly enjoyed the story missions, although the quality varied quite a bit, some levels being amazing, and others not so great. i've still got loads of side missions to do, not sure if i'll try them now or start a different game. overall pretty mixed feelings about the game, it's great to have mirrors edge back, it looks lovely and controls really well, they've nailed the feeling of the running about from the first game. but in many ways the game is a bit of a mess which is disappointing. i don't regret buying it anyway.

 

also it needs less glass that i can't tell is there so run into it like a stupid dog or bird.

[illdog]

2 hours ago, spatular said:

 

also it needs less glass that i can't tell is there so run into it like a stupid dog or bird.

 

That made me laugh. It's funny cos it's true.

[hinn888]

I don't think i'm enjoying this as much as the first,

 

story is short and really not interesting,

it focuses more on fighting when the whole point is to keep on the move

I was worried about the open world but it actually works, problem is now theres a mass amount of collectables and strict time limits for A to B runs.

 

Its good for the playthrough/platinum but i can't see me keep going back to it like the first.

 

Plus i wish it didn't have Kid Faith on the statue (If you bought the CE)

[DisturbedSwan]

Played another 90 minutes of this yesterday and actually had much more fun with it.

 

Did a few side-missions, a few story missions, 1 of the security checkpoints and a couple of billboards hacked.

 

I still don't think I'm going to bother with a lot of the busywork-type stuff, races, delivery missions etc. but the side missions, security checkpoints and billboards have all been surprisingly cool so far, nothing groundbreaking or awe-inspiring, but it was pretty fun figuring out how to get upto a Billboard to hack it, or defeating a load of goons at a security checkpoint.

 

All the characters are still hilariously shallow (and have godawful names) but both the side-missions and story-missions I've really enjoyed, an equal mix between platforming-puzzle elements, combat and that fast parkour which is ME's trademark. For the story missions I probably could've done with a bit less combat (they even had a section where you had to survive until a terminal was loaded like in CoD etc.) as it is very clumsy, something about it is kind of satisfying too in a weird way.

 

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot more yesterday, still only played 3 hours total though so early days, hoping to play more in the coming week.

[illdog]

I've finished this now. I skipped the story entirely, I have no idea what happened at all. But the story missions were indeed fun. To re-iterate my feelings - I like the running in this game. It doesnt always flow together like I would like it, sometime 'coil' refuses to work, sometimes Faith hits the top of a fence and makes a meal of getting over which completely takes the flow out of your run. Sometimes she seems to miss edges of platforms or not wallrun and you can't seem to fathom as to why. But mostly the running is great.

 

I've spent quite a bit of time getting all the gridLeaks (little collectable orbs), hacking the billboards and doing all the security hubs. The gridLeak collection was especially good fun, once you complete the story they appear on your map making the task a little less daunting. Some of them are in plain site but I had to have a good think on how to get them, they were either up high or in a room that took a while to find way in to. But in collecting them I got to see the whole city of Glass and it's really impressively put together.

 

I absolutely fucking suck balls at the Time Trials though. I'm struggling to get three stars in any but the simplist of them.

 

To be honest though I think I'm done with this now. Worth a play when it comes down in price, especially if you enjoyed the first game. It's just a real shame the story was such completey wank. I'm wondering how important that is upon reflection, I put in 22 hours without much other complaint. I do like a story if it's well told but the core gameplay here is great fun. Hmmm.

[DisturbedSwan]

Wow, 22 hours?! You must've liked it then, can't see myself spending that much time with it myself, I have been enjoying it all the same though.

 

This was the first thing I played yesterday on my new GPU and it boggled my mind how much better it looked, I went from playing at 1440p at 60fps on Medium settings on my GTX 970 the day before to playing on Hyper settings at 80+ FPS on my 1080.

 

And let me tell you, the Hyper settings at 1440p are just unbelievably gorgeous, the medium settings looked good but you could tell textures were muddy and I got a lot of pop in, at Hyper settings though everything like looks unbelievably amazing, running at that high FPS as well it just made the world pop even more, I even got a bit queasy at some point in a mission where I had to climb up very high, I'm not scared of heights but the graphics, draw distance, lighting and particle effects are just sensational.

 

As for the game itself, mainly been doing the story and side missions, with a few collectibles and hacking billboards etc. thrown in too, really enjoyed it for the most part, getting into a rhythm on a run is an incredible feeling and when you mess it up by falling or not pressing LT at the right time when falling it is annoying. There was one really shit mission where you just had to defeat a few waves of increasingly difficult guards, I was like 'WTF were you thinking of, DICE?!' it just completely baffled me really, it was quite annoying and I just felt needless.

 

More tomorrow.

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this earlier, took me about 10/11 hours.

 

It's definitely at its best when you're just on a run being chased or chasing something in a story mission, you get that sense of speed, momentum, urgency and adrenaline that you got in the first game but everything else just feels superfluous really, and at times infuriatingly frustrating too.

 

As a concept I actually think Mirror's Edge works better as an Open-World game, you get that sense of freedom to go wherever you like which works incredibly well in a Parkour game and you don't feel funnelled down a set path like in the original, but the problem is if that open world isn't filled with anything interesting then you don't feel like exploring it, it ends up being superfluous.

 

On the face of it the 'City of Glass' is populated with things to do, there's Security Hubs to destroy, side missions for various NPCs to attempt, Grid Nodes to switch on, Billboards to hack, Grid Leaks to collect, Races to complete and deliveries to courier. But the big problem is hardly any of these activities are fun in anyway, I tried a lot of them out but the only ones I stuck with were the hackable billboards, Grid Nodes and side missions, all the rest I decided not to bother with after trying them, they're just so needless and just no fun at all.

 

Even the hackable billboards, which are like platforming puzzles to get to end up an exercise in fruastration after a while. After 15 or so attempts at failing to find your way up to a billboard, dying numerous times in the process they get real old real fast and were no fun in the end. The same goes for the side missions, for the most part they're an enjoyable distraction to the story missions filled with some unique mission types and scenarios but by the end of the game you're sick of them as you're fed up with the same types repeating ad nauseam. The Grid Nodes are the only activity that I found enenjoyable throughout, another platforming puzzle, but much more straightforward, less frustrating and much more fun than the Billboards.

 

Now onto the story, it is just absolute garbage, all the characters are so shallow you can practically see through them, the dialogue and writing is cringeworthy a lot of the time and the character development is nonexistent. At one point in the story someone you're meant to care about dies and Faith has a cry in one cutscene, but you don't give a flying fuck that they died as you didn't know anything much about them and they were an utterly cuntish, unlikeable cliche of a character. Oh and there's a 'twist' in the story too that you'll see coming a mile off.

 

The actual story missions themselves are the games only redeeming quality, they're frequently very fun and of a consistently good quality (bar a few combat-centred missions), they're what Mirror's Edge should be, pure adrenaline filled fun.

 

The graphics are also absolutely incredible and technically the game is very good, rarely saw any glitches and the game runs like a dream.

 

Overall, if you're a fan of the first game you should probably give this a go, but if not I'd give it a miss or pick it up when its £10/£15 later on down the line.

[regemond]

I basically got this for free, so I've already had my money's worth, but I'm really enjoying it for the most part.

 

I do agree with all the complaints listed here (harsh time trials, crap combat, dumb story), but none of that is getting in the way of me having fun with it. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it's not the best either. Weirdly, even though I don't particularly care about the story, I'm finding myself really enjoying the story missions. I think it may be the fact it gives me a goal and leads me somewhere, rather than just letting me off the leash to go nuts.

 

A mission I played last night was a lot of fun - I had to climb up a building for some Asian dude (can't remember his name, just that he's the only other Asian character I've seen up to now, besides Faith) and destroy a pendulum keeping it together. It involved a lot of climbing, and no combat whatsoever, so it was great!

 

The combat would be a hell of a lot better if you could do it all as you run, rather than getting stuck in a 'room' with 4 guys, like the security node missions. As much as I like them, it starts to feel really stilted when you just run around looking for something to jump off and only fight face to face when you absolutely have to.

 

I'll keep playing, although I can see me ignoring all the time trials because fuck it, too much like hard work for me!

[illdog]

3 hours ago, regemond said:

A mission I played last night was a lot of fun - I had to climb up a building for some Asian dude (can't remember his name)

 

That would probably be @hinn888

 

I keep meaning to go back to this, I dont have much left to do (side mission wise) and I always meant to pick it back up. I'd like to play it again in all honeslty, knowing the beast that it is and excepting it as that.

[regemond]

Just finished this. I really fucking enjoyed it! The last mission was a bit of a tosser, with a lot more accurate jumps than the rest of the game, but it was still fun!

 

I ignored everything except the main and side missions way before the end, and only did a few delivery missions after the end to make sure I got all the upgrades.

 

The story scenes were incredibly pretty, even on console. There was one at the end where Faith was getting her tattoo and you could see the pores in her skin raised a little. It looked awesome.

 

Not the best game I've ever played, but when I decided to play it my way instead of doing all the extra tidbits there's nothing I can complain about. Average on the whole? yes. Still a Hell of a lot of fun? Yes!

[Sambob]

I got this for 8 quid the other day. Its been pretty enjoyable actually apart from one or two slightly frustrating parts which surprise surprise involved the fighting although thats been much better implemented this time round.

 

Ive not really bothered with the side missions or trying to make my own runs up, that normally ends up in me just jumping off a building, and then watching the load screen for half a minute, so in that respect I guess youd say its poorly incentivised.

 

Not much else to say, its pretty much the last one, which some of the issues solved although not entirely, and so far ive liked the level design slightly less, dont really dig the open world approach, and actually thought it worked a bit better in Dying Light. 

[Maryokutai]

Most likely of zero interest to anyone but I properly replayed this over the last couple of days for the first time since its release. The first game I basically know by heart at this point, but for various reasons I never went back to Catalyst.

 

I never disliked the game, but there was a certain sense of lingering disappointment when I first played it. It didn't quite feel as elegant and confident as the first and every objective step forward I subjectively perceived as a step back, all the way to its improved visual fidelity, which I thought was overcomplicating something that thrived on simplicity. Going back to it with the proper mindset of what it is though, I'll say I've really come to appreciate what they did here. I still think the original is a better template – it's basically infinitely replayable and will never age – but there are quite a few things to appreciate in Catalyst as well.

 

First and foremost, the open world, which I remain a bit ambivalent about, but there's no denying it adds certain things. Context for one, a certain sense of freedom that goes hand in hand with its main themes (be them on a gameplay or narrative level), a sandbox to try out moves and finetune more complex manoeuvres. The skylines of the City of Glass in the original were extremely impressive, but knowing that you can, more or less, visit the places you see turns the city into a central character rather than just a backdrop. On the downside, and this has been mentioned here multiple times as well, is that outside of these less tangible benefits, the game doesn't pull a lot out of it from a design standpoint. In the latter half of the game, mission targets are so far away from each other that it almost encourages you to use fast travel, whereas the little side tasks you can indulge in are just collectibles and frustratingly difficult time trials.

 

But knowing this when going in for round two, I immediately applied the cure: open the map and turn off symbols for everything bar the main missions and major side quests. And just like turning off the question marks in The Witcher 3 this has such a positive impact on how you experience the game. It's basically a 'good content' filter, because what remains is indeed just very good. The main missions can, for the most part, easily compete with its predecessor, the side quests are mostly decent and the Gridnote towers, with their almost puzzle-platforming designs, have always been the unsung heroes of the game. Of course, a game shouldn't force the players to disengage with a lot of its content to be a more pleasant experience, but I think we're far enough away from its release now to be able to finetune it to be its better version. The very noticeable highs and lows that are the result of its open world approach also made me think how I and a lot of people were convinced this was a pure EA decision at the time. I think since then there have been some reports that DICE did actually want to give it a shot and while you could be cynical about it and presume it was the only way to get it greenlit, I think the good parts of it could convince me that might actually be true.

 

One aspect that is a significant improvement is Faith's general movement. There are quite a few moments in ME1 where she simply does not do what you want her to, and those moments are almost completely gone. It feels extremely polished in every way, which is all the more remarkable considering they switched to their own Frostbyte tech for this game. Adding in stuff like a grappling hook, which has the potential of completely upstaging its central parcour mechanics, turns out to be an excellent addition that is thankfully used in a very limited capacity as to not distract from its core DNA of running and jumping. One feature lifted straight from the first game on the other hand is Runner Vision, and what a Eureka moment it must have been when they realised how well it could be adapted for an open world. This is basically 'yellow paint' done right, a visual pathway guidance system that is not only not intrusive, but actually works in tandem with its art direction. It was always cool to look at in the first game but the argument could be made that it wasn't fundamentally necessary and more of a cool gimmick (proven by the fact that it is deactivated on hard difficulty), but it absolutely makes sense in an open world parcour game, where you simply can't always know where to go next, but don't want to open the map every couple of meters and break the flow.

 

And while I still think the cleaner, less detailed look of the original is a more timeless visual design, I've come to appreciate a lot more of what Catalyst does with it. It's still very minimalistic, but those few extra flourishes and different, colour-coded areas do help make the city feel alive, while also not abandoning that eerie feeling that comes with looking around and seeing every happening at a distance, and at a distance only. It reinforces the idea of you being around in places you're not allowed to, and everyone else living their lives on predetermined paths. And while I'm on the topic of visuals, DICE's foresight of targeting 60fps on last gen was an absolute masterstroke. In their defense, it did hit that target surprisingly often on these older machines, but if you play Catalyst now on a current-gen console, it's an absolutely flawless 60fps from start to finish with the added bonus of the once excruciatingly long loading times reduced to a few seconds at most.

 

tl;dr: this game is on sale every other month for a couple of bucks and I strongly recommend picking it up. There's really nothing else like it out there and it runs like a dream on current-gen. While I still prefer the first one, this replay made me really appreciate what is one of the most unlikely sequels ever made. And considering we're now as far away from Catalyst as it was from the original upon release, it's probably safe to assume that this was it for the IP. But it was a good run, pun very much intended.