Mirror's Edge™ Catalyst

First and foremost Ea closed its servers long time ago with this one so make sure to start game first then after first cinematic, close the game open the Ea app and turn on the offline mode. Then you wont get the infinte loading screen, then after sometime Ea app will want you to go online so they can just confirm that you own the game so you can just use the app at online mode from now on it wont effect the game. Story was good. Faith is an amazing main character Runing feels smooth Combat is not clunky but bit boring. Side story quests also not bad enjoyable Now collectibles are worthless other than recordings Side quest are just one type of quests copy pasted 10000 times over and over again makes no sense. Grid tower hacking quests are the best to be fair. This games problem is dice tried to reboot it but hide everything that could make this game way way more understanble about the story line behind the collectible recordings which you need re do story missions again to find all of em. Terrible idea. Just listen them from youtube after you finished the game. Good story. Performs well. Repetitve side quests Confusing world building. 7/10

terrible.. if you know your gonna shut servers down and your game has a singleplayer mode DONT TIE IT TO THE SERVERS it keeps crashing, i guess if i wanna play this i gotta find it on ps4 or something.

I love the original Mirror's Edge. I bought it for full price at release, gifted it to others, and I've even repurchased it for other platforms during my console pleb phase of the 2010s. Over the past fifteen years I've replayed it at semi-regular intervals and I've pretty much endlessly sung its praises despite being fully aware of and acknowledging its many flaws. But Mirror's Edge is one of those games that just inspires something in me—its world, characters, and audiovisual presentation are unlike anything else I've ever played. When Catalyst was finally announced I was filled with excitement, a sequel to one of my favourite games was finally happening. Then, it was revealed that the game was going to be an origin story reboot, to a game series that only had one game. Then Catalyst released to what can mostly only be described as a dull thud. Where the first game was considered a cult classic masterpiece with a devoted following, Catalyst felt like some kind of rejected HBO series masquerading in Mirror's Edge cosplay. In terms of its narrative tone and characters it felt nothing like the original game. Who was it even for? After hearing of the general disappointment and lack of enthusiasm towards Catalyst I ended up ignoring it for many years as there were simply too many other games at the time that interested me. Why play a mediocre sequel to one of my favourite games? Years later I'd finally pick up Catalyst here on Steam at a steep discount, though I'd only briefly touch it before being put off by the narrative dissonance with the first game. Where were the characters from the original? Why did Faith act and sound like a completely different character? Fast forward a few more years to 2025 and I finally came back to Catalyst nearly a full decade after its original release. This time I stuck it out and I'm glad that I did, because if you're anything like me—a huge fan of the original game—then Catalyst is worth playing despite its narrative shortcomings. The first game's story and characters are not particularly robust, but we've come to like those aspects of it anyway as there's a certain level of charm in the cast's simplicity and those Esurance FMVs (which are thankfully gone in Catalyst). But it's all really just window dressing for the real character of Mirror's Edge: [i]The City of Glass[/i]. Yes, the world of Mirror's Edge itself is the real star; and, while I prefer the way it was presented in the original over Catalyst, it's still the star of the show here as well. If the thing that you loved about the original game was the gameplay above all else, then the mediocre story and characters of Catalyst are worth sifting through to get to the core of the experience. That's not to say that Catalyst isn't without other flaws as there are many. The open world is full of pointless and meaningless tasks to complete that feel appropriate for a game released in 2016 following every trend of the era. Those pointless tasks are even more meaningless now a decade later due to the online servers being shut down in typical EA fashion. None of the social features work and numerous achievements—even the ones strictly related to single-player—are completely and utterly broken. When you launch the game the first thing you're greeted to is a message about failing to connect to the game's servers, which doesn't exactly make for a great first impression. Catalyst is ultimately a failed reboot to a series that the IP holder views in contempt for its inability to generate mass market appeal. EA ultimately isn't interested in creating unique and compelling games for the sake of art; the company is only interested in extrapolating whatever financial value it can from every IP it owns and will cast said IPs into the abyss should they no longer be deemed to carry any meaningful financial return on investment according to the company's own vague standards. EA itself might be the most notorious game company in existence for acquiring and destroying a variety of compelling intellectual properties due to its own incompetence and inability to understand what makes them interesting. But, I digress; this is supposed to be a review of Mirror's Edge Catalyst, not EA's uncanny ability to destroy and bury game franchises. Catalyst is a wholly uncompelling and uninteresting game from a narrative perspective compared to its predecessor. It feels like it was made by people who didn't see the original as a success and wanted to force it to have broader narrative appeal. They accomplished this by metaphorically killing every character from the original besides the protagonist and one other who has been more or less reimagined into a different character. Everyone else has been replaced with less interesting and even more underutilized people. It would have been interesting to see the original's cast come back in extended roles, fleshing out their backstories and the depths of their character, but we instead got a bunch of living and breathing cliches to replace them, like their personalities and dialogue were designed by an AI algorithm instead of real people. Most of them are forgettable and annoying; they all stand around doing nothing and you can't interact with anyone outside of cutscenes, and their character arcs never amount to anything interesting beyond serving as a footnote in the game's mediocre plot by the end, which takes a skydive from the highest mountain possible with no parachute in the game's final act that is appropriately bewildering to see unfold. I found myself laughing at its absurdity and legitimately felt like I was watching a parody of cheesy 90s action films like [i]Speed[/i], except Catalyst presented these moments of sheer absurdity in a manner which genuinely felt like they were meant to be taken seriously. You could reskin everyone involved in the game's finale with Sonic characters and it would feel much more appropriate. But, all of this aside, Mirror's Edge Catalyst preserves the gameplay aspects from the original that I adore. Running through this world is satisfying in a way that no other game I've yet to find has been able to emulate. The gameplay finale is incredibly disappointing but there are several set pieces scattered throughout the adventure that are worth experiencing. Mirror's Edge Catalyst may be terribly flawed and full of all of the worst EAisms imaginable such as their mandatory EA App bloatware and broken game functionality; yet, somehow—months after playing—Catalyst still lives on in my memory. I'm not sure whether or not I'll ever feel compelled to replay it again—and if I did I can't imagine I'd ever replay it to the same extent as the original—but I'm glad to have experienced it at least once. Its gameplay captures the right things from the original that left an unforgettable impression on me and it even manages to streamline some of the things about the original that were kind of annoying. The combat is significantly improved and is actually quite challenging and satisfying when you master it; some of the enemies really put up a mean fight. The soundtrack might not leave as much of an impression as the first's does but Solar Fields still shows up to deliver a respectful sophomore effort that feels in tune with the spirit of the original. My only other real complaint is that a game as beautiful as this deserves a minimalist hud, but it feels like there's always some kind of marker getting in your way reminding you of something you need to do or interact with that can't be disabled, which is really and truly unfortunate. Despite its myriad flaws, if you're a fan of the first Mirror's Edge then you should still play through Catalyst anyway. It lacks the same lighting in a bottle magic as the original but when you're free-flowing through the game world you'll occasionally see the same glimpses of that original game's magic, and those fleeting moments of zen-like bliss are worth chasing—even if only once.

卡加载：把EA app 设置为离线模式，然后启动游戏

Screw this. Impossible to play on Linux. EA apparently needs to shove its launcher in a 10 year old game for some reason. Well, I know somewhere else they can shove it. If I find I way, I'll update the review.

Бесконечная загрузка после вступительной кат-сцены, сервера отключены. ЕА как всегда днище, худшая корпорация зла из всех представленных в стиме

I'm going to be really honest here. I came into this game with a lot of faith (no pun intended), since the original game was so good. I was kind of disappointed. Let me explain. I thought this game was a sequel. It's not. It's a reboot for some reason and it does not tie into the original story. The protest and the security part are correct, but in the original game, Faith's mother was killed by the security, not both her parents. Faith's sister's name is Kate, not Caitlyn or Isabel, and she's an officer not an executive of a corporation. The combat is pretty sloppy you have to kick someone in order to break their guard, where as in the original, you can counter an attack and take their weapon and use it on other enemies. Finally, this game had a sloppy plot and it ended in a slight cliffhanger when they could have only made one more level to end it in a better way than how they did. The first game ended so much better and satisfying. If there is only one thing that is good about this game it's the ability to run around the city in a sandbox style and do side quest with the main story. Overall, this game is a bust. I wouldn't recommend it if you are a Mirror's Edge fan like me. Save your money, and buy the original game, because that will always be a better game to me.