Mirrors Edge: Catalyst

Mr E

Chvrches have written an original song for Mirrors Edge Catalyst.

I'm not sure where it will feature in the game but if it's not an end credits song, I expect that it will have a similar placement to Lisa Miskovsky's Still Alive in the first game.

Great song, I really like it. Seems like a good fit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSRheLrB1uA

intune

I can't wait for this to come out! Their in-game / story trailer looks absolutely amazing and I hope the mechanics will be as fluid as they look in the videos

Mr E

Reviews are out.... seems good. This wasn't a game that was ever going to get many 9s or 10s.

Gamespot: 7
Polygon: 8
IGN: 6.8
PC Gamer: 7.8
The Guardian: 3/5
Games Radar: 8
Examiner: 10
Hardcore Gamer: 3.5/5
Eurogamer

J. Marston

I adored the first game and that got luke-warm reviews too, hoping for more of the same.

I heard that this has an open world, which lends itself to some cool free-running opportunities but also has skill trees, which has no place in a game like Mirror's Edge, prequel or not.

Robert ninja

Mr E wrote: »

Reviews are out.... seems good. This wasn't a game that was ever going to get many 9s or 10s.

Don't forget the chart that goes with em'.

Played the trial on EA access over the weekend, the reviews from the more credible sources are all spot on regards the games short comings in terms of story , characters, combat and repetition. I put maybe 3-4 hours in and walked away.

It's not terrible by any means but it's just not that fun or interesting

Oafley Jones

Reviews aren't great , are they! Neither were the originals I suppose, but I've the fear that the open world nonsense will have scuppered this. It just didn't need it.

Oafley Jones

Oafley Jones wrote: »

Reviews aren't great , are they! Neither were the originals I suppose, but I've the fear that the open world nonsense will have scuppered this. It just didn't need it.

Yeah thats what put me off the most from what I played off it. The world just isn't interesting enough to be played like that, and the fun of the games main staple, it's parkour suffers for it. Got to the point very quickly were I just annoyed at having to run all over the city to pick up objectives and start or turn in missions.

And then the icing on the cake, the reviews mention that later they give you a kind of grapple hook

Robert ninja

Someone claiming to be a developer on the game has some pretty harsh things to say about it. They've also provided spoilers to apparently show how bad the game is and adhere to the community's demand for some form of proof while simuteaneously spoiling the game over social networks etc.

Posting images now. I guess if the spoilers are true then he/she was telling the truth and is a shocking distaste in one's own work (although we have no idea what their job description is).

Oh and obviously possible SPOILER ALERT so click at your own risk.

http://i.imgur.com/ReCbibj.png

http://i.imgur.com/XvdB0vi.png

http://i.imgur.com/O0dPa2p.png

Rorok

Id just skip the game and play dying light, much better

Mr. K

The negative chatter and reviews made me cancel my ME preorder, which isn't something I can recall doing before! It all suggests that it's just not good enough and certainly not worth my time. Boo.

pity this game was ballsed up - had potential from the first one.
seems like combat is a key area that is crap again (amongst others like unreliable controls which was a feature of the first game at times also).
most likely will be the end of the franchise if sales are poor.

Retr0gamer

The fact they focused any effort into combat at all is crazy. It was never what the first game was about and when played properly the combat flowed into the parkour, you never broke stride to slap a gun out of a guards hand.

It's maddening considering what could have been.

Mr. K

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The fact they focused any effort into combat at all is crazy. It was never what the first game was about and when played properly the combat flowed into the parkour, you never broke stride to slap a gun out of a guards hand.

It's maddening considering what could have been.

Combat, the open world and poor characters appear to be the big problems. The first is unforgivable, given the feedback they got about the first game.

At least the tie-in song is good!

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

when played properly the combat flowed into the parkour, you never broke stride to slap a gun out of a guards hand.

.

Yeah, from the beta, it was grand when KO'ing a guard after a free run keeping it nice and flowy but having to stop and pull off combos and special moves while circling around a guard was just awful.

glasso

glasso wrote: »

pity this game was ballsed up - had potential from the first one.
seems like combat is a key area that is crap again (amongst others like unreliable controls which was a feature of the first game at times also).
most likely will be the end of the franchise if sales are poor.

why couldn't they have largely removed combat by focusing the game on the running - maybe by changing it into more of a pursuit aspect or largely based on obstacles or something like that....
or if they had to have it - go for a sort of a batman type combat system.

Mr E

I heard that the boss battles are just BAD. You need to run around in a circle to build up enough energy to hit the boss. Sounds ridiculous.

Maybe they'll do something similar to the devs of Deus Ex:HR and just 'fix' the broken stuff.

Retr0gamer

glasso wrote: »

go for a sort of a batman type combat system.

Anything but that! I fecking hate that stupid QTE fest rubbish.

Even an awful combat system would work. Like have the combat system work where you need to hit an enemy with some momentum so you can knock them down long enough to get away. If you haven't the momentum you end up being held up by an enemy that will very likely kill you. In those cases the combat doesn't even need to be good.

The MC is an athletic but small framed girl, it's just ridiculous to think of her as someone that can take on multiple armed assailants (and she is apparently only 16).

Why even have the combat, bosses and other **** like that. I just screams of focus testing. 'If you can't shoot or fight anything how can we sell it?'

CastorTroy

So anyone play this? Only played the first last year so may pick this up cheap.

Is it ever a good sign when a game is released and the only way I hear it's released is reading a thread about games that released without people knowing?

Dohnjoe

cdkeys seems to be the best price at the mo for this €38.49

Should be an extra 5% off with a Facebook like

aaronjumper

So I'm really liking this so far the traversal, combat, missions, side missions, story, all of it.

Apart from the odd graphical error and accidentally climbing out of the map once or twice I'm enjoying myself.
Some of the timed deliveries seem needlessly difficult though.

Shiminay

I'm just installing it now, I plan to get stuck into it for the evening.

aaronjumper

Shiminay wrote: »

I'm just installing it now, I plan to get stuck into it for the evening.

So what do you think so far? Curious to see if anyone else enjoyed it.

Rob2D

I'm loving it. I wish I was at home playing it right now.

At the end of the day this game wasn't going to change people's minds. You either love Mirror's Edge or you hate it.

aaronjumper

Rob2D wrote: »

I'm loving it. I wish I was at home playing it right now.

At the end of the day this game wasn't going to change people's minds. You either love Mirror's Edge or you hate it.

Have you tried any of the timed deliveries yet?

Shiminay

Right, well first things first, I was sent my copy of the game from EA because of an advertising partnership Boards has with them.

The world: sci-fi dystopia at its finest. Everything is shiny and bright and the "consumers" are being advertised at via the AR implants everyone has - nothing new or groundbreaking here. The game starts with Faith being released from Juvenile Hall after a 2 year stretch. There's a comic series to explain the back story: https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/27-218/Mirrors-Edge-Exordium-1

The game gets you into the action pretty quickly with a straightforward "tutorial that isn't a tutorial" but is instead lining up the story. Without delving into much of the story and spoiling it for anyone, you're in significant debt to a local crime boss and you'll need to figure out how to pay him back before things turn uncivil.

Gameplay: it's been ages since I played the first game and tbh, I wasn't in the mood for that sort of game at the time so never did much with it. Its handling wasn't good on mouse & keyboard, and whilst there are still quite a few infuriating moments of "I was trying to wall run, not vertical run" the contols do seem a bit better to me. Having played as much of Dying Light as I have in the last 12-18 months, I was able to move around relatively stress free. There is a grappling hook/line launching thing you get very early on that's context sensitive and so if you're not at the correct distance from the thing, it'll never work and you find your flow broken because you didn't shoot a line at a swinging bit and have instead just jumped to your death. I think I'd have preferred an active "grappling hook" key instead of relying on the quite frustrating prompts that only appear at X metres from the edge/hook point and that only appear if you're looking at it etc.

Combat: I don't really object to combat being some part of the game, it makes sense, but instead of having an emphasis on "this is a barrier you need to get past, but it can hit you" there's a "here's a cluster of enemies and your combat allows you to kick them into one another, trick off the walls to land an unexpected bigger kick etc. If the much derided Arkham series combat were ever to get an overhaul to be a much more skillful affair, this is where I'd start. As it happens, in Catalyst, it's not really that much fun at all. I just found it frustrating when I was locked into areas where I had to take on 4 or 5 mooks instead of being able to hop, skip and jump my way around, over or through them as necessary.

The World: It's an open world with the expected cluster of collectibles of various sorts and time trial missions. You can also create your own courses and post them for people to try. It's got all the leaderboard functionality you'd expect for these sorts of games. It's got radio towers you need to hack and then you get a safe house unlocked - standard stuff for open world games tbh.

Overall: It's fun, I'm looking forward to playing more and teasing out the story. I just hope it's not all schlock. I shall update this thread when I've made more progress deeper into the game.

Mr E

aaronjumper wrote: »

Have you tried any of the timed deliveries yet?

I think all the sidequests become easier when you've unlocked more abilities (faster climbing etc.)

aaronjumper

It has been awhile since I tried one, I thought it was the routes I was picking.
I'll give it another go next time I'm on.

Rob2D

aaronjumper wrote: »

Have you tried any of the timed deliveries yet?

Yeah they all cut it pretty fine. I always get there with 1-3 secs left. But they're not hard you just have to run clean so it's fine really.

I like that you're given more or less exactly the time needed. Teaches you to git gud.

aaronjumper

Rob2D wrote: »

git gud.

I'll do my best.