Mirror's Edge: Catalyst - First Impressions

Confession: I didn't play the original game and I picked up Catalyst because it honestly looked cool and I've been wanting to try out some other first person games. I haven't gotten very far in the game, but what I've played has been pretty enjoyable. Of course this doesn't come without critique.

So far I have only played Catalyst while streaming, mostly just for friends, but there were a few strangers who popped in for a bit as well. This adds to the commentary and really flushes out the games flaws. Cause chat keeps asking questions like "but why???"

Spoilers (if you haven't played and don't want to know anything).

Anyway, the game began, we had just got out of prison, which was pretty dope. Then we immediately break out of the walk way leading out of the prison, which was hilarious. We broke out as we were being freed. (I tried to punch a guard at the time), and I like to think that is why we had to book it out of there, but of course we would have had to regardless. So kinda a silly start.

Then we were accompanied by this Icarus kid, who is stupid annoying. WORST PART OF THE GAME. And from there we go around on missions and do some sick parkour while punching bad guys. What more could you want? Right? At first it kinda has a similar layout to Assassins Creed but the games are still far too different to make any good comparisons. So I would only say its like AC because of how you get to choose what missions/destinations to do via a map. Not unlike FarCry: Primal.

After playing a bit more today (my chat and I) realized that everything seems to be either red, yellow, or white, which lends to less impressive cityscape but maybe its significant so who knows. Also there are a lot of cut scenes, some of which are pretty neat. I didn't really have any issues with the cutscenes, but the dialogue leaves something to be desired. Maybe this is just a gaming thing in general. But there are very few games that do dialogue well. Its really hard to take a games seriously when the dialogue is either really over dramatic or underwhelming. They can't seem to find a good balance and the moodiness "we are all doomed" attitude which prevails constantly in these characters just becomes ridiculous to the player because the tension is never released.

So these are my initial thoughts on this game. Overall, its really fun to play cause you feel like a badass, but it is by no means perfect.

~Ducky