Mirror’s Edge™ Catalyst

THANK GOD I played this game on steam before my EA account got heisted. This game is a story platformer with a very appealing aesthetic and a one of a kind parkour play-style. Do urself a solid and PIRAT the game as Faith would have done. F U EA PLAY!!!!!!!

I hate EA.

I like this game, though. I don't know why I am so fascinated by the Glass City it's happening in, but I just am and I can't get enough of it.

Still, I hate EA. Their disgusting launcher app is now defiling my computer, as they forced me to install it if I wanted to play Mirror's Edge Catalyst.

The only reason I folded and did it is because I realised I have registered an account with EA back in 2008, for some reason. So, they already have my info. Still sucks.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a game where you spend 80% of your time feeling like a futuristic parkour god, and the other 20% furiously yelling at your screen because Faith decided to aggressively backflip off a skyscraper instead of grabbing the brightly colored pipe right in front of her.
When the game actually works, it’s undeniably fun. Running seamlessly across the rooftops of the City of Glass, chaining together wall-runs, slides, and vaults puts you in an incredibly satisfying flow state. The city is gorgeous, and the raw sensation of speed is top-notch.
But then, the game constantly trips over its own shoelaces:
The Inconsistent Parkour: For an experience entirely built around precise movement, the targeting has a mind of its own. There are way too many moments where your character randomly jumps to a point you weren't even looking at. You’ll be mid-run, aiming for a ledge, and suddenly Faith decides the air three feet to your left looks like a better place to be. It completely kills the momentum.
The Combat System: It is, to put it mildly, awful. You are frequently forced into weird, closed-off arena fights where you have to awkwardly kick armored guards into each other like a clumsy game of human bowling. It’s clunky, repetitive, and ruins the pacing of a game that is supposed to be about running away.
The Bugged Achievements: The absolute final insult. EA pulled the plug on the servers in late 2023, which didn't just remove the online leaderboards—it completely broke the achievement system. Even standard, offline single-player achievements are now a glitchy mess that refuse to unlock properly, making 100% completion essentially impossible without a headache.
A genuinely fun freerunning simulator trapped inside a terrible combat system and ruined by classic EA server management.

I love the original Mirror's Edge. I bought it for full price at release, gifted it to others, and I've even repurchased it for other platforms during my console pleb phase of the 2010s. Over the past fifteen years I've replayed it at semi-regular intervals and I've pretty much endlessly sung its praises despite being fully aware of and acknowledging its many flaws. But Mirror's Edge is one of those games that just inspires something in me—its world, characters, and audiovisual presentation are unlike anything else I've ever played. When Catalyst was finally announced I was filled with excitement, a sequel to one of my favourite games was finally happening. Then, it was revealed that the game was going to be an origin story reboot, to a game series that only had one game. Then Catalyst released to what can mostly only be described as a dull thud. Where the first game was considered a cult classic masterpiece with a devoted following, Catalyst felt like some kind of rejected HBO series masquerading in Mirror's Edge cosplay. In terms of its narrative tone and characters it felt nothing like the original game. Who was it even for?
After hearing of the general disappointment and lack of enthusiasm towards Catalyst I ended up ignoring it for many years as there were simply too many other games at the time that interested me. Why play a mediocre sequel to one of my favourite games? Years later I'd finally pick up Catalyst here on Steam at a steep discount, though I'd only briefly touch it before being put off by the narrative dissonance with the first game. Where were the characters from the original? Why did Faith act and sound like a completely different character? Fast forward a few more years to 2025 and I finally came back to Catalyst nearly a full decade after its original release. This time I stuck it out and I'm glad that I did, because if you're anything like me—a huge fan of the original game—then Catalyst is worth playing despite its narrative shortcomings. The first game's story and characters are not particularly robust, but we've come to like those aspects of it anyway as there's a certain level of charm in the cast's simplicity and those Esurance FMVs (which are thankfully gone in Catalyst). But it's all really just window dressing for the real character of Mirror's Edge: The City of Glass. Yes, the world of Mirror's Edge itself is the real star; and, while I prefer the way it was presented in the original over Catalyst, it's still the star of the show here as well. If the thing that you loved about the original game was the gameplay above all else, then the mediocre story and characters of Catalyst are worth sifting through to get to the core of the experience.
That's not to say that Catalyst isn't without other flaws as there are many. The open world is full of pointless and meaningless tasks to complete that feel appropriate for a game released in 2016 following every trend of the era. Those pointless tasks are even more meaningless now a decade later due to the online servers being shut down in typical EA fashion. None of the social features work and numerous achievements—even the ones strictly related to single-player—are completely and utterly broken. When you launch the game the first thing you're greeted to is a message about failing to connect to the game's servers, which doesn't exactly make for a great first impression. Catalyst is ultimately a failed reboot to a series that the IP holder views in contempt for its inability to generate mass market appeal. EA ultimately isn't interested in creating unique and compelling games for the sake of art; the company is only interested in extrapolating whatever financial value it can from every IP it owns and will cast said IPs into the abyss should they no longer be deemed to carry any meaningful financial return on investment according to the company's own vague standards. EA itself might be the most notorious game company in existence for acquiring and destroying a variety of compelling intellectual properties due to its own incompetence and inability to understand what makes them interesting.
But, I digress; this is supposed to be a review of Mirror's Edge Catalyst, not EA's uncanny ability to destroy and bury game franchises. Catalyst is a wholly uncompelling and uninteresting game from a narrative perspective compared to its predecessor. It feels like it was made by people who didn't see the original as a success and wanted to force it to have broader narrative appeal. They accomplished this by metaphorically killing every character from the original besides the protagonist and one other who has been more or less reimagined into a different character. Everyone else has been replaced with less interesting and even more underutilized people. It would have been interesting to see the original's cast come back in extended roles, fleshing out their backstories and the depths of their character, but we instead got a bunch of living and breathing cliches to replace them, like their personalities and dialogue were designed by an AI algorithm instead of real people. Most of them are forgettable and annoying; they all stand around doing nothing and you can't interact with anyone outside of cutscenes, and their character arcs never amount to anything interesting beyond serving as a footnote in the game's mediocre plot by the end, which takes a skydive from the highest mountain possible with no parachute in the game's final act that is appropriately bewildering to see unfold. I found myself laughing at its absurdity and legitimately felt like I was watching a parody of cheesy 90s action films like Speed, except Catalyst presented these moments of sheer absurdity in a manner which genuinely felt like they were meant to be taken seriously. You could reskin everyone involved in the game's finale with Sonic characters and it would feel much more appropriate.
But, all of this aside, Mirror's Edge Catalyst preserves the gameplay aspects from the original that I adore. Running through this world is satisfying in a way that no other game I've yet to find has been able to emulate. The gameplay finale is incredibly disappointing but there are several set pieces scattered throughout the adventure that are worth experiencing. Mirror's Edge Catalyst may be terribly flawed and full of all of the worst EAisms imaginable such as their mandatory EA App bloatware and broken game functionality; yet, somehow—months after playing—Catalyst still lives on in my memory. I'm not sure whether or not I'll ever feel compelled to replay it again—and if I did I can't imagine I'd ever replay it to the same extent as the original—but I'm glad to have experienced it at least once. Its gameplay captures the right things from the original that left an unforgettable impression on me and it even manages to streamline some of the things about the original that were kind of annoying. The combat is significantly improved and is actually quite challenging and satisfying when you master it; some of the enemies really put up a mean fight. The soundtrack might not leave as much of an impression as the first's does but Solar Fields still shows up to deliver a respectful sophomore effort that feels in tune with the spirit of the original. My only other real complaint is that a game as beautiful as this deserves a minimalist hud, but it feels like there's always some kind of marker getting in your way reminding you of something you need to do or interact with that can't be disabled, which is really and truly unfortunate.
Despite its myriad flaws, if you're a fan of the first Mirror's Edge then you should still play through Catalyst anyway. It lacks the same lighting in a bottle magic as the original but when you're free-flowing through the game world you'll occasionally see the same glimpses of that original game's magic, and those fleeting moments of zen-like bliss are worth chasing—even if only once.

Forget guns. Forget explosions.
This is about fluidity, motion over mayhem.
Every rooftop is a puzzle. Every drop, every leap, every wall-run is a decision. And when you’re in rhythm, when the music rises and your feet barely touch the ground and the world melts away. You're not just playing. You're flying.
The City of Glass is immaculate and sterile. Cold beauty. A dystopia disguised as a utopia. It makes you feel small, but also reminds you: you’re the glitch in the system. The smudge on their mirror. The one spark they can’t quite extinguish.
A sleek, emotional ride through a glass prison. Not perfect, but when it moves, it sings. And if you’ve ever needed an escape, this game gives you wings made of asphalt, wind, and rebellion.

This game is 9 years old yet still looks better than most new titles with ray tracing (and performs so much better).
Proves that art direction is so much more important than shallow usage of technologies.

Just a reminder from me
Completed the game, really baffled by this one, as a Mirror's Edge fan, I was dissapointed at start, about the story.
Now when I am close to ending it I can see the end encroaching and I am sad that I will leave this world.
A look at the futuristic world envisioned in 2016 and what we thought the future will be in 2008.
The world design is an absolute masterpiece, every location has a way to get back up to it, if you fail, amazing props to the enviroment artists.
The story is weak but compeling.
The parkour and new tools are cool as always. The combat is super weak and just an afterthought. Half of the combat unlocks just allow you to get rid of the enemies faster, without introducing super cool moves or finishers.
The voice acting and dialogue bits are mostly a miss with some ok to good moments in the more focused story missions.
The game really was made for people's active presence. It was made with community goals. Leadeboard, custom runs, online interactions, beating your friends in races, hacking the billboards and the screen. Everything screamed people, and I think it actually works in this game.
But now... the servers are gone, it is only you and your world.
It still works, but it doesn't shine anymore.
It's criminal that this got canned and most likely we will never see a game like this before. The parkour movement got stiffled and is not as popular anymore in media. And games that have it, use it as a traversal movement, not as the core focus of the game.
Unfortunately you have to do some workarounds if you want to actually play it.
Also a hassle to be able to delete the save and start from scratch.
The game has online only protection and the servers are gone. So you have to do some tinkering to be able to launch the game if you buy it now, after the servers got canned.
It's not hard, but every time you will launch the game will tell you that the servers are offline, and in some instances even when playing.
The game uses Steam and EA App (formerly Origin) to run. With servers gone and not constantly checking syncs between the game, EA App and Steam, only some of the achievements are able to trigger.
I've done all the side quests and I did not get the achievements for the zone completion or all regions completion, so achievement hunting it's out of the question.
Buy it on DEEP SALE if you fan of the original game. Or not, if you hate that EA killed this game and still asking for your money, then put the pirate hat on.