Mirror’s Edge Catalyst Review – from a Mirror’s Edge fan

I have gone through many reviews and the best match of what I feel is also the first Google search result: IGN

While I have played original Mirror’s Edge multiple times and enjoyed it every time, Catalyst fails in several places to capture the thrill of the original:

1. Some movements are locked until you ‘upgrade’. This means the people who have played part 1 before are going to be frustrated from the beginning.
2. But most of the things that are locked in the still tree are about combat. And combat – and I might be in minority here – is worse than before. It was a thing to avoid in part 1, but at least it was inventive. It gave that game the titular edge. Here, it is just “you can’t avoid this until you unlock that skill tree”.
3. The story is blah. Everyone is suffering from crazy. Faith is unlikable. Icarus is punchable. Noah is not a leader. Plastic is anti-social. DICE forgot to add an anchor to this sea of idiosyncrasies and unsurprisingly the story drowns because of this.
4. The city is booooring. And it is dull. There, I said it. For all the praise it is getting everywhere – yes, the graphics have improved – the color palette is not as bright as it was in part 1. Furthermore, probably due to the game being open world, there is now a day-night system whose effect is not consistent on all the pieces. Some things look good in the afternoon but become boring as evening approaches. And evening approaches fast.
5. Another thing is that a lot of places are multi-storied building but have no uniqueness to them.
6. The runner vision is different. In part 1, the things you could use to jump etc. – the doors, the pipes, the boxes – were colored red. Now the runner vision shows arrows. And most of the time it shows arrows to most time taking path. Did I mention that nothing in the city is streamlined? You WILL get stuck more often than not and practice most probably won’t make you perfect. Add the multistoried buildings to this and a lot of times if you step over a wrong ladder, you won’t know where to go! The runner vision will just stop working until you can find your way out.

These are just some of the things that made me stop playing Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. I never foresaw this.