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Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

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Mirror’s Edge was a breath of fresh air when it was released in 2008. Featuring an Asian female lead who was appropriately proportioned when most other games featured buff marine types or buxom wenches; a game world that was full of stark white splashed with bold colours amongst a sea of drab brown and grey game worlds; and featured a fluidity of movement in a world full of stop-start gun fighty games. It certainly wasn’t without its flaws and had many detractors throughout the game community, but it was bold, especially for a big publisher like EA, and full of promise for those of us who wanted something new.

Unfortunately, we had to wait 8 years for a sequel and 8 years is a long time in game development terms, and particularly with what has happened to the games industry lately. The games market has completely fragmented, with PC and the console market dominance being smashed by iPhone and Android games. The rise of the casual gamer and indie developer has pushed games in directions unheard of 8 years ago in terms of art and action. Diversity of representation, which has always been in the back of developer’s minds, has been pushed to the forefront of the conversation surrounding games.

With this context in mind, fans of Mirror’s Edge were excited to see what EA could come up with. With the story rebooted and an entire city open to explore, would Mirror’s Edge live up to its promise and could Catalyst become the next big thing ™? Well, in a word, no. Regrettably, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst tries hard, but when held up to its competitors it falls quite short.

Let’s start with the character Faith. I can excuse the developers for having her iconic sleave tattoo absent at the start of the game and turning it into a reward. As a player, it’s kind of cool to play through wondering how she gets it. But, without spoiling it too much, the when it’s rewarded is really too late in the story, and the way it’s rewarded is kind of lame. But that’s not the worst of it for Faith. Her strength of character has been greatly reduced by the weak story. The predictable plot and one dimensional villains strip her of agency, and instead of acting on her own and for her own sake, she gets pulled along inexorably and the player is simply there for the ride. It doesn’t help that Faith is still depicted as a teenager. I’m completely aware that I’m nowhere near being a teenager any more, but this doesn’t excuse the poor writing and plotting. We’ve all grown in 8 years, but Faith hasn’t and she seems wildly immature and predictably whinny.

Arguably, story comes after gameplay, and strong gameplay can erase the bad taste the story can leave in your mouth. Unfortunately here the game stumbles too. Quite often. Into an abyss. Where you wait an eternity for a loading screen to bring you back to the action. The first Mirror’s Edge was criticised for poor controls and 8 years on the developers haven’t figured it out yet either. Which is a shame because when it works, like games such as Sunset Overdrive, Dishonored, Assassin’s Creed, Batman’s Arkham and Infamous series, where exploration and movement are put in the forefront of design, the movement in the game brings an almost Zen-like sense of calm and achievement to the player.

And in a world where those games exist, it’s not like the makers of Catalyst had nothing to emulate. The Up/Down mechanic is a great idea – you hold the left bumper for contextual up movements like jump and climb, and squeeze the left trigger for contextual down movements like slide and drop. The idea is you get a rhythm going as you move through the world, stringing movements together and flowing through the game. Unfortunately, the poor execution results in Faith falling to her death constantly. The biggest issue is the amount of things the left bumper is used for – jumping, wall running, attaching your rope, jumping off the rope, grabbing a ladder – compared to the trigger which is simply slide down/under and land. Quite often you’ll want to do a standing jump but wall run, or want to leap from a wall run but continue in the direction without jumping. I suspect the bumper isn’t as reliable as the trigger, and fervently wish I could remap the up and down to the left and right triggers so I could get a better flow going when playing. Another idea would be to have the facebuttons mapped to contextual movements, so pressing the bumper and pressing A would make you wall run, pressing Y would make shoot your rope out for example.

Speaking of shooting, thankfully faith doesn’t ever use guns this time around. One of the biggest complaints about the original game was the weapon sections. This time, Faith exclusively uses her fists and legs to fight. You’re meant to use the environment and your speed overwhelm the game’s enemies – leap up the wall, fly kick off a flywire, and so forth. And yet again, the game underwhelms with tedious AI where it just bunches together so you can kick the enemies into one another. You can defeat all the enemies using the same move (Y and joystick back or to the side). Every. Single. Fight. Some fights you can pretty much ignore, though towards the end of the game you’re frequently locked in a room and have to fight all the guards to enable you to proceed which feels like shoddy game design.

What’s most frustrating about these issues is the open world City Of Glass is actually spectacular, and you really want to spend time here exploring. The world is sterile, stark, cold and beautiful. Although it’s pretty much non-interactive – people stand around and exist just for you to interact with them, you can’t knock chairs and tables and ornaments flying – like many open world games, there are a heap of secrets to find which fill in backstory and give you things to do. My favourite was the screen hacking. After doing missions or winning achievements you’re rewarded with runner packs, containing logos and backgrounds which you can put together on the Mirror’s Edge website and then hack billboards showing your logo across the city and in your friend’s worlds. The billboards are quite often difficult to get to, and it’s fun exploring how to activate them (but not constantly dying and seeing a reload screen). Also as in the previous game, you can also set up and complete with other players runs, trying to beat their time or infuriate them with near impossible paths to follow.

Conclusion
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst unfortunately misses its mark. Following on from the first game, the ambition and desire is present, and doesn’t completely fail but doesn’t quite succeed either. Maybe if it came out 5-6 years ago I could appreciate it more, but with some many other fabulous open-world games out there to compare it to, plus a very weak story which lets the series down, it’s mechanical flaws really stand out, and it feels like a let down.

Pros:
The World of Glass is fabulous and itches to be explored.
When you can string moves together the game really shines.

Cons:
Stringing moves together happens rarely. You die because of the controls, not because of the game’s intention or difficulty level.
The enemy AI is stupid and fights are always the same.
The loading screen takes too long to get you back into the action.
The story is predictable and Faith feels diminished as a character because of it.

70/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

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The world of PC shooters was set alight by the introduction of Battlefield 1942. A massive amount of people could play an engaging shooting game that was fast, furious, and full of action. It shirked the realism aspect of other WWII games out at the time, and allowed you to fly a plane, drive a tank, then get out and shoot like a soldier. When you died, you only had to wait a few seconds before spawning into another soldier.

When Battlefield 2 arrived, its setting was placed in a more modern context, and new soldier roles allowed you to play a much more tactical game, but still kept the arcade fun of the original. Now that experience comes to Xbox, however the Xbox version of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat shouldn’t be compared to its PC counterpart, as DICE designed B2:MC for the Xbox from the ground up. It’s a similarly intense action shooter, yet provides a different and exciting gameplay experience from the PC version.

One aspect of B2:MC that is different is the single player campaign. Like many war games, you’re tasked with completing certain missions in campaign style. B2:MC is a little different to most in that it places you in the sides of two forces – NATO and Chinese – concurrently. Every few missions the game will swap you to the other side, and you’ll play a mission as the other side, complete with news broadcasts letting you know how insidious the other side has been. This negates the whole “good” versus “bad” ideal that so frequently occurs in these types of games, as well as allows you to experience quite a wide range of vehicles and weapons from time to time.

Each mission varies greatly in its objectives, and you’ll be tasked to blow up bridges or installations, defend an area, attack an area, and each encourages you to utilise a whole range of different troops, such as snipers or engineers, and vehicles. In fact, there are 5 different types of troop you can be – Assault, who is your typical on foot combatant; Sniper, who not only snipes, but can locate enemy troop locations with his “GPS Forward Observer”, and paint targets for missile strikes. There’s Special Ops, trained in stealth and sabotage, whose weapons are silenced. They also carry C4 charges, designed for blowing things like bridges off the face of the planet. The Engineer is Mr Fixit, who can repair vehicles with the blowtorch, and lay landmines to stop enemy vehicles. Failing that, he can whip out his rocket launcher, which is brutally effective against tanks and helicopters. And bringing up the rear is Support, acting as field medic, administrating health intravenously, and also able to call mortar strikes to devastate an area.

Missions help you rise in rank. The quicker you complete a mission, the less men you lose, the more enemy you kill, objectives completed, and so on, the higher your Combat Score. Medals are also awarded for doing certain things in a mission, such as Hotswapping (more on that later) a certain distance or number of times, getting so many sniper headshots, planting so many explosives, that kind of thing. At the end of a mission, time, kills and casualties are tallied up, along with any medals you’ve earned, and you are awarded stars for certain point milestones. The more stars you earn, the higher your ranking will go. Ranking gives you access to better weapons and equipment, as well as more health, ammo, and so forth.

B2:MC also allows you to pilot tanks, jeeps, boats, amphibious vehicles and helicopters. Run up to a vehicle, press B and you’re in and racing. AI Teammates can operate mounted weaponry, or by simply pressing the Black button you can switch to the mounted weapons while the AI drives. This is great for when shooting is more important than driving. However, the AI isn’t anywhere near perfect, and often drives into enemy fire, or occasionally gets stuck on obstacles, so being able to switch so quickly is a godsend in some missions.

Speaking of switching, something absolutely awesome in the single player game is Hotswapping. If you see a fellow trooper on the other side of the battlefield, simply pressing the Y button zooms you into that player. The player has to be in the line of sight, which indicated by the icon above their head turning white. This allows you to, for instance, snipe some guards from one position, Hotswap to a tank and attack another position, zoom into a Special Ops to breach a wall, and then hotswap back to the tank and roll into an enemy compound. It is a fantastic gameplay mechanic that works incredibly well and is a lot of fun to use, and it allows for some great tactical manoeuvres and is totally unique to the single player aspect of B2:MC. I just wish it were available in Multiplayer as well!

Apart from the single player campaign, there are minigames that allow you to increase your star rating by up to 3 stars per game. This include a hotswap challenge, where you have to hotswap from person to person travelling across a map; a racing challenge, where you drive or fly through checkpoints; and shooting challenges which test your accuracy with a particular weapon. These are also a lot of fun, and often more intense than the action of the campaign missions, and extends the single player game further than the rather large 20 mission campaign. For a game that is mainly meant to be for online play, they sure have catered well for the single player.

Online, the game is just as fun and addictive as both the single player, and PC counterpart. With up to 24 players Conquest is where you have to hold certain key control points on the map to get hold ‘tickets’, which are essentially remaining soldiers. The less control points the team hold, the quicker the tickets decrease. Unlike the PC version, you don’t have online bots though, just your human counterparts, so in that way it is a little tougher to capture and hold points. Capture the flag is the traditional capture the flag – storm an enemy’s base and steal their flag, and this seems to be the less popular online mode.

Getting into a game is pretty simple –Quick Match finds games quickly enough, and optimatch allows you to choose your favourite game type and map, although on the odd occasion I got a ‘server is full’ error when it said there were only 15 out of 24 players. I also got a few mysterious disconnections, but no more than usual for Xbox Live. Lag was non-existent, and voices were crisp for the most part. In fact, unlike other Live games, the talking was, 90% of the time, just about the game. Most of the players seem pretty serious about playing and having fun – there’s very little Team Killing, very little Griefing, which makes B2:MC all that much more enjoyable.

The maps are varied enough to keep you interested for a while. Some obviously suit vehicles more than others, but on the whole the maps provide a balance for all kinds of players. Snipers can set up on top of buildings and the like, but most buildings can be entered from below, and rooftops accessed by stairs, so there’s never a sense of the sniper ‘sweet spot’ that occurs in other shooters.

B2:MC isn’t going to win too many awards for its graphical presentation. It’s not that it looks particularly bad, it just doesn’t stand out. The interface is rather bland, featuring mainly text and a few 3D ‘army sim’ style graphics, but it’s not a shining example of a great user interface. The in-game graphics are solid, and the game moves so fast that you don’t really notice anything too bad, but it’s no Halo. Explosions look quite sad, as vehicles disappear in a puff of smoke, and often it’s hard to see where the tracers of enemy bullets are actually coming from. And there’s certain sameness about all the maps you play on, particularly in single player. However, there are nice touches, like smashed windows, graffiti covering bridges and disused city blocks, and the smoking remains of ruined vehicles.

Audio wise the game is pretty solid. Weapons sound different enough, and the clink and clank of tanks and other vehicles sounds authentic. Explosions, whilst looking weak, sound great. The voiceover for your fellow soldiers give them personality and vitality. However, one really annoying thing about the audio is the Chinese voice over in the mission briefing. It sounds like someone putting on an accent, and a rather bad one at that.

Conclusion:
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat may disappoint fans of the PC game who expect a PC port, but don’t let that put you off. It is still a fabulous game, with single players being well catered for, and online players having a similar, although more arcady and faster experience than their PC counterparts. And with Hotswapping being so damn cool and a hell of a lot of fun, it is sure to become common in more and more games in the future.

Pros:
Single Player well catered for
Excellent Online Play
Hotswapping is a very cool device

Cons:
May be too arcadey for those use to the PC version
Vehicles sometimes get caught on obstacles.
AI isn’t too good at driving.
Bad voice acting for the Chinese forces.

85/100