Gaming review: Mirrors Edge - Catalyst

The original Mirror's Edge, announced in summer 2007 and released in November 2008, was well received by the press, the first-person parkour game hosted stunning visuals, fast-paced gameplay and a badass protagonist. The game was too humble of a success to earn itself a sequel, however, just under a decade later, EA and Dice has another chance to get Faith and her city, running again.

Mirrors Edge: Catalyst is set in the city of Glass, which is visually stunning with a beautiful blue sky and a place that looks blissfully picturesque. Giant white buildings dominate the skyline with company branding scattered across and then there is the giant billboards attempting to promote the good we are led to believe exists within the conglomerate. You play as a younger and more naive Faith, who is trying her best to bring down the villainous corporation who are driven by greed as well as unlocking the secrets of her own past.

Dice has always excelled at captivating the player into the world of being a Free-runner. This is where Mirrors Edge has always felt unique and fresh, it's a genre that isn't explored much, while we have seen some games with great parkour, Mirror's Edge is the crème de la crème when it comes down to the innovation, immersion and feeling a sense of excitement when free-running across rooftops and jumping random obstacles. Each slide, vault, jump and movement feels smooth and well transitioned and flows like water as you make your way across the city. I would often find myself running frantically across the rooftops, instinctively my Runner Vision turned off, and I would just seamlessly begin hopping from wall to roof. It's a breathtaking experience at times, and it can feel really exhilarating and gets the blood pumping if you totally take it all in and ignore the distractions around you.

You're rewarded for your fluid and continuous movement throughout Glass, this comes in the form of the focus shield. With every successful manoeuvre comes extra protection to your health via the new focus shield, it builds as you traverse across the city pulling together some impressive parkour moves. However, If you get shot by a KrugerSec enforcer, your shield will reduce pretty quickly, but this won't affect your health. Only when you stop or miscalculate a landing will your shield then disappear. It's a nice feature and one that'll help you as you build on your technique to glide across rooftops and roll over obstacles in the city of Glass.

One thing that could have had slightly more improvement is the combat system, which isn't as strong as it could be. but on the flip side, you are never really pushed in to fighting if you don't need to. If you're roaming through the open-world and not currently focussed on the story missions, then it's probably best to not get into a scrap. KrugerSec are a ruthless pack and you can get overpowered quickly if you're not fully prepared. Faith will never find herself wielding a gun, but there are several tricks up her sleeve that can become very affective during your adventure. There are a few light attacks which won't cause you to stop if you're trying to race past your attackers, they'll just knock them out of the way.

The majority of the damage you inflict will obviously come from heavy attacks, these can be really affective and when you mix them together with your free-running skills it can make interesting results. You'll find that In the main story, you will be forced to fight against large groups of enemies, so trying various techniques like wall-running before landing a devastating kick will do more damage than just a standard kick from a stationary position.

You can improve and upgrade your movement, combat, and gear by earning XP. As you advance through the story, new traits are unlocked like the ability to quick turn, and a grappling hook that attaches to certain fixed points throughout the open world to help you swing across large gaps. The inclusion of the grappling hook in particular is a really cool addition that changes the flow of cruising through the city without making it notably easy to get everywhere. You can also increase how much damage you do in combat and you can even add extra bars to your health gauge. Each upgrade adds slight changes to Faith's skills and help to make you a tremendous runner.

Despite this, Catalyst's problem lies in how easy it can be to die instantly, which can occasionally be down to poor decision making, but can sometimes be down to confusing visual language. I've died several times by leaping towards a feature that looks like a pipe or a ladder, but unfortunately it wasn't. More often than not I've found myself been carried away by momentum, completely misjudged a jump and fallen to my untimely death. This is a game that is built around player assists, and of course keeping the player moving, but when it comes to particular challenges the smallest miscalculation of a jump will be strictly punished.

Mirrors Edge: Catalyst gives you plenty to do outside the main story, including side missions, dashes and deliveries. The majority of the deliveries will involve reaching a recipient within an allocated time, whilst the dashes are aimed more at competing against players in time trail races across the city. There are other additions like for instance billboard hacks and grid nodes, but social play is where it aims to please players who enjoy a challenge.

One slightly disappointing aspect of the game is in the story and characters. Serving as a prequel to Mirror's Edge, Catalyst looks to fill in the blanks of the story and evolve Faith's character. However, the plot twists are so predictable that you'll see what's coming a mile off, even if you never played the original. Then there are the emotionless characters, who are incredibly dull and lacking in personality that you'd find it difficult to pick one out of a lineup.

The Verdict - Despite a few flaws, Mirrors Edge: Catalyst is addictive, it's a solid game with fast paced mechanics that can give you as many thrills as it can chills.

Visually stunning and with a huge open world to explore with plenty to do you won't get bored easy. It's certainly worth playing and experiencing a Mirrors Edge title on our current generation of consoles. Dice have made a fantastic game and I hope we won't have to wait another 8 years for the next one.

By Simon Hill

Twitter - @SimonHOfficial