I’ve completed Mirror’s Edge four times, so I know first person parkour is good. To me, Catalyst feels every bit the same as Mirror’s Edge 2008. The controls remain the same except for a couple of buttons, but only hardcore gamers will notice the changes, and my muscle memory and sense of timing served me well at E3. For those who fear that Catalyst will lose the essence of the original, I can say that the game feels like a full-fledged sequel, and not a reboot.
The demo showed only a small fragment of the open world in Catalyst, a series of flat roofs with three tasks: a race against the clock (Race), a chain of battles (Delivery) and a challenge – to climb to the highest point of the world and hack a shield with propaganda (Shield Hacking). My main reaction to the demo was excitement when I finally played Mirror’s Edge, after seven years of advertising the game to any poor souls who were there to listen. There have been six Call of Duty games since the first game came out, but Catalyst standing alongside the absurdly expensive AAA games lifts my spirits. It’s also good that everything that made the original Mirror’s Edge so interesting was preserved in the sequel.
What the thirteen minute demo really https://mrluck-casino.co.uk/ failed to do was show how the open world would work, from the moment the sun roof area became limited, and it felt like it could have been a level from the first Mirror’s Edge. The environment appears small at first, then reveals itself, but how big will it really be?? The map in the menu suggests a huge open city, but the demo doesn’t answer how the player will get from one place to another.
Big changes are taking place in the combat system, which was initially misleading, but then turned out to be noticeably simple. Since I found the controls too easy when I first played it, it may appeal to players who found the original’s controls too difficult or awkward. The attack is done by pressing the X button on the XBOX controller rather than a trigger (it’s just a button to open doors now), and if you quickly press the button while close to an enemy, Faith will quickly take them out, sometimes with a nice third-person finisher.
There really aren’t enough fights in the demo to talk about anymore. While the fights don’t pose any threat and there were no guns for Faith to use, DICE has made it clear that Mirror’s Edge is little more than a platformer. What’s really changed is that you can fight more while you’re running. While Mirror’s Edge sometimes required more savvy. You had to circle across rooftops and ambush enemies, taking your mind off the pace of the level. A complex combat system may not be what Mirror’s Edge is all about, but the truth is I’ll need to spend more time with Catalyst to know for sure.
Mirror’s Edge is worth reviving. And the demo shows that Catalyst will look and feel like a familiar game to existing audiences. DICE must now focus on showing players what kind of open world will be added to the game.
