Sometimes, it comes down to a feeling, and what Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst gets fundamentally, massively right is replicating the feeling of free running, the exhilarating sense of flowing through an environment, utilising it as a high-speed aerial playground. Moreover, you never feel invincible, the knowledge always there that one misplaced jump could send you hurtling to Earth, the screen spinning around to replicate the distress of plummeting to your doom as the relentless forward movement that the game is built around comes to a shuddering halt. It is, of course, this feeling of toying with disaster that gives the game its power, delicately balancing on a beam or leaping from a skyscraper pumps the adrenaline precisely because of the player’s knowledge of the consequences of misjudging a jump or overshooting the mark. When Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is at its best though, the almost zen-like feeling of mastery is incredible, with daring leaps, scrambles up walls, high-speed pipe climbing, hi-tech grappling hook swinging, and horizontal wall runs all forming part of one sustained run that simply flows until you reach your destination.
Fundamentally, this is the same pleasure that the original Mirror’s Edge offered eight years ago, albeit refined, polished, and given a few new tricks to show off. Produced by Swedish studio DICE, Mirror’s Edge always felt like an outlier, a passion project fuelled by the megabucks success of the Battlefield series and positioned in opposition to the perennial concerns of AAA titles (which, let’s face it, tend to be white men doing violent things to each other). In contrast, Mirror’s Edge‘s female protagonist and relatively pacifist nature (enemies are knocked out and avoided rather than gunned down with glee) felt revelatory and got the game a committed cult following. That this formula still feels fresh and exciting in 2016 is a neat reflection of the fact that while the mainstream games industry has made massive progress commercially in the intervening eight years, thematically it’s still pretty much in the same place it always was.
The game’s best missions are generally those involving extreme verticality, getting to the top of the almost Tower of Babel-like edifices that house Glass’s ruling elite, is an undeniable thrill, the wind whipping in your ears and the controller faintly vibrating as you look down on the partly shrouded city below. There’s also a voyeuristic excitement to industrial espionage assignments, creeping past any hard-working employs (as Mirror’s Edge refers to the proletariat that create the wealth for this particular society) burning the midnight oil and repurposing bland, functional architecture as a land of experimentation and play, reinforcing your status as a transgressive force in an otherwise tightly controlled world. However, there’s only a handful of such missions, the game more interested in Faith’s running battles with Krugersec than truly fleshing out its fiction. The story is also hampered by its status as a prequel to the original game, it’s not really able to fundamentally change anything and therefore sometimes feels anticlimactic and inconsequential.
The game’s combat has been heavily criticised in some quarters and few would pick it out as a highlight. It is, however, functional with fighting in first-person adding, at least initially, a pleasing novelty to the proceedings and blows landing with a satisfying crunch. The biggest problem is it all essentially boils down to avoid and attack, a somewhat limited formula that is repeated throughout the game. Aerial attacks make things a little more exciting, with kicks from wall runs and springboards able to take down some enemies in one hit but, given that every enemy in the game can be defeated using the same basic formula discussed above, players will need to make a conscious effort to use them.
Catalyst also marks the series’ transition to an open world, although this hasn’t quite had the transformative impact that one might have hoped for. While you do now have the freedom of the city’s rooftops, there’s not a great deal to discover, beyond delivery missions that all essentially boil down to the same thing (complete a near flawless run to meet what often feels like a pointlessly prohibitive time limit), compulsive collecting of memory sticks, security chips and gridleaks, and various time trials and dashes. If you’re the sort of person who loves replaying runs to find shortcuts and shave seconds off your best time, then it’s a set-up that will appeal greatly, particularly as the game allows players to create their own time trials and dashes in order to challenge other players. By far the best side missions are hackable billboards, which are generally located in hard to reach places and add a pleasing puzzle element to the game’s navigation. Once reached, billboards will be imprinted with your tag, which can be changed online or in the companion app (EA practically forcing players into these methods of engagement), allowing you to imprint your identity on the city.
Ultimately, it’s hard to deny that Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst has flaws, the story could undeniably go in a more interesting direction and be told with more flair, the combat could be more varied, and its open world could be fleshed out further. However, it gets the most important stuff massively right, perfectly replicating the adrenaline rush and experimentation that is the essence of free running and making you feel like you’re genuinely leaping from skyscraper to skyscraper rather than just pretending to in your living room. Ultimately, it’s one of the most unique play and visual experiences in gaming and its distinctive pleasures overcome conventional failings that could ruin less interesting games.
Developer: DICE
Publisher: EA
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Release Date: 9th June 2016