Mirror's Edge™ Catalyst

Freerunning is incredibly satisfying, achieving a sense of flow state is easy but also feels rewarding at the same time. This is also elevated by the breath-taking visuals of the City of Glass. The landscape is unbelievably clean and crisp, and feels almost unnatural running through it. Paired with the piercing blue of the sky, and the iconic Red runner's vision, it truly is a visual masterpiece. The mission where you scale (and eventually destroy) Anansi Emporium is to this day one of my favourite missions of any game I've played. Despite this, the parkour experience really falls off a cliff as soon as you're relegated to even a remotely small space. I found that most of the parkour that takes place inside buildings (cough cough art museum) and some of the narrow rooftops around the end of the game felt clunky and frustrating to navigate. For a game that relies of masterful control and precise movements, it really struggles with this. The combat is lackluster, to be blunt. You really have only two moves; punching and kicking, but I found it satisfying enough once I mastered combining my attacks with momentum I had previously built up. Having a combat system with more depth and range would be interesting, but I'd hate for that to take away focus from the parkour system. Finally, I think the story is good, allbeit too short. Catalyst introduces us to a storied city full of history and complicated political views. The cast of characters that we follow all have a major stake in the plot, and feel planted/grounded as a result. Unfortunately, this game's main storyline is only 12 hours, so most of what I just said isn't realised to it's full potential by a country mile. The cinematic cutscenes are nice, and give you a good insight into mostly just Noah, Faith and Dogen's characters. These three easily steal the spotlight, and it is interesting to watch Faith mature throughout the story; finally getting taking a stand and not just being a fly on the wall watching conflicts after getting the motivation she needed (that being Noah's death). However, this game does suffer from over-expositon and context-dumping during your time travelling to missions. Characters like Rebecca Thane, Plastic and Nomad will just spew their entire political views at Faith while she silently scales an entire tower. It feels like a lazy way to flesh out your characters, and I would have wished that the game took a bit more time to connect us more with these characters. It's very easy to just tune out their ramblings while you repeatedly fail the sixth wall-run to a thin beam in a row. Catalyst is a true 5/10 for me. Incredible art, environment. Good gameplay that can quickly turn frustrating. Story that has a high ceiling, but marred by game length.