I love this review! Lol! ;Þ
Catalyst serves as a prequel to the 2008 game. Players step once
more into the padded parkour slippers of Faith, a hotheaded young
woman who works as an off-the-grid courier in the
corporate-controlled utopian megacity of Glass. You will be shocked
to read this, but something is rotten beneath the city’s glossy
exterior, and Faith just may hold the key to blowing this thing
wide open. If that sort of dystopian cyber-cliché sounds like your
cup of dystopian cyber-tea, well, you’re in luck.
At no point does Catalyst’s narrative stray from its
megacorp-approved checklist of megacity megatropes. You may have
guessed that, as a child, Faith lost her family in a violent
incident that motivated her to rebel against the system. Surely you
will do a spit-take upon learning that her allies include a
socially awkward hacker teen, a weary father-figure, a cocky young
recruit with a lot to learn, an inscrutable Asian organized crime
boss, and a dangerous loose-cannon “ends justify the means” rebel
leader. Your amazement will deepen upon learning that Faith is up
against a megalomaniacal corporate bigwig who believes in
sacrificing personal liberty in the name of the greater good. He
travels with a mysterious, deadly henchwoman. There’s a mission
called “enemy of my enemy.” You get the idea.
The characters are dull and largely unlikable, and most of them
seem pissed off. (I guess I would be too, if I had to live in
Glass.) I appreciate that Catalyst bucks convention by making most
of the story’s major players women, but it’s a shame that the
characters themselves are such a drag. Faith is still a
cool-looking, snappily dressed future-ninja, but mostly mumbles her
way through her own story. Her most likable ally, a young tech
savant named Plastic, is only charming fifty percent of the time
and only in comparison with her fellow cast members. The rest of
the cast is made up of gruff scowlers. One particularly shitheaded
questgiver kept badgering me over the radio until my partner told
me to “just ignore her.” Never a good sign when even the NPCs can’t
stand one another.
Everything in Glass is referred to by some sort of doofy proper
name: “DataTap,” “KrugerSec,” “HiCaste,” “OmniStat,” “GridNode,”
“BeatLink,” or my favorite, “FoodDome.” The intent was likely to
illustrate the branded vapidity of Glass’ corporate overlords, but
it goes past that and winds up making every character who speaks
these terms aloud—mostly sympathetic rebel-types—seem just as dorky
and vapid as whoever coined them. Welcome to your Dystopian
Future-City™, we’re your designated Scrappy Underground
Resistance™!
http://kotaku.com/mirrors-edge-catalyst-the-kotaku-review-1781085684
