Mirror's Edge™ Catalyst Reviews

+ Free running is pretty cool + Pretty good controls - Non avoidable !super! annoying fights - Environments all look the same - Story is very predictable Get it on a sale.

Game doesn't start. Just stuck on a loading screen due to the draconian online DRM system and the servers are closed down.

this game has a special place in my heart, legit one of my favourite games of all time, and absolutely stunning beauty, 10/10 visually appealing, 10/10 style, super unique gameplay, one of a kind game. love it

I could not play the game. After selecting a brightness, it flashes EA's launcher and an error with online stuff (too fast, couldn't read), and then closes completely. Don't bother buying it.

Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst is a first-person action-adventure game developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts, serving as a reboot and prequel to the original Mirror’s Edge. It thrusts players into the sleek, futuristic city of Glass, a visually striking urban landscape characterized by its clean lines, bright white surfaces, and vivid red accents. The game’s hallmark is its unique blend of parkour-style movement and fast-paced traversal, combined with a narrative focused on freedom, rebellion, and corporate oppression. Unlike many traditional first-person games that center on shooting or combat, Catalyst emphasizes fluid motion and momentum as core gameplay elements, creating a distinctive and immersive experience. At the heart of Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst is the exhilarating movement system. Players control Faith Connors, an agile courier who relies on her parkour skills to navigate the cityscape, sprinting across rooftops, scaling walls, vaulting over obstacles, and performing acrobatic maneuvers with a sense of speed and grace rarely seen in first-person games. The game rewards mastery of momentum and spatial awareness; maintaining fluidity in movement not only enhances the thrill but is often essential for successfully overcoming environmental challenges and enemy encounters. This dynamic traversal is supported by intuitive controls and a thoughtfully designed tutorial system, helping players gradually build confidence as they chain together complex maneuvers. The open-world city of Glass is both beautiful and functional, serving as a playground for exploration and parkour. The design encourages players to find multiple routes to their objectives, with hidden collectibles and time trials scattered throughout the environment. The skyline and architecture offer a unique visual contrast to typical urban game settings, with the bright and clean aesthetics contributing to a feeling of hope amidst the dystopian narrative. Climbing and jumping across this cityscape feels liberating, especially when the game’s verticality is fully exploited. However, the open-world format sometimes leads to moments where the pacing slows down due to backtracking or long traversal between missions, which can occasionally break immersion. Narratively, Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst dives into Faith’s backstory and her fight against the authoritarian conglomerate known as the Conglomerate. The story explores themes of surveillance, control, and resistance through Faith’s interactions with various characters, including allies and antagonists. While the narrative provides context and motivation, some players may find the storytelling less compelling or somewhat fragmented, with occasional pacing issues and dialogue that doesn’t always match the urgency of Faith’s actions. Nevertheless, the game shines in how it integrates story elements into the world-building and environmental storytelling, encouraging players to piece together the broader picture through exploration and optional content. Combat in Catalyst takes a different approach than many first-person titles, focusing on melee and acrobatic evasions rather than firearms. Faith is unarmed for most encounters and relies on speed, timing, and quick reflexes to outmaneuver enemies. Combat sequences emphasize chaining attacks and counterattacks, blending parkour movement with strikes to keep the flow uninterrupted. This design keeps combat fast and engaging but can sometimes feel limited or repetitive, especially compared to the exhilarating freedom found in the traversal sections. Some players might wish for more variety or depth in enemy encounters, but the combat remains faithful to the game’s core emphasis on mobility and momentum. Visually, Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst is stunning. The minimalist, futuristic aesthetic is a standout feature, with pristine white surfaces contrasted sharply by red highlights that guide players through the environment. The lighting and reflections enhance the immersive experience, creating a world that feels both sterile and alive. The art direction reinforces the game’s themes of control versus freedom, with the city’s design reflecting the Conglomerate’s dominance while the open skies and high rooftops symbolize escape. The soundtrack complements the gameplay perfectly, featuring a dynamic electronic score that builds tension and energy during chase sequences and exploration. Despite its many strengths, Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst is not without its flaws. Some players have noted issues with camera angles during complex parkour moves, occasional glitches in the open-world traversal, and a story that might feel underdeveloped for those expecting a deeper narrative experience. Additionally, while the game’s open-world structure offers freedom, it sometimes leads to repetitive fetch quests or longer travel times that can detract from the overall momentum. However, these shortcomings are often overshadowed by the core thrill of the movement and the unique feel of the game’s world. In conclusion, Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst is a bold and stylish reinvention of the parkour-first-person genre, offering a fresh experience that prioritizes fluid movement and momentum over traditional combat mechanics. Its visually striking world, intuitive traversal system, and thematic depth make it a memorable title for players seeking something different from typical action games. While it may stumble with pacing and narrative cohesion at times, the game’s strengths in design and atmosphere provide a compelling journey through a dystopian city where freedom means running fast, thinking quick, and always moving forward. For fans of parkour, first-person adventures, or unique game worlds, Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst remains a thrilling and worthy experience. Rating: 8/10

This game isn't a dumpster fire unplayable mess but man is it just not good, it does not help I am a mega geek of the original Mirrors Edge but this game just doesn't even come close, it truly doesn't feel like a sequel more a fan-fiction, an alternate timeline maybe. It completely ignores the events of the first game (for the most part) and makes you read a poopoo comic book just to understand the needlessly complicated plot, this whole game is needlessly complicated - cluttered is the word I'm looking for; cluttered thematically, visually and mechanically. The plot isn't even the worst part about the story, the characters are. Faith is no longer cool, I understand they wanted to make her aged and therefore more mature but alongside her new (and worse) voice actor and design she is a completely different person who is tragically 2d and cookie cutter, I mourn the loss of OG Faith everyday and this may be the worst crime EA has done. On top of her one dimensional character the game feels the need to introduce a million more, the amount of side characters and these supposedly super important people who where previously unheard of just ruins the memorability of the plot, which spoiler, is not great. The original ME plot wasn't a cinematic masterpiece but it was a personal, relatable and engaging story that I wanted to see the conclusion of, and if not for this game, the continuation of but no, kat has to be EVIL and there's a big scary corpo thats EVIL and all your friends DIE :steambored:. Visually we where robbed. I love love LOVE the original art style of ME, The comic book cutscenes, the silhouette loading screens and of course the unforgettable minimalist dystopia that used bright contrasting colours that demanded the players attention making for an effortlessly seamless and effective tool of game design, it is to this day unlike anything else no matter how hard some try to replicate it they just cannot capture that strange 2009ish feeling the og gives off. The new ones boring. it actually makes me mad, it looks like if Detroit BH had a forbidden lovechild with black ops 3, its messy, its ugly and it fails to convey a realistic futuristic setting within the context of the universe and I do not want to talk about it anymore. Also if we wanna go super nerd the original score for ME is euphonious symphony crafted by the divinest of hands to bless those who hear it, the new one is just alright i guess. And lastly the gameplay, more so the movement and I'm gonna be honest, there's not much to say. Mostly because there wasn't much to say about the original, for a game all about parkour it was pretty basic, anyways the new one takes that justified simplicity and throws it out the window to pave way for the new convoluted fighting mechanics, stupid zipline thing that I HATE and skill tree because of course there is. too keep it a buck I actually kinda liked the new kicking system with the directional stumbles and interactive environment but that's where the praise ends, much like everything else its just so polluted, the game would literally change only for the better if they just removed the the skill tree and added back weapons and weapon stealing, mirrors edge should not be a combat title, it should be a minor distraction between the parkour-ey bits but in this game its a main stage feature and its BORING and that's when it functions. This game isnt downright buggy but it is jank and does just not feel good to play. In conclusion ea SUCKS they wont make a 3rd Mirrors Edge game because their SCARED of ME as they should be. dont install the ea app and go play the original, thank you.

Looks more casual than prequel, but does have some potential, but we forgot that the Publisher's EA that aren't humans but demons I don't recommend Catalyst, as there're the same problems as with Far Cry: Blood Dragon (my previous review) - I may bear the fact that it demands from you downloading and Signing Up into some ugly-a$$ launcher, but: 1) I got my EA Account activation code only on 5-6th attempt (while at the same time, Google only takes 1st attempt). Note that I'm not a lucky-man and this problem is quite popular + I had good Internet Connection and my GMail/Google account was active with no interruption 2) Prequel & Sequel are both officially disconnected from EA servers, meaning that there's just no meaning in EAL, as the game already has no connection to LeaderBoard and none of the games ever had multiplayer/co-op mode 3) I installed Catalyst, and it installed EAL afterwards. I some-fakking-how Signed Up, and started the game while I had Wi-Fi. After closing the game, I ran the game again but turned off Wi-Fi on my computer. It took longer for game to launch than with Wi-Fi, but was good for me (had no serious problems as with Far Cry: Blood Dragon) - in other words, the game was activated successfully 1.5+ months ago 3.1) After 1.5+ months, I started the game again via Steam Launcher (today while I'm writing this comment) with no Internet Connection (to test the game again + our Wi-Fi was cut for no reason), and EAL popped-up with "The license has expired. Please launch the game while online to renew the license" message. I'm sorry, but why the 1st time-activation was not enough - and is it Kaspersky Antivirus/Adobe Photoshop or what, that I have to renew the "1-time-buy license" every month? You think I always have Wi-Fi or something? I bought the game, and this is my right to launch it anywhere and whenever I want 3.2) "MirrorsEdgeCatalyst.exe" (launching not from Steam) anyways runs EAL :)

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☑ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☑ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10

online servers shut down but the game still uses the shitty ea launcher for no reason along with its drm .and also denuvo just to fuck your cpu and your life up even more

I recently completed my second playthrough of Mirror's Edge Catalyst and it mostly confirmed my thoughts I had on the game from my first time playing it. The game has some gorgeous areas and some amazing set pieces that will blow you away and 22 "dashes" (time trials) that genuinely seem to get it right leaving the play with a lot of freedom for plotting out a route to complete said trial. Unfortunately that's about it since the main parts of the game will have the player following intended routes that often times the game designers couldn't possibly navigate as half of the movement mechanics have been snipped and ruined from the original and reintroduced as a rpg system. Many aspects of the parkour wind up forcing the player into long winded animations that are often impossible to avoid for example the grappling hook which gives no momentum, no locks you into set paths and gives you little to no control of Faith. All that said the music is still quite good and a nice accompaniment to the visuals. The open world offers quite a few nice routes in the individualised areas, however the issues with the open world is that it's truncated into areas where you unlock different abilities, which was already a problem being introduced but then this makes the open world feel far too narrow as you often wind up going through the same three corridors to go to different areas in the game. So that leaves the story which feels miserable. The whole story is a critique of large corporations running peoples lives, this immediately falls flat as the game is funded by EA. And this hollow ringing tone deafness echoes through out the story, it devolves into calling violent change a step too far despite the fact in it's fiction the capitalist state uses violence on anyone not deemed productive and decides that the only way to change this is I guess running around doing graffiti and parkour? Parkour which in it's own fiction is for the benefit of these hyper capitalists? It's whole message is strung up running against itself incapable of making any proper commentary because it's made by and for the benefit of the exact people it's trying to critique. So that leaves any character stories which Faith and her sister is mildly interesting. And I mean mild as in calling pepper a spice, nothing substantial is done with it, these characters all serve to retcon the original games story. The new characters often just serve to patronise and infantilize our protagonist despite many characters basically constantly relying on her despite all of these characters saying a bunch of hollow threats the only character who actually backs up this threat of not actually needing her is Rebecca Thane who actually proves that she doesn't need Faith by leaving the whole story before the ending. So in conclusion, story sucks, a few good moments visually of the main campaign, a few decent open world activities and rpg mechanics which does a lot to make the game feel less fun to play than the original making it and underwhelming sequel to a game it could never fill the shoes of.