Mirror's Edge Catalyst Beta Preview, Performance, And Impressions
Mirror's Edge Catalyst Introduction
Fans of the original Mirror's Edge will be happy to hear that a follow-up title is in the works, dubbed Mirror's Edge Catalyst. ME Catalyst revisits the dystopian world of the original game with a fresh new story that expands on the origins of protagonist Faith Connors. The beta test just wrapped up last week. It offered a brief window into the look and feel of ME Catalyst, which is the unofficial reboot of the original 2008 parkour adventure from developer EA DICE.
Back then, while known primarily for their success with the Battlefield franchise, EA DICE gambled on something completely new with Mirror's Edge. The parkour-focused first-person adventure game was a wild departure from the developer’s squad-based multiplayer shooter titles in both theme and gameplay mechanics. It was created using the Unreal Engine 3 and received deserving praise from consumers and critics alike for its originality and artistic design. Unfortunately, the original presented a very brief sub-10 hour adventure. While fun and entertaining, it was marred by repetitive trial-and-error gameplay and a lackluster narrative.
Nonetheless, the potential for greatness was obvious to fans, and in 2010 a new side-scrolling Mirror’s Edge game was released for iOS, which was ported to the Windows Phone platform a couple years later. With EA DICE still showing interest in the IP backed by a passionate and committed community, a sequel of some sort was inevitable.
HotHardware Mirror's Edge Catalyst Preview Test Setup:
![HotHardware Test System](https://hothardware.com/ContentImages/Article/2440/content/small_testsetup.jpg)
Although ME Catalyst does not launch until June, we want to highlight what players can expect, our impressions, and cover some performance charcteristics for this early beta build, across a few available GPUs