When you say “Game Beta”, you immediately think “Multiplayer Beta” because… That’s what Betas are for right? To test the Multiplayer, the servers, getting rid of some possible glitches, exploits and bugs, etc…
So why does a game that is singleplayer exclusive have a Beta? I asked myself that question while I played Dark Souls 3 during the time that it took for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst to download. Now the boss-man had asked for to make an impressions vid, so I complied. I set up my Elgato and waited for the game to install.
Now, once it installed, I did the regular check up, you know, audio sync and stuff. All is well. So, I start up the game. That’s where I was reminded why people hate EA with a passion. Please, embark on this Journey of Annoyance with me.
CHAPTER 1: EA, Challenge Everything… Especially your Patience.
So, game loads up and I get treated to a usual “User Agreement” window. Okay, cool, stuff I’ll have to cut out, no biggie. Then I get to something a bit more annoying: I have to sign in to my EA account. Now, this displays my e-mail address, so, obviously, I’ll cut this part out. But… Part of me thinks “You know, people HAVE to see this bullshit. They HAVE to know what they’re getting into.”
So I decide I’ll leave it in but blur out my E-Mail. But it doesn’t stop there, oh no.
After resetting my EA password (I have no ungodly idea why I already had an EA account…) I actually have to go through the security question, the choosing of a screen name, etc… before I even get to the game.
This was pretty dismal for my mood. I mean, Mirror’s Edge is about Free Running and Parcours right? Then could you please speed things up EA?
So I get through that, game starts… For a solid 2 minutes, I have to sit and watch a white screen with red text that tells me what the hell’s up with the City of Ass. I mean Glass, sorry, zoned out there for a while EA because I didn’t even have tunes to listen to, to keep me entertained. Then we get some flashbacks to Mirror’s Edge 1 (I presume) and we’re finally in the game… Thank Arceus…
CHAPTER 2: The Thing with First Person Free Running…
So we’re dropped in at the moment that Faith, our spunky Asian protagonist, gets released from prison after (apparently) getting arrested at the end of Mirror’s Edge 1. We have to get on a bus located not too far from prison to take us where ever the hell we’re supposed to go.
But no, a red door beckons us. Behind it is Icarus, no not Gohan’s pet Dragon in Dragon Ball (though after hearing the idiot talk for 10 seconds I’d wish on the Dragon Balls it actually was…). Icarus is a Standard Rival Character Cliché (or SRCC for short) in that he mocks you, thinks himself better than you and wears a hoody because he’s edgy. He has to guide you through the tutorial by making mocking sounds into your ear as you try to parkour through the city in first person.
Now, I never really believed when the critics said that first person free running was a bad idea. Now, however, I can fully understand why. It’s absolute crap. Half of the time Faith falls on her ass (or head, or chest, or whatever body part is facing down at the time) because I couldn’t correctly judge the distance I had to jump or wall-run because I couldn’t see. That’s a big problem right there. A red flag, if you will. Maybe that’s why everything you can “jump off of “ turns red? To say “Well, you should be able to safely jump from here… IF YOU COULD SEE WHEN YOU HAVE TO JUMP, MUAHAHAHA!!”
I mean, come on EA, even Ubisoft managed smooth free-running mechanics in Assassin’s Creed! You want to know why? Because it was in third person, you [CENSORED], little [REDACTED] pieces of [BLACKED OUT].
Anyway. After actually killing faith a couple of times because I got bored of trying the same thing over and over (and failing over and over because of previously mentioned reasons) I got through the “Free Running Tutorial” and met up with (D)Icarus again. Next was a little fighting tutorial: hit the blue glowy constructs that you can see through your “Beat” optics.
Okay, now, after typing that, I came to a realization here. So, this Beat thing can only make you see stuff, not physically interact with it, right? So why do my moves actually give her physical feedback? Like, I have to shove a guy out of the way, and she actually has to put in effort to push him. How? How does that work?
Okay so after playing a bad SUPER HOT game in which I had to punch blue constructs, I get to the real deal! Now I can finally put all the things I learned to the test! I can beat down these guards! Hell yeah!
Or… You know… I can just run past them. No biggie. They’re just going to stand in the same spot, even though I’m just down the hall. They didn’t even chase me. I ran past every guard on the way out. As soon as they explain a game mechanic to you, you can ditch it. You don’t even need to fight the damn guards. Just breeze past them, giving chase is above their pay grade… Or their programming.
All of a sudden I get a message that “a new tougher enemy has been dropped in” and that I have to be careful.
What does this new big mean baddy look like? Same as the other guys, only this guy wears more black! That way you know he’s real bad. So, I assume that this guy probably has a gun or something, so I prepare to dodge past him and be on my merry way. NOPE. Cutscene.
Faith gets her ass beaten into the ground and is arrested, after which we get to sit through her trial and execution. Then, “WE’RE SORRY” is displayed on the screen, signed by EA along with a code to redeem to get your money back…
I wished.
No, Faith runs towards this new enemy, who produces the reason he’s so dangerous: He can block a punch and punch back. That’s it. Faith falls through the scaffolding and the big bad enemy looks down, saying “she couldn’t have survived that fall. Send some medics to help the guys she took down”.
Now, first off, mister big bad police guy, you know who you’re dealing with here. This Faith apparently has a rep the size of an EA exec’s ego, if there’s one free runner out there that can survive an eight-meter fall, it’s that one. Like, I sent her tumbling down falls that were of the same distance and sadly, she always survived.
So the officer makes the same standard trope mistake of not looking for a body to back up his claim and is on his merry way, leaving me to run the same course again and exit the same way he exited 5 seconds earlier.
Finally, we’re out of the tutorial and off to the races. “MIRROR’S EDGE CATALYST” hovers over the pure white city in bright red letters.
Now, here, another problem I have with this game arises: Why the Hell does everything have to be either white, blue, orange or red? Like… Seriously, this game would’ve looked so much better if it wasn’t set in some architect’s proof of concept 3D model. Are textures that expensive?
So we head to the lair, where we meet Noah, the leader of the runners. Then we get a mission to run to Birdman (sadly, not Michael Keaton) who gives us a mission where we have to run to another part of the map in a certain amount of time, after which we meet up with some other guy, who gives us a mission to run to collect items while fighting guards.
Now, free-running in first person? Bad idea. Fighting in first person? Even worse. Do they do you the courtesy to give you a “lock-on” so you don’t have to constantly adjust the camera while you’re trying to hit the guy? No, they don’t, because that would be good game design.
Not that it matters because the guy just stands completely still until you’re in whacking distance. Seriously. He just stands there. He doesn’t follow you. Let me explain:
I thought to myself “Well, I HAVE to take him down, so I’ll do some cool parkour climbing, get on top of something high and then drop down on him like Batman would. That’d be kickass! I’ll lead him to these stairs so I can do it.” So I run to the stairs, climb up them turn around to jump onto the guard like Mario jumps on Goombas and… No one. I round the corner and the guy is still standing in his spot, FACING THE OPPOSITE WAY. He SAW me run in the other direction, but he just defaulted back to his original stance the moment I got out of sight. Brilliant coding there guys. Really gets the blood pumping when the guards don’t even follow you.
Anyways, I had to just punch the guy a couple of times and collect the chip I was sent to get, off to the other chip I went. Now it’s 2 guards. After I had to complete the “Kick one guy into the other” prompt, I was once again met with quite stubborn AI. I ran from them (not too far, I made it so they could still see me and actually run up to me) to see if I could actually do the takedown I wanted. Guess what: They reverted to their default position and just stood there, staring at me. Like, seriously, I could just stand there for the rest of eternity and they wouldn’t move.
So I kicked one into a wall and accidentally kicked the other off of the roof. Moments later I hear that the evil company that’s running everything don’t even know the atrocities that company commits and then I realize I actually kicked an innocent man that was just doing his job off of the roof.
This actually shocked me. Like, we’re part of a terrorist cell that tries to revolt against the company in question and we’re fighting people who’re just doing their jobs, sometimes not even knowing what their company does. For all I know, I just kicked a father of three who was just doing his job and Is actually quite a nice guy, off of a roof Now I’ve played a lot of games where you revolt against “an evil group” (looking at you, Just Cause 3) but the guys you fight in that are corrupt people who are on the payroll and know what crimes the regime commits. Those are guys who deserve to get shot (or in Just Cause’s case: get strung up like Pinocchio with rocket bombs strapped to their bodies that send them off into space like a piece of firework once the tethers are released).
So, Mirror’s Edge Catastrophe left quite the bad taste in my mouth because of that.
Another thing I noticed as I glanced over the edge because I just killed a man: the “traffic” in the streets? Laughable. I’ve seen better traffic animation in PS1 games. Like, the cars drive in the same path, constantly, even just driving in circles. They even clipped through each other when their cycles overlapped.
Then, the game crashed. Well, not just the game, everything crashed. My Xbox One actually had to reboot. So, I did the smart thing: I went to “My Games” and I uninstalled Mirror’s Edge.
After which I headed back to Dark Souls 3 to get my ass handed to me by a boss in Lothric Castle.
Oh, one more thing, on one of the loading screens (that I saw the numerous times I died) it said
“If you see a rat the size of a car, you’re playing the wrong game.”
… I’m sorry, what? Is it a joke? Or a bad attempt at it? Because, quite frankly EA, if I see a rat the size of a car, that doesn’t mean I’m playing the wrong game… That means I’m playing the RIGHT one. Aka not Mirror’s Edge.
