![]() Since many of these optional challenges don't send you off into an instanced version of the game's world, dipping into one of two of these while on your way to the next objective feels pretty organic. If the promise of yet another open-world game with thousands of things to do has you feeling less than enthused, it's actually easy to skip most of the chaff and focus on the main missions. Again, it's a huge improvement over what we saw in the last game, but combat still can't help but feel like a box to check on EA's "But Will This Sell?" list. Encountering an enemy or two along your route feels completely manageable, but Catalyst's worst moments come when you're trapped in an arena and this formerly exhilarating parkour game becomes a dull, first-person brawler. Most of the combat involves mixing up your moves-since enemies tend to block the same successive attacks-and using directional attacks to knock them into one another. Encountering enemies still stands as the least exciting thing to do in Mirror's Edge, but Catalyst at least tries to spice it up by providing a host of melee options for Faith. Thankfully, the awkward, frustrating gunplay of the original has been omitted entirely. Plus, Catalyst often removes the Runner's Vision option entirely for missions and challenges that focus more on navigation puzzles than sheer speed. In theory, this choice may seem patronizing, but it actually helps maintain momentum by allowing players to keep moving without having to jump to a menu or divert their eyes to a mini-map to maintain their sense of direction. ![]() Clicking the right analog stick activates "Runner's Vision," which sends a faint red trail in front of Faith to reveal the route to her next objective. As with the 2008 debut, objects you should interact with begin to glow red as you approach them, but Catalyst builds on this feature a bit more to help players cope with its open-world nature. Since there aren't many notable landmarks within its Ikea-crafted world, Mirror's Edge Catalyst does its best to approximate protagonist Faith's sense of runner's intuition with some smart visual feedback. Oh yeah, and there's still some awkward fighting thrown in, but this time around, it's mercifully less awkward. Your interactions with the world basically consist of "run, "jump," and "slide," though the real challenge comes in stringing a succession of these moves together with split-second timing to cope with obstacles and ostensibly bottomless pits in your path. During its best moments, Mirror's Edge's sequel feels like a sort of first-person Prince of Persia, in which you use acrobatics, upper-body strength, and a strong resistance to motion sickness to parkour your way from Point A to Point B. Oh, and there are lots of collectibles strewn about, because what would an open world game be without any of those?Īt its heart, Catalyst doesn't differ too much from the original. New abilities unlock as you complete more objectives, but, as expected, every player should end up with all of them unlocked by the end-you won't be shooting for any specific character build, here. At its core, it's basically indistinguishable from The Ubisoft Model: Catalyst offers a large world, littered with dozens of variants on a half-dozen activities, as well as more intricately designed story missions that push the campaign forward. If you've played any open-world game in the past decade, Mirror's Edge Catalyst should feel extremely familiar. And while it's funny a series about a bland, corporate dystopia would inevitably feel like a product from its fictional world, Mirror's Edge's original spark can still be spotted within this very well-trodden form of expression. While its debut amounted to a concise, linear adventure that wouldn't occupy more than a few afternoons, Mirror's Edge Catalyst has assumed the only identity a major release from a major publisher can take these days: that of the sprawling, open world game. It's funny, then, that the long-awaited return of Mirror's Edge feels so. While it had its flaws, EA Dice's unique creation at least gave us some hope during those first few dismal years of the last console version. Back in 2008, the original Mirror's Edge turned heads for being a rare splash of color in landscape of first-person-shootery greys, greens and browns.
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