Mirror's Edge™ Catalyst

It's been ages since I last played Mirror's Edge, recently went back and the game holds up great. Honestly, the jank makes it even better. Easily one of the best movement in any game I've ever played. There's weight to it that you can learn to manipulate and contributes so well towards that feeling of "flow." It's been ages since I last played Catalyst, remembered not liking it, didn't want to say that it's bad without having played it. It's open world slop. There's so much to say about it but suffice to say that every single aspect that made the original interesting and fun has been stripped down, sanitized, then sanded with the toilet paper of an EA CEO. To explain why it's such a tragedy though... Bigger map means more fun options when running right? No. It means you run in a straight line for 5-10 seconds before being faced with the thrilling choice to either jump off the box or jump off the railing. Either way you land on the same part of the same roof and this repeats until you get to your destination. You don't even see most of the map anyways because you're treading over the same needlessly long, nondescript, empty hallways over and over. Even writing this just having finished the story, I'd say that the final mission has the only real memorable moments in the whole game. The absolute biggest thing (for me) is that they neutered the movement. There is no weight or momentum. The camera feels like it's the head of a chicken with how stable it has to be whenever it vaults over objects. They took out the fun jank but still keep random contextual movements deciding that you're wallrunning into an abyss. Even if they had the greatest level design known to mankind, it'd be hard to enjoy it when getting and conserving speed feels completely unrewarding. If you want more Mirror's Edge, look into Mirror's Edge speedrunning. Side jump boosts, kick glitches, wallrun boosts, these things are relatively accessible and make the game look completely different while still keeping what's fun at it's core. You won't get that here. Here you get an EA executive looming over your shoulder telling you how to play the game.