I have finally completed some of the reviews I had on backlog. Expect more over the next week. *Played on Xbox One
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst takes you high up on the rooftops of the City of Glass. This game has countless moments of pulse stopping bone chilling close calls as you run from roof top to roof top narrowly escaping a cataclysmic fall by the skin of your teeth all exaggerated by Catalyst’s first-person perspective. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst takes place in a dystopian future where corporations have taken power and run the nation of Cascadia. The main character, Faith Connors, is an angry youth as she is released from juvie. Faith is part of a Cabal called The Runners, led by her mentor and surrogate, father Noah. The Runners fight back against the corporations by basically acting as a black market postal service that assists the Lowcaste (the lower members of the social castes). To pay off an outstanding debt, Faith takes a job to infiltrate an agricultural firm and steal some data. Upon entering the building and collecting the data she was sent in to steal, Faith’s natural curiosity is piqued when she sees another intruder, dressed like Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, stalking the halls. Naturally Faith follows and is roped into a conspiracy all revolving around Reflection, a program that when paired with Nanites in the human body can control human emotion, and the main antagonist Gabriel Kruger. Catalyst has an intriguing set that ends up going nowhere. The narrative is predictable and holds few mysteries or surprises that would keep you guessing about what is going to happen next. The narrative is simply boring and is supported by a lackluster voice cast and characters. With a few exceptions who did a fantastic job, the voice cast seemed as if they were just reading lines off paper and all emotion came across as forced or just fake. I feel as though the writers let a golden opportunity go by not making some sort of political statement. The underlying tones of numerous statements are there, but lacks a clear cut message. Catalyst’s action is all about movement. Running, jumping, climbing, and any combination of those. There is a slight learning curve, but chaining moves together soon becomes second nature. Combat also revolves around movement. Faith’s punches and kicks do more damage when combined with another movement action (i.e. wall runs, springboard jumps, etc.). The enemies Faith encounters have small variations. There are the base grunt soldiers, a slightly more armored version of the grunts, a ranged combat variant, a soldier with a shock glove, and a strong agile enemy with similar movement abilities to Faith. Sadly this is where the variety for Catalyst ends. Glass is not an “open world” in the traditional sense. It is more like a set of branching and connecting paths in areas that all have the same feel from a movement sense, though different aesthetics. Missions also have little variety. They have different objectives, but all boil down to the same equation of running to point A to point B. There is a lack of major set pieces or action sequences that break up the monotonous running. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has a few graphical problems on console. The majority of issues are with rendering details. Graffiti on walls appears blurred, and in non-cut scene dialogue, faces of NPCs appear low resolution and blurred. The actual cinematic scenes have a sharp, but at times stiff look. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst as a whole is not a bad game by any sense of the word. However, I came away from my time with Catalyst with feeling indifferent towards it. There is a lot of potential and fun mechanics, but is not a memorable experience. Rating: 6/10
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AuthorI am A.J. Goelz. I'm a gamer first and a writer second. I hope you enjoy the content on this page and check out the rest of my content on YouTube. Archives
April 2019
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