Mirror's Edge Catalyst

Mirror's Edge wasn't quite a great game, but there was something there underneath the rough edges, something special, that made it one of the standout games of its year. As is so often the case with forced sequels, Catalyst misunderstands the brilliance of the original, taking the surface elements of that game whilst leaving the soul behind and plopping them into a generic open-world framework, adding next to nothing in the process. The fundamental parkour gameplay is as good as you remember it being and recaptures that exciting, fresh feeling that the first game had in spades, but everything else is uninspired to varying degrees: the banal cookie-cutter world that you will find yourself endlessly circling the same stretches of, the side content/collectibles that are a repetitive chore to work through, the characters who are irritating stereotypes (Faith in the original was hardly a fleshed-out character but had a compelling moodiness; here, she's more like a bratty teenager) and the dialogue which is genuinely awful at times and sounds written-by-committee to within an inch of its life.

Despite the entertainment of the parkouring, this is a thoroughly mediocre experience and to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum, the game designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could make an open world Mirror's Edge game, they didn't stop to think if they should.