While the Runners Vision trail will guide you through the simplest ways to get to the destination, Catalyst’s world is set up for speedrunners to shave seconds off their runs. It’s hefty, it has momentum, it really challenges the player to know what they’re doing. Which is a shame, because at its core, Mirror’s Edge’s parkour is excellent. This means players can endlessly kick enemies into one another or the enemy AI will throw themselves off of rooftops like a badly choreographed student play. For some reason Faith’s main attack is susceptible to parries and counters but her directional kick isn’t.
But Faith is also equipped with a kick that can change directions. Faith can swerve around enemies easily to dodge attacks, which always feels good. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s combat is also incredibly easy to cheese. In its current state, placing a marker and following the thin red strip across the city is the equivalent of having your horse auto-run to your destination in an Assassin’s Creed game that’s how mentally stimulating it gets. Wider level design and multiple routes through spaces would have made Catalyst a more engaging experience. This would not have been an issue if the game simply gave players more options to navigate these spaces themselves. I found myself retracing the same few routes repeatedly, to get back and forth between missions. While, in theory, an open-world would only benefit a game like Catalyst (free running across endless buildings in any direction sounds exhilarating), in practice Catalyst’s open-world feels static. As exciting as the series’ wall-running, sliding and jumping is, it can’t endure being stretched this thinly. The closed beta runs Tuesday, April 26 and is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PCs.Regardless of how you feel about this trend in general, it’s definitely a core design decision that wounded Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.
If you registered for the closed beta - the registration period is already over, by the way - you should receive a code either on Friday or Saturday. "Closed Beta participants will be able to try out several of the main missions in Faith's story, Side Missions, other optional content, and the Social Play features Mirror's Edge Catalyst has to offer," Erik Odeldahl, design director on the game, wrote in a blog post. ( Also see: 10 Games Releasing in 2016 We Are Most Excited About)ĮA also provided further details on the contents of the closed beta last week. Video: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970 4GB or better / AMD Radeon™ R9 280x 3GB or better.Hard Drive: At least 25 GB of free space.
With the closed beta for open-world first-person parkour game Mirror's Edge Catalyst just two days away, and open release a month later, Electronic Arts (EA) has provided the minimum and recommended system specifications PC owners will need to run the game.