Mirror's Edge Catalyst

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a game from 2016 developed by DICE, it is the second Mirror's Edge game, although it is a reboot and not a continuation of the first one. I played it on a PS4 with a controller. Playtime varies with the amount of side content you want to do, I played for about 4-5 hours. This is my second playthrough, first was million years ago and I didn't remember anything except to not upgrade certain abilities that break the game.

Unlike the first Mirror's Edge which was level based, this one is open world, meaning you can go anywhere you want. This sounds cool but creates some really strange issues, since it's not really trivial to create a game area that is open world but only on rooftops. I'll come back to this later.

The game starts off with your main character, Faith, getting out from jail and returning to the rooftops again. The game then pauses and you navigate to the options and set the controller layout to alternative because the default is absolutely terrible. The story then establishes a corporate ruled everything where everything is good only if you surrender yourself. So the story naturally goes towards go destroy the bad guys plans that are evil. You meet some people along the way that you do missions for and then forget about, like that wise bird guy or someone that shows up only twice I think. Almost none of the characters in the game are memorable in any way except like Plastic which is the stereotypical nerdy computer girl quirky smart stuff, or the guy with the hoodie and sunglasses idk the name or what he does. Oh and that dead guy too had some plot importance idk. The story is really not that engaging, it's just pretty boring in a way, it lacks spice. The pacing is also strange when taking side missions, as the game doesn't really care about events that just happened in the main story. For example: a building blew up! Damn, that sure is an issue! Hey Faith! Come here! I need you to deliver some something idk do this and that pls :) <-- that is a side mission that just unlocked after the boom... No mention of boom at all. It can sometimes feel disconnected from the world, like no one really cares. But hey at least there is a story of some sort, and it makes sense in some way, so that's cool. I would have rather stayed with the 1st games story, or make a story from a different perspective, but whatever.

The more I think about the story the less it makes sense, so don't think about the story too hard.

The base gameplay element: parkour, works fine. The only complaint that I can't really explain well is that the character movement feels "floaty" or "disconnected". It doesn't feel as good as first Mirror's Edge, as if it lacked "weight" to it. But that could tie in to the level design, which is hindered by a few things. First thing I dislike and would want to mod out of the game if I was playing on PC are the collectibles that are placed around the map. There are multiple types of collectibles: yellow magic orbs, security boxes, documents, recordings, and yellow bags. These collectibles are scattered around absolutely everywhere, there is no escaping them. When you want to look around the environment and focus on something, these collectibles will distract you and will change your pathing from A to B to intercept these things. They are so invasive that they steer me off the path during story missions or chases or any activity, because if you collect them once, they disappear forever, which means that if you collect them early, you won't get distracted anymore. You are basically urged to get them. This gets really really annoyingly stupid when getting chased around and shot at and suddenly "Oh! a security box. NOM NOM NOM." "Oh! a yellow glowing magic orb NOM NOM NOM". It's just stupid, and you can't just ignore it! If there only was a toggle in the settings to show/hide these things, it would be really cool but nope, instead I'm going to have to run around collecting everything and sometimes even killing myself in the process just to collect something, it's ridiculous. My favorite incident was when I was hiding from the cyber police. I was crouching and looking around waiting for the timer to run out, when suddenly a prompt to destroy some security box appeared. So I naturally went "Oh! NOM NOM?" and got teleported through the wall. Not even walls will stop these collectibles, that's how dedicated they are to be collected! Now you could argue that without any collectibles there would be nothing going on in the game, and I would actually prefer that while playing through the main story. I just don't want any stupid box or anything to stop me from focusing on the "really important" thing I'm supposed to do, but the game insists on doing so. Very stupid.

Now that I finished ranting about collectibles (I will return cuz the game insists), here's a few things about how I feel about the level design. The game presents itself as an open world kind of platformer where you can jump around from place to place, but it really isn't that well made. I would call this game a semi-open world that feels confused about itself whether it actually wants to be open or linear. I think I can explain better with a picture:

There is not enough open in my open world I feel. It feels so cramped together like they wanted to make mashed potatoes of everything. What they forgot about is the good old NOTHING. How about making an area where there are no collectibles, barely any platforming, and barely any anything? You know, just to make the player take a break from the constant barrage of mostly tedious things. The closest thing I have in mind are the first areas of the first Mirror's Edge, where the level felt like a tutorial to get used to the controls kind of thing. It wasn't hard on platforming or on visuals while still looking nice and was decently spaced out, where almost all areas in this game try way too hard in a very small cramped space. I just don't find the open world appealing. I resorted to fast traveling when I got to the construction site area because the game started to stall out the mission locations, the world felt pointless to explore and looked boring, and it felt like I was just backtracking and the game wanted to squeeze more play time.

BTW there is an achievement for running some X amount of seconds without stopping that I unlocked nearly halfway into the game. That should really be one of the first things to unlock, it just shows how invasive the collectibles are, and how crammed and unintuitive the flow navigation really is.

The game has certain abilities you can unlock, but the system was handled poorly. Instead of using the million collectible things as points for unlocking them, the abilities are tied to unlock through the main story (since you get enough XP by beating them), which renders the whole system useless. I still mention the collectibles because it fascinates me how useless they are. Why aren't they integrated in the ability system if the designers desperately wanted the player to collect them? I think it's just broken game design combined with time pressure of release. They probably realized a lot of the wrongs but weren't able to fix them. The abilities you unlock are really dumb as well, especially the combat tab. The combat tab should outright be ignored on the first playthrough since upgrading anything in there will make the game so much easier, and it already is really easy. The combat system itself is very basic, with only a few moves that you can perform. Throwing cyber police from the rooftops is fun for the first few times, but gets stale rather quickly.

There is a lot of side content around the map, but it's all the same things over and over again. It's essentially just run from point A to point B as fast as possible, surely that can't go wrong, right? Nothing is broken about tha- oh... :( There is one pretty major issue with all side content in the game, and that is a lack of a "planning phase". The game says somewhere at the beginning to "not rely on runner vision (ingame GPS like navigation)", and instead make your own route since the runner vision is not always fast enough. This is true, some side stuff is impossible to complete with max rating using the runner route, but the game doesn't do a good job making the player want to find the correct fast route. Everything is timed precisely, so as soon as you start the mission, the timer starts as well, and you must go. The mission will fail when you run out of time and you have to restart. This system is completely broken because there is no planning phase, which means that in order to try out a different route, you must go through the entire previous section again if you fail. Restarting = Long loading screen. Since the way the levels are designed is pretty confusing and all over the place, finding the correct route will take some time restarting over and over again. This makes the player not want to do these side missions, because they are just tedious. They NEED a planning phase, there is just no way to expect the player to find the correct path when the end goal is on the complete opposite side of the map. Even when you try to find it, you are restricted to the timer. And the fact that when you start one of these missions, the end goal is not even showed to you. You don't actually know where you're going. There is no camera bird view of the course you are trying to get through. It's just start mission, then "Go Faith! I believe in you!!", without even knowing where to go. So in the end you rely on the runner vision anyway and all hope of exploration is lost to loading screens and pointless resetting over and over and over and over......... Nope! Skipping! Could have been cool but nope! Also they don't reward you with anything sooo... pointless AND tedious, yay!

I'm suprised at the lack of variety in the side content. It really is just running from A to B, yet there could have been more things to it. For example, here is something I came up with just now without much thinking at all: You are given a few yellow bags, go hide them across the city somewhere, then put a grafitti near it. That would be cool when the game was still online, it could promote some interactivity between players. Then the game would spawn yellow bags from other players. And maybe the yellow bags could contain a message of some sort, or a picture (you could create a custom image from parts you buy/unlock from collectibles and activities). Instead there are useless yellow orbs everywhere....aaaaaaAAAAAAAAaA... Or you could make an actual race with other player/NPC runners in real time, that would be cool. Shame the whole game world is void of any interactive NPCs or any life at all. It would be really cool to see some clueless AIs run around and jump to their deaths all the time, it would be fascinating to watch. Instead, it feels lonely on the rooftops and everything is static. Dynamic content would help the game a lot, but it seemed as if the devs were afraid to do anything at all, or the budget ran out, or the game got rushed out. At this point, I'd take Faith with wings, a jetpack and a minigun. Atleast that would make out of bounds exploration squeeze a 30 minutes of glitchy fun.

I didn't listen to the whole soundtrack of the game since I was playing on a PS4, but from the something I heard I think it's ok. It's not first Mirror's Edge awesome, it's just ok. The best track is definitely Isabel. I wonder how it was made, what tools/methods were used. I do wish to replicate this style someday.

The game is okay for a quick playthrough, but the open world part sucks and feels like annoying backtracking with nothing really interesting to do in the meantime. Don't upgrade the combat abilities as they make the game way too easy. Try to avoid collectibles (impossible challenge (can it even be done??)). Try side stuff like twice until it gets annoying. Yep, it sure is a video game. I just wish it was a better one, I like the whole premise and setting potential, but this is just not the greatest execution. I believe proper open world is possible, but requires better planning and more "controversial" moves, such as empty sections of almost nothing but some scenery, or street sections, or other deviations from the overexposed tryhard blocky levels, but don't overdo it in some space alien way (unless that is the style you want). The game is not very memorable in both story and visual parts. Really the only thing I remember about the levels is that there was a purple section somewhere, that's it, there are just no notable landmarks. And the story was uhhh something something go climb bad guy building and destroy him. It worked in the first game since it was a novelty and parkour mechanics were new and exciting and the game was linear, but this is just the same but worse in every way.

I don't have the game anymore since I played on a PS4 just before a 13.52 JB was found, which made me delete everything. I don't want to play through the game again, so I snatched a few screenshots from a yt video with 20 views. It looks blurry and compressed and bad, but it's actually very comparable to what I was seeing on the PS4. The general blurrines with forced DOF and motion blur certainly doesn't help with orientation and graphics.

Published on 29.09.2026