PS4 MIRROR'S EDGE: CATALYST (US)

I was a big fan of the original Mirror's Edge. As flawed as it was, it was just something so different and so unique, I adored it. The story was forgettable, but the gameplay was not. It's no wonder it became a bit of a cult classic later on. Up until the release of maybe Dying Light, there really hadn't been anything quite like Mirror's Edge. A first person action parkour game. So when they announced Catalyst, I was excited, but all the same, I waited for a price drop because I'm cheap and I anticipated that the game would be flawed.Fast forward a few months and I now own Mirror's Edge Catalyst, a prequel/reboot to the original game. Right out of the gate, I will say that the story is a bit better than what we saw in the original title. I actually kind of remember it, but it's still nothing ground breaking at all. Which is a bit unfortunate because I think the universe that they've created in Mirror's Edge has so much potential as a good basis for storytelling. This game relies heavily on it's gameplay, and that's okay too. No one plays Mario for the story either, I suppose. The gist of the story is that you play as Faith Connors, a Runner in the city of Glass. Runners are basically people who live off-grid and generally do delivery jobs that are borderline illegal, but they can also take part in burglaries and thefts. The world of Mirror's Edge is a corporate run dystopia where people are basically owned by these big companies and everybody is connected through technology and what-have-you. It's kind of like 1984 meets Ghost in the Shell meets Run Lola Run meets Aeon Flux meets something else that I can't think of right now. At the start of Catalyst's story, Faith is getting released from jail after getting busted for doing some work for a crime lord. She returns to her fellow Runners and the ho-hum story goes from there. Other than Faith herself, none of the characters are memorable or even likable. Actually, I found that I disliked majority of the characters because I found them to be annoying or ignorant or just flat.They tweaked the gameplay just enough to make it feel better than the original game, but it still has it's problems.Combat is still incredibly frustrating and kind of disorienting at times. You'll be trying to dodge and shift out of the way, and then suddenly you can't see your enemy anymore because they're behind you and then you're getting rushed from behind and you're being shot at and you can't see who is shooting at you. Faith can't take a lot of damage either. If you played the original, you'll understand. It feels a little better, but hasn't improved that much. The only difference here is that you can no longer pick up the guns and shoot enemies with them.The parkour feels good and a bit a smoother, I think. But it still has those problems where sometimes Faith doesn't always grab on to a bar or a ledge and you end up falling. There's still a lot of trial and error involved, and I fell A LOT. But when the gameplay is working, it feels great to just run and chain jumps and movements together. You feel so cool. And that's when I feel this game is at it's best, when you're just running and seeing what you can do. I think that is one major benefit of the open world design they went with here. The city of Glass serves as a sort of jungle gym to run around in aimlessly. But other than that, the open world design is just sort of there too. It feels like this just falls in line with the trend of games going to an open world concept because it's trendy right now, even though those games weren't original conceived to be open world. The levels of the original game were set up as courses, like a Sonic game, but here you have this sort of empty hub world that gives you these things to collect and all these boring side missions that aren't even remotely engaging. I did a delivery mission and literally the whole time all I could hear was the woman that gave me the mission yammering on and on about the story of her life, and it was about as enjoyable as you think it would be. I think I did a handful of these side missions and then I just decided I was only going to focus on the story missions.Another nitpick I had was that every time you die or restart a mission, the game has to reload. And that may not sound like a big deal, but when you keep falling or you keep running out of a time on a mission, sitting there for ten seconds on a load screen will drive you nuts.As flawed as this game is, I enjoyed it. Overall it looks really good though. I love the style of Mirror's Edge. If you liked the original game and were tolerant of it's flaws, I think you will like this and I would recommend it if you can get it for like $20 or less, just know that a lot of those flaws are still kind of there. New players, I think if you're looking for something different, this might be your cup of tea. Watch some gameplay and know that this a very different game and it handles unlike any other game out there.

Enjoyable even though I have some motion sickness from first person games. I enjoyed finding out the origin of a strong bold female protagonist like Faith, just wished the game was a bit longer and the plot was less predictable.

I know this game has lots of mixed reviews. I personally really like it. I wish the story mode were longer, it feels a bit short, but the gameplay itself is great. It’s a fun and fast paced game!

Great parkour game ! I dont know why there is so much bad press about this one . If you liked the original you WILL like it. Mostly 60fps, great graphics, amazing city and unlike the first game its an open world.

I like Mirror's Edge Catalyst because it continues the story from the first Mirror's Edge game.