Mirror's Edge Catalyst - Closed Beta Review

So the Closed BETA for Mirror's Edge Catalyst and unfortunately I didn't get a chance to do any recording for a video. Oh well, here's my review anyway.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is really good game from what've played in the Beta, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have it's own issues.

I absolutely loved the first Mirror's Edge game and was the game that finally broke me down to buy a Xbox 360. I even pre-ordered it before I got the console to get the bag from the game. I still use that bag. The first game was great, but short. The story was muddy and a little hard to follow from the way it was told. It also ended on a cliffhanger and was set up for a sequel. Well, guess what. Forget all of it! That's all gone! Time for a reboot after one game. They also removed the gun mechanics, but that's a good thing. The game was supposed to be about freerunning/parkour and not about shooting. The shooting mechanics were clunky and bad to deter you from using them, there's even a pacifist achievement to not use them in the first game. I didn't use them because of that. Even from a character standpoint it makes sense that runners wouldn't use guns. Have you ever tried running with a nerf gun? It's not practical and imagine it being twice as heavy. Now try to jump and roll with something like that. Not going to end well, you'll end up shooting yourself or just restrict your movement. Which is why it makes sense to remove this mechanic if favor of getting close and using your momentum and gravity to help you fight the armed enemies. Oh and there's no more disarming. Oh well.

So as I already established this as a reboot, I'm really excited to learn more about the story in this game. You only get teases of it during the beta. The setting is a dystopian future world where corporations run everything including all forms of data. There's runners who securely deliver data and items by traversing the rooftops of the City of Glass, pretty much couriers for anything you want off the grid.

Starting off the game, Faith is being released from jail. As someone who is supposed to be established as one of the best runners (I'll come back to that because I have beef) I doubt Faith would get caught easily. We don't find out how she got caught in the beta, hopefully we find out more in the full game or most likely in the 6-part Dark Horse comic, Mirror's Edge Exodius (I have it all, just need to read still). We quickly learn that there's several gangs (referred as cabals) that oppose the main conglomerate, Kruger. When Faith is released she's intercepted from Kruger's programs by Icarus, a runner sent by Noah - Faith's mentor and father-figure. I'm speculating but I feel like Icarus will end up betraying Faith, because he's kind of a dick and just gives off that type of vibe. Noah's a cool character and is the head of Faith's old cabal. That doesn't mean she hasn't done jobs for other factions, which is why she was in jail. Something went wrong while on a job for Dogen and now owes him money. We also meet two other supporting characters named Birdman and Nomad. Birdman is a former runner who I assume you'll just get side missions from like you do in the beta. Nomad seems like a cool, young character that I would like to find out more about. He gives Faith specialized hacking tech that pretty much takes elements straight from Watch_Dogs (great game). He gives you the ability to hack fans to stop that opens up more areas and eventually gives you a disrupter that does the exact same thing in Watch_Dogs. It overloads the enemies earpieces and makes the stumble while holding their heads. Not original, but will become useful when you unlock it.

 Speaking of unlocking. There's a new skill tree progress to unlock Movement, Combat, and Tech abilities. Which is fine and a neat idea, except for one thing. Faith is already established as one of the best runners in the city. Then WHY the hell can't she FREAKIN' ROLL when she lands to start off! That is the #1 basic parkour move ever. And you need to unlock it for an expert level runner? What the hell is that about? That's obviously the first thing you should unlock, but your forced to unlock some simple hud element for your runner's vision. Once you get the option for the love of christ unlock the landing roll maneuver. There is a very new addition to Tech gear that I'm really interested in trying out. We do not get access to this within the beta but you can look at the tutorial video in the progression tree menu. That is the magrope, which is pretty much a grappling hook that acts like the arm from Bionic Commando. So cool looking and seems to be a game changing addition. Can't wait to test that out. I'm assuming we'll get our hands on that during a mission as a tutorial. I would initially guess that would be from Nomad, but during a mission with Icarus it sounds like he's using a similar device over the radio. We'll just have to wait and see how that controls.Aside from that, the controls are a bit dumb down from the original game. The controls are slightly closer to Assassin's Creed where you have an Up Action (LB) and Down Action (LT) buttons. You also get Shift button (RT) that seems to help with cornering, getting a quick burst of speed, and dodging in combat. I'm assuming there's going to be more use of 'shift' later in the game. Then there's (RB) which starts off doing nothing until you unlock that move in the skill tree. Bet you can't guess what it is. TURNING AROUND!!!! You're telling me, Faith doesn't know how to turn around to begin with??? Why have this as unlock? Just have it already usable and not waste the Level Up point. Seriously. At least there's many opportunities to get XP.

You can get XP from main missions, side missions, and a ridiculous amount of collectables. The side missions consist of Time-Trials, Delivery missions(also time trials with unclear endings, which I hope they fix because half the time I don't know where I'm running to), and side story missions. I hope there's in-game maps for these collectables because there are a ton of them. There's Audio logs, Documents, Runner's bags, Glitch orbs (omg not Crackdown again!),  Billboards that you hack (hello again Watch_Dogs), Security chips that you rip out of panels, Electronic parts that you also rip out of panels, Antenna bases that you have to destroy then run from a drone (which really sucks), and I think I'm missing one more. Most of these collectables are introduced through side-missions. Once you do those missions they pop up everywhere and they give you a breakdown of how many you've found in each section and how many are in that sections. Which is nice, but I really hope there's in-game maps that show you where everything is. There's an ability you can unlock for the Glitch orbs that you can unlock in the progression tree after you beat the main story. This tells us and you can still explore the world after the game ends and that Faith survives (unless they pull a Red Dead Redemption, probably not that type of game though). Even if you see say an item while doing a time-trial run, it won't show up on the map and you won't have time to grab it unless you want to retry the mission you're doing at the moment because you will run out of time.

Time to talk about the final mission of the beta. This is where we get into the beginning of the actual story and out of the introduction. It's pretty much what we see in the full trailer. Faith is on a job to steal data from Pirandello Kruger when a cyber-ninja does the same. Faith get's curious and follows the unknown ninja into the mainframe. The ninja get's caught by Gabriel Kruger, the antagonist and CEO of Pirandello Kruger (and looks like EA's CEO, Andrew Wilson) and Gabriel's female bodyguard who I assume is some sort of cyborg because she has some sort of super strength going on. The ninja dies and drops a drive with whatever data he was stealing. Faith is seen retrieving the drive by Gabriel and needs to flee the building in quite the epic scene. We are then shown a few scenes of the past, which includes Faith running in a crowd with her sister, Kate who was a cop in the first game (not sure where she is in this story). I'm intrigued to find out more about Faith's past and her parents. We see her parents were working on something big and are killed by who I assume was the Kruger corporation. It is then revealed that Faith's mother was working on the symbol that is then known as Faith's tattoo. Which I really want to know what that's about. I always thought her iconic tattoo was the map of the city in the first game. I guess not.

After you finish the final main story mission, you're free to explore the city and complete side missions and time-trials. It also unlocks UGC (user generated content) around the map. This includes user-made time-trial missions (which is cool) and Beat L.E. (Location Emitter, which are kind of dumb, it's like making a Foursquare point where you check in). These are interesting ideas, but it makes the game freaking muddy mess. The map screen is freaking covered with this crap and is useless unless you disable UGC icons. But they still show up these red points while you're running around the city. This becomes very distracting and I've seen users cover many of the in-game time-trial missions so you they're hard to select. I'm hoping they add a feature to turn off these icons while running around the city if you want. Very annoying. 

Other than that I can't wait till June 7. It's going to be awesome and I hope they tweak some stuff in time for the release. This is the open-world parkour game that I've been waiting for.