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This review is purely based on my experience of this game. I tried my best not to let other games affect my view of this game too much and rate everything on an for this game appropriate scale! This review does contain spoilers, some of which may not be marked as such!
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☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
The graphics and details have improved from the first game, but even after that, because of the reflections, lens flares and so much more, some things are a bit difficult to see.
Since this city (or world) is called "Glass", there are a lot of windows. At some parts it's actually pretty difficult to see windows right in front of you.
Other than that, the game's graphics are very good!
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
TL;DR below...
This game is some sort of "alternate reality" or even a spin-off game from the first one. You still play as "Faith", but her backstory is completely different from the first game, including the name of her sister (In the first game it's Kate and in this game it's Cat).
So it feels like you're playing a completely different game.
If we actually take a look at the gameplay itself, this game is semi open world, which gives you the freedom to go where you want but with restrictions, thanks to the skill system.
For some reason, there is a skill system and a lot of movement options are not unlocked at the start of the game. So the game encourages you to do sidequests or go look around for collectibles, which will give you XP so you can unlock new skills (like rolling, coiling, jumping higher and much more). The combat has somewhat improved (there are also skills to get stronger). But it still feels VERY janky.
Thanks to the skill system AND the open world, you're also using your "running vision" a lot (which is basically a form of GPS to guide you where you need to go). If you play this game for the first time, you will lose a lot of momentum, because you constantly have to stop and use your runner vision to navigate to the correct way. This takes a lot of the satisfying moments during the parkour away.
Also the missions are pretty boring. Go from point A to point B, talk to people and/or fight guards. But again, thanks to the open world it's easy to get stuck when you want to run away from the guards. There is also a weird "police system" when you do certain objectives and then you have to run away from the police and hide for a moment (similar to running away from the police in GTA games). This feels very out of place in this game.
It is kind of fun to just roam around a little bit, but it gets boring really quick. There are a lot of collectibles to find in the game, but after a while I was questioning if it was even worth to stop for every single one of them or not. (Maybe for achievement hunters, this is a good thing. But as an achievement hunter myself, this was very tedious after about 2-3 hours of gameplay).
TL;DR
The gameplay is okay, but the open world makes it boring and feel empty. The objectives, collectibles and skill system are not fun at all and they disrupt the gameplay a lot.
You also lose a lot of momentum (during parkour parts) because it's not always super clear where you need to go.
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
The audio, music and sound effects are very good.
I actually love the sound effects, but the rating is pretty low because of the audio settings.
There is only "Master Volume", "Music" and "Speech".
Since this game is almost at full volume as a DEFAULT setting, be prepared to be blasted with music and sound effects.
It would have been nice to have separate "Sound effects" options, but oh well.
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
This is somewhat the same as the first Mirror's Edge.
On the box, it's mentioned that this game is 16+, but this can easily be played by younger teens too!
There is a minor amount of blood/gore and like in almost every game that is 16+ there are some "bad words", but the game doesn't focus on any of this.
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
I recommend to go into the settings and switch down some settings. Because if you play on "ultra" settings, you will have a lot of lens flares and so on, which can be annoying running through the Glass city.
A lot of the buildings and play areas are "white", so the world feels very bright.
Recommended requirements, as mentioned by Steam:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-Bit (use the latest Service Pack)
- Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 at 3.4 GHz / AMD FX-8350 at 4.0 GHz
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970 4GB or better / AMD Radeon™ R9 280x 3GB or better
- Storage: 25 GB available space
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
According to Steam, the game is qround 23.34 GB "big", which in my opinion is pretty big for a game from 2016, but it's not too bad comparing to a lot of modern games nowadays.
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
"In theory" the difficulty is not that hard (I don't even think you can select a difficulty at the start of the game), but due to the game focussing on a skill system, it can get pretty hard in the beginning when you're still pretty weak.
Not only the combat, but also the parkour element is not too easy comparing to the first game. At the start of the game there is of course a tutorial (that you have to complete during every new game you start) which takes between 10-20 minutes and is also kind of boring.
A lot of the "difficult" parts are because of the "janky" mechanics. Sometimes when you want to do "Action A" and if you accidentally look a bit too much to the wrong direction, your character will do "Action B" instead which can be very frustrating.
I imagine that if you can manage to learn the game and play enough, that it's much easier to navigate through the game.
(Also, watching speedruns of this game is very satisfying).
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
The skill system is mentioned a lot in previous tabs, so it's obvious that there is a grind.
The amount of different collectibles, side quests, skills you HAVE to unlock to be able to complete the game takes a lot of time and can get boring really quick.
It's very sad that this is the complete opposite if you compare it to the first game.
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
To be honest, I've played this game for about 4-5 hours, and I watched the cutscenes and dialogue, but I still have no idea what the actual story is.
The cutscenes (and nightmares that Faith has) are trying to tell you the story about who your character is, but there is not really a connection between Faith's backstory and the game you're playing.
If you choose to just play the game, you can skip almost every cutscene and just by playing, the game will guide you to your next objective. You meet some characters in the game, but some dialogues feel like they where rushed which is a bit of a shame.
It would be interesting to see or know the characters where you interact with a little bit more, but there are no "real" introductions.
When you meet a new character, it's mostly just "Hey I'm Faith, I need your help" and then the other character is like "Oh hi, my name is X, let me help you".
In short, the game and the story feel rushed.
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
According to How Long To Beat, the game takes around 8.5 hours to complete (without going for collectibles and so on. If you want to 100% the game, you'll be playing for about 32 hours).
☐ It's free!
☐ Fair price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
As of writing this article, the price on Steam is 19.99€ which is a fair price for this game, but this is just my opinion, but for me that's a bit too much.
Because of the boring grind, forgettable characters, janky movement and combat, I'd say if you really want to check out an "alternate version" of Mirror's Edge 1, then pick it up when it's on sale.
(I think I've seen the price drop to about 5 euro's).
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
It would not really be fair to call the "jank" bugs, but it sometimes feels like when you're trying to perform an action, that it feels like a bug or a glitch when your character decides to do something completely different.
This can be annoying at times, but luckily there are a lot of checkpoints, so if you die because of a "bug: or glitch, then you don't always have to repeat a lot.
I also haven't had any gamebreaking bugs before, just some annoying things OR because the first person view, it can happen that when you move the camera too quick, that you can see through your body a bit.
But again, nothing gamebreaking.
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☑ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
I REALLY wish that I could rate this game higher, but sadly I can't.
I still remember being very hyped when this game was announced, but sadly the "biggest" things in this game are so different things (skill system, open world, too much collectibles, boring story,...) from the 1st game that I just can't rate this game any higher.
It's pretty fun to parkour around a little bit, but because the world is "too big", there is almost no place to actually do some tricks. So it gets boring very quick.
I'm sorry Mirror's Edge Catalyst, but a 4 is the highest I can give you!