This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries look through other blog entries, or for a quick overview use the link at the bottom.

How did I do?

* I figured I should start recording what I have done in terms of "beating" a game. Its not that anyone asked, but with some games, it is more than just beating the story as there are an abundance of side content to see.. So going forward I will be attaching the above to every game we talk about.... Unless people actively hate it*

In theory, I have never liked the ideas of prequels. If I enjoyed a movie, book, or game as written/conceived then I am probably not thinking, I wonder what they did before that great adventure. I might want follow ups, to see how their life changed, but I usually don't want to go back in time. Now with that said, there are some prequels that turn out to be pretty ok, but in general I think it is a tough line to walk, because you have to not only tie the story up so it leads into the original, but you also have to make it stand on its own for the people who want to start at the beginning of the story, and not the release order of the story.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst, the game we are discussing, was the follow up (release order) to the original Mirror's Edge. It takes place before the events of the original game. The game is a first-person parkour game, where you are running on rooftops trying to make deliveries as fast/efficient as possible while not getting caught by security. The game is all about free running, so you have a moveset that allows you to traverse the environment as seamlessly as possible. You can wall run, vault over and off of lower objects, slide, use zip-lines, and roll out of large jumps to avoid taking damage. When confronted with security you can either attempt to lose them by running away, or fight in which case you use your free-running (and apparent martial arts background) to knock them out. You can turn a slide into a sliding kick to take out their legs, or use a zip-line to land on them from above. Essentially the game is all about both the freedom of movement you have and the flow at which you can do actions.

Which if we pause here on gameplay is where this game shines. When you feel like you have a really solid grasp on Faith's moves, it is intoxicating to be able to pull off all her moves without missing a beat. Having a run go completely flawless is what this game boils down to, it makes you truly feel that you can go anywhere on the map in record time and that nothing can stop you. However, hitting that stride does not come without some stumbling blocks. If you didn't play the original or are starting this game fresh, it can take a lengthy lead up until you feel you have full control over Faith, and I would be lying if I said there weren't moments when I was attempting to do a simple jump, but Faith decided to do a different move, resulting in me dying and having to start back at a checkpoint.

The combat is really touch and go, and is a weird touch that they included in this game. In the original Mirror's Edge, Faith could fight, but it was really seen as a last resort. That game was all about avoidance at all costs until you had to. In fact one of my favorite moments in gaming is from the first game, the crane jump. It centers around running up the exterior stairwell of a building with guards hot on your heels, running up a crane arm and jumping to safety. However, in this game they decided to not only put Faith into more combat encounters, but to make it a core aspect of the game. The further you go in the game, the more and tougher guards you experience, and there are multiple points where you are siloed into an arena expected to fight waves of enemies until your mission marker tells you to leave. It's such an incredibly odd choice to focus on fighting, when in almost every side-quest and main-quest you are advised to avoid it. In fact the final "Boss" of the game is fighting two of the ultra enemies in a circular room with virtually no obstacles to interact with, so hopefully you just like doing slides and kicks for awhile. Now all of this is to say, that combat is not difficult, it is more of a nuisance. I never died at a combat encounter, and once you have some level of mastery over Faith's moves you can pretty quickly dispatch a room of 3-4 guards by kicking them into each other, or over railings to their demise. It does however break some continuity of the series.

Remember, like 3 paragraphs ago, when I talked about prequels have a fine line to walk between setting up a story already completed, and being unique enough to stand on its own. Well Catalyst seems to have missed the first point. In Catalyst we see that Faith is essentially a martial artist. In fact one of the final cutscenes is her do a 1 on 1 fight with her sister. Now that is fine, but that is not the same Faith we play as in the original Mirror's Edge, because presumably if she can fight off waves of guards in this game, then we shouldn't be running from two wimpy enemies in the original. This may seem like I am nitpicking, but there are multiple examples where this game does not set up its sequel in the correct way. Some of these are minor, like the fighting example, but others are huge story plot points that don't tie together.

In Mirror's Edge Catalyst, you play as Faith Connors, who is just released from Juvi, for something the game never really says. Upon release you immediately go back to your runner family, where you want to do jobs which has you being an illegal courier. The city is run by "the families" and they have made somethings illegal, and thus you run on the rooftops to avoid detection and deliver said items. Long story short, you steal something one of the families that turns out to be a big deal, and is a "weapon" that can be used to essentially erase free thought (sounds like Shaun White Skateboarding), and thus you and your rag tag group of friends attempt to stop it. Its a very far cry from the original which is: You steal something you shouldn't have that shows bad guys are evil, and they are trying to kill you to stop it from getting out.

Without diving too deep into the story, in this version you are haunted by the day that your parents are killed when you were just a little girl, and you tried to escape with your sister, but the cops/security used tear gas, and your sister collapsed and you left her thinking, she was dead. Surprise, she was not dead and she works for the bad guy who adopted her as his daughter. Exposition...exposition...exposition... and then the bad guy dies, your sister who forgives you/tolerates you takes over the company and credits roll. What a lovely story, except in the original game, your sister is a cop who gets framed for murder. It seems like a crazy fall from grace to be head of one of the three largest families in the city, to just a beat cop, but this game does not set that up at all (unless I missed a collectable that explains it). We are to assume that the original takes place very soon after this game, within a year or two, but again that fall from grace seems extreme. You could also point out that the "twist" in this game is ruined if you played the original at all, and knew that Faith had a sister (who was alive) the whole time. I give them credit for trying, but they didn't have to block themselves in like this. Mirror's edge OG ended without a happy ending, sure you save your sister, but the world is still in need of saving, and you could have made a sequel where you can take the story in any direction you like, but to choose a prequel is to box yourself into a story that didn't need to be written.

There is one particular side quest that I feel they really bungled, and that was the incognito deliveries. Essentially you are given a package, a time limit, and told not to get spotted, but the game doesn't seem able to keep its ruleset between each run. Obviously the timer means you can't really be sneaky and need to book it in a straight line the whole way, but I never understood exactly how many times I could be spotted before I had to restart the mission. There were numerous times where I would barrel through 3 different groups of guards who all saw me and I could continue the mission, and another time where a single camera and 2 groups of guards caused me to fail. It would have been far more interesting if you were given a bloated timer, and told to actually sneak around to deliver the package. It would encourage you to find new routes to avoid patrols/cameras, but still have enough time that you didn't have to make a B-line to the objective. Alright, lets move off the story and talk about two final things. The side activities are almost exclusively timed challenges. Which make sense in the world, you are a runner, your job is to get things from point A to B. My gripe is that nearly all of these time challenges, the time allotted to complete is SUPER tight to running a near flawless run. One of the loading screens specifically says, that the route highlighted is the most direct but maybe not the quickest route, in essence saying that you should explore the world to find your own shortcuts. In theory this is a novel idea, its a semi-open-world you should be able to find routes the game isn't showing you, but there are two major issues with that. The first is that the timer for these missions, does not give you room to experiment. If you are looking to make a new path, then you will be restarting that mission multiple times and sitting through longer then they should be load times just for another attempt. The other issue is the world is not distinct enough where I ever felt I had a good sense about where I was going. There are some semblances of areas (construction zone, purple zone, not purple zone), but I wouldn't be able to run from one area to the next without using the built in guide, because believe it or not, the top of buildings all kinda look the same. My hats off to the people who sat and 3-starred every dash, but I rarely beat a timed race with more than 5-6 seconds left on the clock.

The side activities and the missions that aren't timed are the highlight of the game, because you can solve the rooms/areas like a parkour puzzle. Easily my favorite missions in the game, were these gridnode towers, that were basically platform puzzlers with no route indicated, and testing to see what cool shit I could do in order to get up to the top was amazing. I was bummed that there were so few of those levels.

The final aspect I want to discuss is the skill tree. There are three sections that are essentially: Freerunning, combat, and gadgets. Ignoring the fact that you start with half of the free-running section filled out (why even include those as pips), but after you beat the game you can unlock a skill that shows you where 1 subsection of collectables are located on the map. I hate this concept, and it appears in a lot of games. If I have the experience points, and I want to buy that ability instead of a combat one, I should be able to. It's incredibly stupid to lock that behind completing the game, because if I am honest, I usually don't play games post credits to mop anything up. I either mop up side activities before the final level (because I'm enjoying the game, or want to level up) or I just beat the game and put it on my shelf. To have an unlock that is basically saying, now come back and run around the map with nothing at stake to get experience points for no reason, is very dumb. But... BUt... BUT.... they only have this for 1 of essentially 5 categories of collectables! What if I want to find all of the documents or audio logs? What about the secret bags or CPU chips? Well too bad, those you need to use a guide, or run yourself ragged looking for a tiny item in a giant map, but we will give you the ability to find one full category. All I'm saying, is that if you are going to include an upgrade that shows you collectables, you either need it to show you ALL the collectables, or you need separate upgrades for each one. Hell, if those separate upgrades would have existed, AND I could have unlocked them before beating the game, I might have gotten them all, but I'm not going to watch some youtube guide to find every bag, not knowing which ones I already picked up.

All of those gripes aside, I did enjoy my time with Mirror's Edge Catalyst, but I felt it was missing it's moments that the original had in bunches. There was really only one level that I thought competed with the original in terms of scope and awe, and it was the last level of the game. It made sense for Catalyst to focus more on the open world, because the best part about the game is still running and doing cool shit, but when it tried to silo the player into combat encounters, or even its singular levels it missed out on the moments that I still remember from the first game. Catalyst is an enjoyable game, but just doesn't capture the charm of the original, but if you are someone who just loved the free-running of the original, then I think this game can still give you some pleasure in playing through.

Is this game the Greatest game of all time: No

Where does it rank: I actually liked this a fair bit more than I thought I would, because I heard so many "meh" responses to whether it was worth playing. I have ranked it the 11th best game out of 45. It sits right below "The Legend of Zelda", and above "That's You!"

Up Next: River City Ransom (NES)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here

Thanks for listening.

*P.S. - As we get closer to 50 games reviewed I am thinking about incorporating you lovely readers as a chance to decide my next game. On my next write-up I will be listing 3 games to be voted on and then I will start playing the winning game to put on the list. It most likely won't be the next game completed, but one that I will be working on to someday put on the list.