I really can't enjoy FREE running

IEleMenTIx

I have the game since release and have only played 6 hours so far. I have waited so long for this game to come out I was so hyped

I'm in the second part of the city where everything is light blue and purple. I really don't enjoy exploring the city much because everything looks like it's put randomly together. There's no smooth path to take. It's a very choppy experience compared to Mirrors Edge 1. And don't tell me it's because it's an open world and ME1 was linear... you can make open worlds much better than ME Catalysts.

Most of the city looks beautiful and I have always loved the art design of ME. But I thought it would be more like in the last scene from the E3 2013 Trailer. But they have definetely overdone it. There's too much stuff around with no distinct pattern. Everything is so tightly cluttered that there is no real vista to enjoy. I have done the mission in the Anansi Emporium. That one was beautiful, but the view from the top didn't take my breath, I don't know why Don't get me wrong, I really don't want to bash the game as I'm a huge fan of the series, but the game simply can't get me hooked.

Ibsen

The cityscape definitely isn't as smooth as the original. They exchanged the minimalist colors and abstract environments for a real textured city. There still is a vibrant contrasting color palette but I feel it's damaged due to the billboards and rooftop clutter.

I happen to love Catalyst, but the visual change was a bit jarring at first. Keep going and explore!

ninemil

IEleMenTIx wrote: »

Everything is so tightly cluttered that there is no real vista to enjoy.

There are vistas everywhere - the sequel is no less vertical than the original. The difference in Catalyst is that you actively have to hunt them out and climb to them. In ME'08, the level overview gave you a vista every time you finished a run. I wouldn't underestimate the effect that had.

I suppose the question is whether removing the overview is a bad thing or not? Personally, I think getting rid of it leads to a better way of exploring your routes, while optimizing time. More replayability, more challenge. There's also a good chance that neither of the consoles could have coped with rendering them without tanking performance.

A few of my favourite spots in Glass:

Carnaga

TL;TR (too long to read version)

I understand that in competitive pvp games (Battlefield series) where you have a spawn point, devs want to design the map in a way that the opponent doesn't have clear line of sight to shoot you once you spawn. Of course the rest of the level design follows the same pattern: they put here and there a car, a wall, a tree, a pillar and some other debris to obstruct line of sight on those strategic points. This is to create immersive and fun gameplay when fighting against other people. The better you know the map the better you do.

But now we have Mirror's Edge Catalyst (MEC) which is a single player experience concentrated to sports of free running and parkour and where the key elements are quite opposite from a pvp shooter. And even so the map and areas follows exactly the same design as competitive pvp games. Your running is obstructed with the same elements you see in pvp arenas. And this is wrong. ME2008 was clear, clean, bright and the paths you ran were fun. And I think in this aspect MEC fails: instead of putting stuff to aid the fluent free runs they aggravated it with obstructs.

LONG VERSION:

Maybe I could blame the runner vision: instead of selecting the most fluent and successful route it reveals a route where you experience not joy, but a frustration. And if you are following the red pulse or arrows and taking an obvious shortcut - well, you know what happens: map design and mechanics forces you to fail. Than you repeat, and while doing so you get familiar with the area. At some point you find a nice and relatively smooth and fast route but timewise you would've been better off if you just followed the red line from the firts place.

We have seen this similar thing in Warframe map design. They introduced a sniper rifle with a range of 1500 meters. But the new and the old maps were re-designed in a way that they added objects and debris that obstructs the line of sight. So basically you snipe enemies within 50 meters.

The level design of Mirror's Edge Catalyst is not that different. We have Faith - the best runner in the city of glass. I believe the initial map design was fluent to run, but for some reason they added these annoying obstructs and debris on the strategical points of the routes - you grab and stick to them unintentionally, you collide with them and you get frustrated with them. They call it as "increased challenge" but I would use word of: "annoying". And instead of a freerun MEC feels more like an obstacle course game.

If you pay attention you can see that the 'open world' design of MEC does not bring you the freedom as a freerunner. And most of the time the stunts and parkour maneuvers Faith does - do not work properly or they are hard to execute because of the game mechanics and it has a learning curve. With these two things combined: I call them as "Choke Points"; where you are forced to collide with a wall/debris/and stuff/enemies and to overcome them you need to perform like a clock work machine.

If you keep this in mind, that you are a "Sniper Rifle Bullet" and you cannot harness the full power of your speed and range -- you really have to get familiar with the map - which means 20 - 30 hours of gameplay. Its not just pressing the "forward button": you really have to press constantly those action buttons (Sometimes it generates not fun but pretty exhausting gaming experience) and you have to be extremely sharp with your timing not forgetting about skill upgrades: at the beginning Faith is lacking some basics which will help you bit later once you have upgraded it.

You know that in all sorts of sports - including freerun, parkour, martial arts - the most important thing is to master the basic landing: before you can jump or do all sorts of stunts you need to learn how to fall. In real life basic landing and roll are extremely important skills to master because they will save your joints and protect your body from further damage. And for me this was a game breaking thing; it took all the immersion away when I realized that Faith couldn't perform basic landings and bit later I noticed that the whole game was designed in this "cheap" way with an excuse of a challenge.

It's a shame that the MEC was designed in a way you cannot memorize the route beforehand (eg. "Diversion" missions). And it forces you to do most of the stuff with a lot of retries - because the runner vision red path doesn't show up when you need it. This is not fun cause you realize that you are not fighting against enemies or doing mission objectives or timer but you are fighting against game mechanics and sometimes these mechanics are pretty absurd.

Same goes with "chase sequences": you have bunch of Kuruger-sec on your neck and you want to maximize the experience points and run as far as you can, but because of the choke points you end up going through a safe house which is separating two areas from each other and all your efforts are gone to waste. This is not open world freedom. Open world freedom would be: "all roads lead to rome". Instead we traverse through same paths and narrow bottle necks between separate areas. And as a side note: we are lacking ME2008 chase scenes where you have to chase down and beat another NPC a runner - not a ghost trail.

I've played the game for 34 hours and now I'm doing some of the lacking side missions. Thought last time I played the game was over a week ago and I'm not sure do I want to launch it because I know what is waiting for me. ME2008 was way better; at least in there you could re-run the campaign missions.

Anyways, here is my scenic route 3 star run. You can see clearly that the route has couple choke points. Other than that it's pretty straight forward and on that route the runner vision and ghost trail worked linearily. I can promise you that free running becomes much easier when you have upgraded your all skills and memorized some of the routes. But at this point you have beaten the main campaign and after beating the game the game becomes relatively hollow.

IEleMenTIx

Thanks guys, at least I'm not the only one who feels like I do as I have described in my first post

Carnaga thx for the post. Yea ME2008 was clear, clean, bright and the paths you ran were fun.

Now if ME2008 had the graphics of MEC and a bit more Levels it would be perfect