Mirror's Edge: Catalyst (2016)

It's hard to start talking about Mirror's Edge: Catalyst without first admitting that I am one of those people who absolutely loved the first Mirror's Edge back in 2008, flaws and all. I found the first person running mechanics to be surprisingly fun and strangely cathartic. I became addicted to simply running. And the obstacle courses that required unforgiving precision with the controls? I liked that a lot, too. Combat was clunky as all hell, but navigating through the levels was relatively fair. I didn't often feel like I was plummeting to my death because the game was cheap. I just screwed up. (In that way, it's kind of Dark Souls-like.)

So, there was always going to be a strong probability that I would wind up loving Catalyst as well. Some of the same things I loved about the first game are very much present here. The running mechanics are still fun. The combat is even smoothed out a lot more, even having elements that make it fairly satisfying! I'm still super into the visual style of the world, even if the whole "color palette based on terrorist threat level colors" schtick has kind of lost its contextual relevance almost a decade after George W. Bush left the oval office. Solar Fields once again slays it with their score. And I still enjoy Faith as a character, as well as some of the anti-corporatism story elements. All of those have carried over to make it a fun, enjoyable game. And I really liked it!

But it's hard to say that it's much improved outside the combat. The biggest, most controversial change is that they've attempted to make this an open world game. This has netted complaints from people who thought it wasn't open enough and people who thought it was too open! There are problems with what they did, from a strangely fractured map to the way missions were designed to keep players within a certain area rather than explore the world, but in terms of the size, it's fine. Mirror's Edge succeeded with level design. It kept everything linear. Players didn't get total freedom to wander around the skyline. Instead, the game focused on having players speed through each obstacle course of a level. Players were required to learn the course and become comfortable with the controls. Precision and maintaining momentum were important, because each level was designed for a specific thing.  In Catalyst, each story mission ultimately feels that way too, but much shorter and less memorable. Even more, there just isn't much to explore. 

Running from mission to mission along the rooftops is itself satisfying and fun. It gives you a relatively safe space to practice and hone your skills as the premiere parkour runner. But the side missions are neither interesting nor conducive for exploration. Even more, there's just nothing to really explore, frankly. Don't get me wrong: I love the world of Mirror's Edge. And to some extent, the free running does make it feel more like an actual world. But it isn't exactly like it's a vibrant world with a lot going on. There isn't really anything to do, and there's not much to see. This is a corporate world, after all, focused on removing differences and to, as the Network in The World's End did, "Starbuck" everything. It's a super stale world for the player, because it's supposed to be a stale world in context of the game's story. 

 At the end of the day, the lack of things to do (a common problem across open world games) actually winds up making the game feel pretty linear overall. I'd really be surprised if people who played a majority of the game actually felt like it was "too open." For me, personally, it was just the right amount. Enough that I felt like I was within an actual world, but not enough that I was regularly distracted with side quests. 

There are a few key elements to combat, though, that make it noticeably improved. The first and most significant thing is that they simply abandoned gunplay. You can no longer pick up firearms the way you did in the first game. This prevents any scenarios where there are too many enemies and you just go for the one with the gun, yank it away, then awkwardly try playing the game in a sort of first person shooter fashion. A lack of gunplay also works to further the idea of momentum being important. You can't just pick up a gun and hunker down. You need to keep moving! That means either fleeing when you encounter a group of cops, or it means fighting them by constantly staying in motion. "Traversal attacks" have you use your environment to gain momentum, thus making your strikes more powerful. These elements not only make the combat more fun and satisfying; it also makes it more cohesive with the central mechanics of first person running. 

Quick corner turns make running along a building ledge seem more awesome, but the biggest addition to the running gameplay is the grappling hook. Normally, this is a kind of boring extra that doesn't add that much to the game, but here it actually kind of does. First person swinging is surprisingly fun. It can also be very helpful for escaping security forces. The ultimate problem, though, is that it is pretty limited. There are a few sections where you get to use it, but you largely can avoid them with the fast travel option. 

The story itself is nothing incredible. It starts off pretty great in an accidentally meta-contextual fashion. When you first put in the disc, the very first screen you are brought to is not the start menu. It's an EA licensing agreement. You must scroll down the boring terms and conditions that no one reads, and then you get access to the start menu. The game itself opens up with Faith being released from prison. Before she steps out to enter the world, she must endure listening to a corrections officer go down a laundry list of terms and conditions she must abide by in order to retain her freedom. I'm pretty sure there is no real, meaningful connection between those two things, but given the anti-corporation aspects of the story, it felt a little bit like a shot at companies like EA. 

Otherwise, the story isn't exactly anything to write home about. They try to do the whole "Faith and her sister are on opposite sides" thing again, but somehow make that even less interesting. Even worse is that final cutscene. You spend so much time trying to ruin things for Kruger, the man in charge of everything, who has shaped the world into what it has become. And yet, all the player does is run to the top of his skyscraper. The cutscene then shows Faith essentially beating him. So when you get that "Mission Complete: Defeat Kruger" pop up afterwards, it feels rather hollow. "I didn't defeat Kruger," I thought. "The cutscene did." It's an unsatisfying ending. Imagine how much more impacting that fight between Faith and her sister would be if you actually controlled Faith during that scene.

In fact, the entire final level is lackluster. The majority of the game is so focused on forward momentum and speed. And yet, the final level features a ton of climbing pipes and using the auto-grappling hook that lifts you up. Neither really allows for the typical running gameplay that is the core of it all.

Ultimately, I would say this: I think if you really liked the first Mirror's Edge, there's a good chance you'll really enjoy Catalyst. If you felt underwhelmed by the first game, then you'll likely feel that way here too. I'm a bit more inclined to suggest that the first game actually is the better of the two even if Catalyst might be a more cohesive package overall, but they're also different enough in many ways that I don't know that it's totally fair to compare them.

There is one big similarity, however. As much as I love both games, they're the same in that they have a lot of unexplored potential. It's almost as if the developers understand that they have a lot of really neat, great, or interesting ideas. It's just that they don't really know what to do with them. There is a ton of unrealized potential here, just as there was the first game. By the end, you realize they clearly hope to make more games in this world. Certainly, I would like another installment! I just hope they flesh some things out a lot more than they have. 

REDUCTIVE RATING: It's Fine.

(Rankings from worst to best: Terrible!, It's Pretty Bad, It's Fine, It's Pretty Good, Incredible!)

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

WARNING: SPOILERS PRESENT

Having learned a bit from Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice earlier in the year, let me preface everything I am about to say with, "if you liked it, that's fine!"  (Can you guess how I felt about this latest piece of superhero destruction porn?)

Singer's latest X-Men movies have sometimes felt like little more than an excuse to unnecessarily explain a minor piece of canon. In Days of Future Past, the entire point of the film was to retcon the original trilogy so that they could either bring back the original cast or so they could have greater freedom to use those characters without continuity clashing. In the former scenario, it was immediately rendered pointless by the fact that the follow up films would not even be taking place in the same decade. In the latter, it was made pointless by the very film it was following! First Class already was an reboot designed to have little to no actual connection to the original trilogy.

This is ultimately the issue with Singer. The continuity of the franchise is almost completely shot, and every time he tries to fix it, it just gets worse. Plus, it winds up distracting from the film he has right in front of him. Apocalypse is constantly trying to be the convergence point for First Class and Days of Future Past, which weren't particularly well connected themselves. At the same time, he's clearly trying to set up the Phoenix saga, all while unnecessarily creating canonical reasons for Xavier to be bald or Storm's hair to be white.

The Apocalypse story almost functions solely to give them something to throw CGI buildings and cars at, that they need to stop at the very last possible second before the entire planet is basically destroyed. Essentially, that entire narrative thread feels completely unexplored and meaningless. So much of what made Singer's X2: United so good is how the villain is really William Stryker, and that he was used to showcase and explore the philosophical differences between Xavier and Magneto.

Here, there is no cohesion. Apocalypse just seems hellbent on ruling the world just because. Or I guess they imply that he's simply corrupted by his power, but who knows? They never really go into detail. He's just pissed at the world when he wakes up because he isn't ruling it. Again, Magneto and Xavier shine in their minimal focus. Michael Fassbender's Magneto is easily going to wind up being the biggest waste of talent and potential from this latest trilogy. It's so good, yet never gets to be the focus!

There's also no real cohesion among any of the mutants themselves. Apocalypse recruits Psyclocke, Magneto, Angel, and Storm to be his minions, but they seem picked at random. For a guy who complains at the end that his Four Horsemen are "useless," he has no one to blame but himself. He literally picked the first four mutants he ran into! Magneto is the only one who has any actual connection to the X-Men, and thus, has any narrative significance.

At the same time, you've got a few of the older X-Men (Beast, Mystique, Xavier, Havok) reuniting. And then there are the new people (Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Cyclops) who are starting to integrate into the team. Except because the trilogy took a huge detour with Days of Future Past, there isn't really a team to integrate into. The original team of First Class was never supposed to gel perfectly and remain together, but they never allowed the remaining team to become something either, which would have been worth it for this plot element in Apocalypse.

The lack of cohesion among characters means the entire film is scatterbrained and unfocused. Who is this movie supposed to be about? Is it a movie about Xavier, Magneto, Beast, and Mystique finally concluding their arcs as started in First Class? Is it a movie about younger mutants stepping up to take their place on the squad by idolizing and learning from the previous generation? Is it about a disconnect in Xavier and Magneto's philosophies and the way they view the world? Are we supposed to be empathizing with Mystique's complicated viewpoint? Are we supposed to care about the mutants ensnared by the powerful Apocalypse? The answer is that it's a tiny bit of all of those, without actually being any of them.

The other big problem with Apocalypse is this: there aren't really any characters in the movie! Magneto and Xavier are the only ones who have a discernible personality, although slightly limited in that. And really, so much of that is because those two characters got plenty of screen time and focus in the other two films! Singer has a tendency to reduce superhero characters to simply cardboard cut outs with super powers. It seems as though he thinks people like particular characters because of their powers. Sure, the powers can be really cool and all, but people don't like Wolverine because he has claws and can heal really quickly. They like him because he's essentially the no-nonsense badass with a heart of gold. He smokes cigars and says "bub" a lot. He can sniff out bullshit and is unafraid to call people out on it. He's rough on all of the adults, but is surprisingly nurturing and protective of the younger students.

Jean Grey and Cyclops are stripped of any noticeable personality traits and are instead presented as little more than a super power that is insecure about being a super power. They get no room to be anything else, which is unfortunate because that characterization is identical to Beast and Mystique from earlier films. Jean Grey's defining characteristics are that she is a psychic and she feels insecure about her power. Cyclops's defining characteristics are that he can shoot lasers out of his eyes and he feels insecure about it. Beast's defining characteristics are that he can jump around like an animal with some super strength and he feels insecure about it. Mystique is slightly more complex. She can transform her physical appearance into anything she wants. She used to feel secure about it; now she doesn't. But the other thing about her is that she is seen as a hero to many young mutants and she feels insecure about it.

Storm, Psylocke, Angel, and Nightcrawler fair even worse. Psylocke and Angel have almost no characteristics outside of their powers either. Storm and Psylocke are given no motivation to join up with Apocalypse. At least Angel got his wings fixed, so he might be grateful. At the same time, Nightcrawler is reduced to the teleporter used for occasional comic relief. The nuance of his insecurities are completely absent this time around, as is his desire to make meaningful relationships. And his religious faith and German heritage are presented merely as Easter Egg references rather than anything substantial.

Even Quicksilver has minimal characterization. He's funny and he's fast. Unlike most, he does have a reason for being there, more or less. Magneto is his father and...I guess he wants to meet him, or tell him, or...something? Who knows? They don't actually explore that in the slightest. It's almost as if Bryan Singer just thinks that the X-Men are just a super power with one trait, and that trait is either to be kind of funny or really insecure.

Only Magneto and Xavier are allowed to be somewhat more layered and complex. So much of that is because they've had the room to breathe as characters over the trilogy.

The writing is also all over the place. Featuring a number of lines that were either derivative of other films ("those with the greatest powers, protect those without it" isn't such a clever way to rephrase "with great power comes great responsibility") or dialogue straight up lifted from somewhere else ("I want to go check her out - check out the situation..." is a joke cleanly lifted from Ghostbusters), there are just a number of noticeably cheesy moments. "You will never win because you are alone and I am not," was eye roll worthy. The exchange between Jean and Cyclops that had Cyclops actually ask the girl he's known was psychic the very moment he met her, "How do you know what he felt?" could actually make someone groan. Then there are all those "meta" jokes. After Wolverine runs off, Cyclops says that he hopes "that's the last we see of that guy." HA HA HA! GET IT GUYS? HE'S WOLVERINE! THEY'RE TOTALLY GONNA SEE HIM AGAIN! And then there's that whole bit where the students are leaving Return of the Jedi and they're discussing which film was the best in the trilogy. "We can all agree the third one is always the worst," Jean says. HA HA HA! GET IT GUYS? X-MEN 3 WAS TERRIBLE! AND NOW I'M BACK MAKING THE THIRD INSTALLMENT IN ANOTHER X-MEN TRILOGY! HA HA HA!

AREN'T WE SO CLEVER???

But worst of all was that terrible line from Quicksilver, "Ya know, for a guy as fast as me, I always seem to be late," he says after a surprisingly serious and touching speech about how he keeps missing his chance to connect with his biological father. He ends what was actually solid writing with that line, though, and it spoils the whole moment. It shows that the writer and director just don't trust the audience is smart enough to recognize the point of the speech and the personal tragedy behind it. Rather than letting a good moment play out and trusting the audience to recognize the meaning, they have to conclude it with a line of dialogue that specifically summarizes and explains what it is. Many might just shrug it off as nothing major, and maybe it isn't, but to me it comes off as Singer basically saying that he thinks people are too dumb to get his superhero movie or the drama in it.

The lack of focus or time spent on exploring characters really harms the film. It lacks cohesion, making everything feel completely disjointed and, at times, pointless. Even the surprise scene at Weapon X served no real purpose other than to feature a Wolverine cameo. Seriously, what was even the point of that sequence? It has virtually no narrative or structural significance at all. The more you really think about each scene and what its function is, the more you wind up playing this game of cascading "what's the point?" questions.

Bryan Singer clearly just doesn't know how to structure a film. Even the one moment that seemed like good structure turned out to be incredibly weak. We are introduced to Nightcrawler and Angel in some illegal, underground mutant fighting ring where the two square off. So, at the end of the film when the Four Horsemen are fighting the X-Men, who does Angel get to fight other than Nightcrawler? There isn't a particularly satisfying conclusion to that, however, as it winds up ending with Angel being defeated after getting caught in a plummeting airship that all the mutants were on.

It's hard to say anything was particularly satisfying. It's always strange to see who Singer decides he's going to kill off and who he's going to pocket for later. (Does he really think people care more about saving Psylocke for more movies than Angel?) Storm's name isn't even used once the entire film, so when she finally comes to the X-Men's aid after seeing her hero Mystique being choked by Apocalypse, it's hard to care much. Even getting our first hint at actual X-Men costumes (sort of) doesn't feel satisfying as it comes at the literal end of the film.

Michael Fassbender's Magneto in Russia with a new family is, however, the only worthwhile aspect of the film. In many respects, it is reminiscent of Wolverine's story in one of his origin story movies. It's heartbreaking to watch, and further builds onto the tragedy he has already seen over his life. The pile-on really creates plenty of reasons to sympathize with him. (Although it does kind of beg the question of why there are never any humans depicted as being tolerant of mutants other than Moira. Magneto literally saved a dude's life, and the regular humans don't even seem even slightly grateful. You'd think at some point, exposure to decent, hard-working, productive members of society mutants would soften some of their opinions on them.)

But overall, it's such a small portion of the film. They've squandered the Magneto material and Fassbender's abilities so thoroughly that there isn't even room for a decent solo flick anymore. It's a shame because, as I've said before, Fassbender as Magneto has been so good!

Someday, we will get an X-Men movie again where they're allowed to be the X-Men, to do X-Men things, and to have something resembling a meaningful allegory attached. If you're going to make a superhero movie, then either make it fun or make it mean something if it's darker. X-Men: Apocalypse does neither. At least Batman v. Superman had some redeeming qualities and did some things pretty well.

Sansa Stark was right, of course. The third movie is always the worst.


REDUCTIVE RANKING:  God Awful

(Ranking system: God Awful, Pretty Bad, It's Fine, Pretty Good, Incredible!)

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013)

If you're ever curious to see how much the gaming industry has changed and what they think gamers want, the Splinter Cell franchise is a great series to play. From the slow, methodical, gadget-driven pure stealth gameplay of the early games, it turned quickly into more of a generic third-person cover-based shooter with minimal gadgets and more shooting. Stealth has remained part of the series throughout, but with Blacklist, it is the least significant of the lot.

Blacklist is not a bad game at all, even with its poorly designed side missions that can either be played solo or co-op. That was always going to be tricky to balance given they'd need to make it so the missions aren't too easy playing co-op, but aren't too difficult playing solo. Such missions here are all over the place. Some feel adequately balanced while others don't even come close. It's especially frustrating that completing these missions unlocks access to some of the better equipment in the game, which sure does come in handy with the main campaign.

However, it does miss the mark of being anywhere near a good Splinter Cell game. Blacklist is fun at times, but isn't consistent. The big promise of the game that they remind you of at the start and finish of every mission is that, hey! You can play however you want! The game allows customized equipment load outs that players can design to fit their preferred play style. So, if you're more of a stealth person, you can arm yourself with quieter armor and more tech gadgets. If you're anticipating getting into more firefights and playing more akin to Conviction's style of move, shoot, and hide, you can equip heavier armor and more lethal weapons and devices.

Great in theory, of course, but not really in practice. At the end of each level, you are awarded points for actions you took that fit a particular play style. There's Ghost, Panther, and Assault. Ghost, as it implies, is a style for which you simply avoid everything. Panther style sees similar stealth tactics, mixed with more enemy interactions. Instead of avoiding enemies, you try to take them out, Alien-style. And Assault is, as you'd imagine, is more of a head on confrontation style.

The problem is that the game constantly tells you that it's up to you, and that you can decide how you want to play. You get monetary rewards for your style, as well as achievements. They make recommendations during the load out to give you an idea of what to expect, but it's hard to know exactly what's coming. Despite regularly telling players that they can decide how they want to play, they actually wind up removing that freedom. Sections of the game require you to run and gun. Other parts require you avoid any and all detection, whether that Ghost style is how you have been playing or even like to. Early in the game, you're put into a situation where you have no choice but to dig in and engage in a shoot out. And at one point, you control another character and the game changes over into a pure first-person shooter.

Giving players a taste of each style might have been a good design decision in early stages of the game, but it's frustrating to have your freedom removed randomly throughout the entire game. There have always been missions where you are restricted in what you can do. However, those missions didn't totally change the way you play. Being denied Fifth Freedom just means you have to use nonlethal means to take people out, but otherwise you can still play those sections the same way. In Blacklist, they occasionally force you to play it outside the style you feel most comfortable with.

Which wouldn't at all be a bad thing if they didn't do so much to push the idea that players have ultimate say.

The structure of the game appears to be weirdly influenced by Mass Effect. Players control a Sam Fisher who is now in charge of Fifth Echelon, the new super spy agency born in the aftermath of Conviction. As such, Fisher is given the authority to put together a team who operates in a giant airplane that's always in motion. In between missions, you control Fisher around the plane, talking to team mates. When you're ready to select a mission, you go to the center and access the SMI which displays a world map with mission locations. You've got your campaign missions that advance the story, and then you've got co-op and solo side missions as well as online play options. Essentially, it functions like the Normandy in Mass Effect.

The story, of course, has gotten completely off the rails. Remember the days of actually compelling, grounded geopolitical stories that required the skills of the aging super special forces agent Sam Fisher? And remember when Fisher was always sort of begrudgingly doing things and was regularly irritated with Lambert and Grimsdottir and endeared us to his amusing sense of snark? Yeah, those days are long gone. The new voice actor does an ok job, but he seems completely absent of anything resembling a personality. Maybe they under-appreciated how critical Michael Ironside was to actually injecting personality into the character, because Fisher went from one of the coolest action heroes in video games to a wholly generic and boring one.

Instead of anything remotely grounded, we get yet another comic book type of story. The villain's motives are never explicitly clear. It feels a little bit like they thought they had just come up with a modern James Bond villain and thought that was good enough. Except modern Bond villains aren't that memorable, and it really isn't "good enough." There was a time where Splinter Cell villains made sense, in part because the stories were relatively grounded. Now, everyone is such a one-dimensional, nonsense villain who exists simply to be the menacing super villain to match Fisher.

They also take the super easy approach of using Middle Eastern characters as the public terrorists. It's not that that doesn't make sense or shouldn't be used ever.  In fact, Splinter Cell has actually largely avoided the Middle East entirely. This game marks the first time featuring an Arabic villain. It's just that almost every military-driven shooter at that time was doing it. The over-villianizing of Arabic people further makes it feel stale and uninteresting. We've seen the Middle Eastern terrorist over and over and over and over and over and over and over. So it's a little disappointing that a franchise that has largely avoided that trap fell head first into it here.

As for the game itself: it's fine. It plays very differently from the classic games of the series, but it's hard to tell if it plays better than Conviction. Things are smoothed out (even though they do that thing I hate - arbitrarily swapping control layouts from the previous game), but it's definitely more interested in shoot outs than even the last installment was. It's still ultimately fun to play on the most part. The inclusion of secondary targets that provide cash, which you can then use to purchase upgrades is a welcome addition.

It's just that most of these parts don't truly connect particularly cohesively. And it might just very well be the least Splinter Cell-like game of the franchise.


REDUCTIVE RATING:  It's Fine.

(Scale: God Awful, Pretty Bad, It's Fine, Pretty Good, Incredible!)

So, with the series retrospect concluded, I will reduce nuanced reviews and opinions to an oversimplified ranking list, going from best game to worst in the series.

1. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
2. Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
3. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (PS2/XBox)
4. Splinter Cell: Conviction
5. Splinter Cell
6. Splinter Cell: Blacklist
7. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (XBox360/PS3)

That first game doesn't exactly hold up, and certainly all of the PS2 games are noticeably dated. But the last three actually do play pretty well. It's a different style than what they became. It would be nice to see Ubisoft eventually get back to the series' roots.