Mirrors Edge: Catalyst

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

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.