Mirrors Edge Catalyst

Mirror's Edge built up a devoted fanbase when it first launched back in 2007, but those devotees have had to wait a long time for a sequel. Nearly 10 years later, a whole new generation is being introduced to Faith and the beautiful futuristic city she inhabits. Like it's predecessor, Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a first-person parkour game with a dash of combat mixed in for good measure. The emphasis is squarely on movement, with both the environments and Faith's move set designed to keep players flowing swiftly across the game's rooftops. The first-person perspective creates an immediacy that's rarely seen in platform games. Seeing Faith's hands and feet flick into your eyeline - or flail on a big jump - enables the player to really inhabit the protagonist. Runner's Vision helps with this, giving visual clues in red to show the player what aspects of the environment they might use to make their next move and keep up that precious momentum. Once again the environment is the other star of the game, with the clean, smooth surfaces of the city subtly shifting as the player moves from one area to the next, at times making the environment border on abstraction. Developer DICE has made the most of current-generation hardware to open up the world, ditching the linear missions of the first game to make the environment a sandbox that the player can explore at their leisure. Beyond the various story and side missions, DICE has also thrown in an online mode that enables players to create and share their own rooftop parkour courses that will, no doubt, lead to some strange and creative content.