Mirror's Edge Catalyst's Graphics (Xbox One)

Tried during the free trial and I'm at a loss of words. The graphics are horrendous. They're simply on par with ME1 (2008!) on 360, and I'm not exaggerating. Even the resolution seems to be the same (720p. Maybe it's 900p, tops). One thing that may be better than the 360's game is environments SOMETIMES, in SOME places having higher polycount (things like pipes, that are supposed to be round). Textures are actually blurier in many places, compared to the first game (as hard as it is to believe!).

After that E3 Demo that had the audacity to say "in-game graphics" I'm incredibly disappointed. Turns out, they lied so bad about the visuals. I'm sure even the PC version on the highest settings doesn't have any graphics like in that footage. And if you think about, there's absolutely no reasonable explanation for this - both Xone and PS4 could do so much better in terms of visuals (and it's not like this game is a launch title or something).

The pretty much only GOOD that I saw in the game from the visual standpoint is NPC's animations (Faith's first-person view and reflections animations are bad).

Having recently played ME Catalyst on the PS4 its exactly the same blurry jaggy mess speaking with characters in the game is like talking to someone through a haze filter, it would have helped if the game wasn't so mediocre.

Catalyst is a game where a very loud proud minority of people begging and demanding for a sequel to a game that sold okay finally gets the greenlight but is given 20 bucks and a case of half drunken beer for a budget and told to shoehorn an open world in and when it turned out to be a disappointment the publisher goes "Told you so!"

I always got the feeling EA just didn't give a shit about it and did it just to shut people up. Next thing you know they will probably screw up Skate 4

Pc version looks amazing and the game was much better than i expected.

What the hell does that sentence mean?

@neverlands: It means that fans demanded a new Mirror's Edge for a long time. EA finally gave them one, but gave it a very low budget, so that it inevitably disappointed them. Then EA, who had been saying they didn't want to make a new Mirror's Edge because the first one didn't sell well, would be able to say "We told you the sequel wouldn't sell so please stop bugging us about this franchise!"

I...don't think this is likely. The first two parts are (the game was highly desired by a small group of fans and it seems to have been underfunded) but no publisher makes a game in the hope or expectation that it will fail. Mirror's Edge 2 probably cost 8 figures to produce.

@wheresderrick: by all accounts the game is mediocre but functional and not terrible. please don't conflate things to that level.

Catalyst isn't terrible but its a one trick pony that overstays its welcome, EA arguably spent too much. Catalyst is essentially an elaborate endless runner in its best moments a shorter five hour digital download experience would have made for a better game.

I really liked catalyst. Maybe even more than the first game. Few games have made running so much fun, and shaving of seconds on the time-trials became an obsession for me until I got gold on all of them.

But this is about the graphics. I do not remember them being horrendus, in fact I remember the game being quite beautiful at many times (played the PS4-version), though I think they overdid it with the apple-gloss. The original still beats Catalyst in overall art-direction, though The Heights has some of the greatest views in this console-generation.

Yep, I love this game the music and atmosphere just makes me feel euphoric at times wish this game had VR support.

It means people wanted a sequel to Mirror's Edge but EA didn't think it would profitable and so to finally shut everyone up they let a sequel go that was either rushed, underfunded, or both, and it came out and went to absolutely no fanfare.

The game tried to do things like have an open world or get rid of weapons which were some of the negative points about the first game but the whole entire thing fell flat off a skyscraper.

What's the difference between being mediocre or being terrible?

Appreciate all the replies.

I forgot to mention OBJECTS disappearing LITERALLY 15 feet in front of you (repeatable, have on video. It's their "draw distance", LOL) and inexplicably blurry textures. Famous Frostbite, my ass.

Love the first game though (was it on Unreal?).

From playing the game I have the impression that DICE has created an ambitious design doc for the game at the pre-production stage, then production has started and then half-way in the development EA for some reason realized that no matter how much money they spend on this game, it won't sell too well. So they moved at least 2/3 of all the devs onto other projects and that 1/3 of the ones who stayed was given a strict deadline.

So you think EA purposely lost money to shut the fans up? I think they tried to do an open world on frostbite and it turned out like it turned out, games are hard but nobody is making bad games on purpose, especially to shut their fans up lol.

So after Andromeda it's now official that Frostbite (it should've been called FrostBYTE, what were they thinking!?) can't do open-world?

Play it on PC. Great game, expands and improves upon every single aspect of the original. The early parts are a bit weak but it keeps getting better as you unlock new abilities and areas. Turn off runner vision completely (seriously, makes for a much better experience) and don't spend too much time on generic side activities (especially early on), go for the main missions and those of the side missions that are given by named characters.

Those two words literally have different dictionary definitions and are not synonyms.

I played the game on PC and thought it looked fine. Reflections look bad true, not sure why to be honest. Everything else looks fine and is boosted tremendously by the design aesthetic of the game. I ended up liking the game quite a bit though I mostly just did the main missions and big side missions which ended up making it a tight experience with the added benefit of having a open world to traverse with the still excellent movement mechanics. They made smart changes to tighten up the pretty bad combat from the first game too. Definitely not a perfect game but still decent.

What! Frostbite can't do open world.

The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

"Designing the large maps of Andromeda’s planets became a struggle on Frostbite, where the maximum size of a map was initially 100 by 100 kilometers. The Andromeda team needed their maps to be way bigger than that."

100 km2 is flipping massive all of the Witcher 3's land mass adds to 136 km2 in GTA V its open-world is 81 km2, Bioware Montreal wanted to create 100's of planets each one with a surface area bigger than GTA V, Bioware then spent two years getting the tech to work, before realizing whats the point? The game would be boring, Andromeda's problems all lay at the feet of Montreal's managment not Frostbite.