I fuckin love this game. The story, the style, the gameplay, the music. Easily in my top 5
At the time a rare EA W. A fresh new game, with unique gameplay at a time EA was known for pushing out “sequel 12” for any other games.
I still play this a lot… and it is wonderful every time. 😊
Huh, is this the parkour game? I remember seeing it on Steam, but it didn’t seem like something I’d be into.
It has some combat, but yes, mostly it’s about finding a path from Point A to Point B without dying. That includes running, jumping, climbing, and parkour. It’s pretty great.
The combat was kinda required to be shoved into it, despite developers wishes, as I recall. So it’s not great. It’s not horrible either, it’s just clunky in a way that someone who doesn’t want to fight might do a poor job of it.
The gist is that you’re a courier for illicit things (like information,) and suddenly the government is cracking down.
If you’re remotely curious, and you see it on sale, I strongly urge you to give it a shot. Maybe the tutorial level and one or two more. And if you hate it you can always refund it on Steam.
I would have liked some combat element, but the suits in charge of the game were clearly pushing the “main character is ridiculously overpowered” thing, like the first time you have to fight, it’s you vs 5 or 6 cops armed with guns and you wipe the floor with them. It’s silly. You’re a courier, you can run fast and jump and you’re fearless, but you can’t take out 5 cops on your own lol. It’s not a Marvel movie and you’re not Black Widow.
Combat against armed opponents should be a terrifying, adrenaline-pumping thing where your main aim is to gtfo as fast as possible because if a bullet hits you you’re dead. If you see a cop you should be thinking “oh shit fuck fuck shit” not “oooh I can take his gun”.
That was such a delightfully pretty game. I remember loving playing that. Might give that another play through next week. Thanks for reminding me. <3 :)
She also wrote some of the tomb raider reboots and was an additional writer on BioShock infinite.
Specifically, she wrote the 2013 game and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Studio and publisher interference on Rise was so pervasive that she permanently quit writing for AAA games and someone else took over for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
That explains why Shadow felt different.
And why Rise was so incredibly by-the-numbers after 2013 shook things up.
Yea, the second one started feeling very resident evil 4ish. Which is fine, if you’re playing resident evil.
Some of the Overlord series too 🙂
Sir Terry Pratchett was an avid gamer himself and contributed to a few mods for Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim.
Lovely guy, really. So shame his works doesn’t click in non-english languages.
I’ve seen his books translated into multiple languages and fans of his that read him in those languages. I think with a capable and dedicated translation team you could have a reasonably close translation, though some linguistic jokes would likely be lost. Then again, a single Discworld book has insane joke density, so losing 2-3 isn’t the end of the world.
I’m a big Pratchett fan, and this is something i didn’t know (i knew he was gaming, but not the mods part!) - thanks for that!
Which is such a cool story.
Like Emma had been writing some awesome Morrowind mods for ages - she was involved with a massive project that brought children to the game, wrote some of the pioneering companion mods for that game - and then she got to collaborate with Terry fucking Pratchett on one of the best Oblivion mods ever made.
Well at least regardings books, Patrick Couton did such an amazing work at translating them in French, he even received awards for it
Wait… WHAT?!
Honestly, what an amazing person.
Cool article, thanks
Banger of a theme song too.
First and only time I’ve downloaded a video game’s OST to keep on my playlist.
Oh wait, that plus Vampire: the Masquerade.
Same goes for the sequel’s theme song:
I was just about to post a link to it haha
The first song in English I loved, I was 11
I played it and enjoyed it, but I don’t recall it having much in the way of writing! The plot felt like an excuse to tie the set piece parkour areas together. I mean, moreso than in other games.
I liked the overall cyberpunk theme and setting, and the idea that all electronic comms was so heavily monitored that people regressed to couriers was intriguing. The big evil sinister plot being “they’re training cops to parkour” was silly tho. That reveal was quite a letdown. And it was nicely punctuated by my fights with the evil ninja parkour cops mainly being me grabbing a gun from a regular cop and dusting em with no effort.
Sadly that’s often the way of things in games - writers brought in far too late, when the bulk of the design and development is already done, and being told to ‘just write something that connects these levels together’.
I’m fine with that for most games. I don’t need a strong story if the gameplay is great, it’s more of an added bonus.
And that’s never true in reverse. I REALLY wanted to play The Witcher 3 for the story but I hated the combat too much
I’m 100% the opposite, don’t have time for beautiful games without a heart.
To each their own, the only time I really care about it is when my in-game decisions affect the story.
I play games for the interactivity of it so if the story is told “passively,” I don’t really care how good it is as long as it’s not obtrusively bad
Sure, just love a good LA noire or bioshock.
Popping people in the head repeatedly over the internet just seems like a waste of time to me.
No judgement if you like that, just wanted to counter that “the reverse is never true” part in your earlier comment.
I have a few friends who used to go to game jams, events where you get a bunch of people together, split them up into groups, and give them a set amount of time (usually a day or a weekend) to make a video game.
Most of the people who went to these were programmers of course, and there were a couple in my friend group who were techy people as well, but mostly they were writers, artists, and musicians.
And the groups they ended up in usually handed up doing pretty well. Having the whole team there and involved from the get-go helped them make a pretty polished game, where a lot of the groups that didn’t have that ended up with music, writing, or visuals that felt kind of tacked-on as an afterthought.
Yup. It was a parkour game. I don’t remember much of a story either.
“They’re teaching the cops parkour… we can’t have that in this surveillance state distopia.”
There’s more story and lore in the comic books. I really enjoy its world.
Thanks for the heads up, did you read both series (WildStorm and Exordium) or just one? If both, both good? Exordium seems to have different writers.
I still haven’t played the sequel as I heard it was disappointing. What a bummer, there was so much potential there.
Fwiw, the second one had some frustrating moments but I still really enjoyed it. Running around the open world is really fun and the moveset is slick as hell.
I’d genuinely love a next gen sequel.
Beautiful game.
I liked the look of the city in catalyst, much more easier on the eyes
I think the city feels/looks more natural in the original. In Catalyst the city looks like it was build FOR the runners, like it’s a playground not a real city.
I just recently played through Catalyst and I know it was divisive, but I’m firmly in the “I wish it had another 6 months to cook and it would have been a banger” crowd. The only major issues I had were with unreliable parkour, which I bet they could have resolved. It was so close to being a winner if it weren’t for that.
The reason I quit Catalyst early was the insane loading times. The game just doesn’t play right when you’re too afraid of making mistakes.
Story-wise the original is perfectly adequate, I’d say even good. You can’t put too much story in that kind of game, it’s much more about the vibes and unlike say Doom you can’t hide lore in the environment either, investigating that would destroy the overall gameplay flow. It’s a well-paced game, but the quiet parts aren’t still the quiet parts is when the running is easy and straight-forward. Ideally, you never stop, and the points where you have to stop (elevators) are orchestrated to make you feel restless.
It was a seriously underrated game, my main complaints were too much clunky combat and not nearly enough indoor areas. It felt like I had to run the same outdoor loops dozens of times for what should be serious missions.
Edit: I really think the combat could’ve been awesome with some Ratchet & Clank style gadgets. Not the guns, but the things like the bundle of mini-robots that chase and attack enemies, or the sentry device you throw that slows down/freezes enemies. Feels like a good way to keep the asymmetric fighting where they have actual weapons but you need to be strategic.
As flawed as the original is, it’s one of my all time favourites. To me there’s a perfect harmony between gameplay, graphics (art direction), music and atmosphere. The soundtrack is easily one of the best game OSTs of all time. The story isn’t deep but the characters are interesting and the world has so much potential. On the other hand I love its “cult” status, on the other there was a lot of lost potential for a truly exceptional game franchise.
Catalyst is… not terrible. For me it’s just average and it never reaches that real Mirror’s Edge atmosphere of the original. It’s even worse today because it never got an update for PS4 Pro or PS5, so it looks kinda awful tbh, and I’m usually not too picky with graphics and fps stuff. Finished it once back then and tried replaying it a couple of years ago but dropped after a few hours.
The soundtrack is by Solar Fields. Amazing ambient electronic artist, great for chilling or even sleeping.
Along that genre I also recommend Carbon Based Life forms, Joey Fehrenbach, Trentemoller, Hol Bauman, and Marconi Union
Thanks, lord’s work.
Great recommendations. I’d add Planet Boelex, also ambient electronic artist. Most of his albums are available for free in bandcamp (Suunta and Misplaced Ep are excellent).
Yeah, but writing was pretty meh.
She basically ghost wrote his last novel and it wasn’t good.
Huh, no shit. Such a good fucking game, I never played Catalyst though.
Let’s see what my favorite 2000’s game critic had to say about it :D https://youtu.be/MqTreOK5YUQ
