Mirror’s Edge Catalyst: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Do the Races and Deliveries

When you’re first starting out in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, you’ll probably need a little while to get accustomed to the parkour gameplay and mechanics. The best way to get comfortable with the game’s controls is to try your hand at some of the side missions available in the city of Glass. Simply pull up your map, and you should see some yellow icons, indicating races that you can attempt. There will also be NPCs standing around, asking you to do some fragile deliveries for them.

These deliveries will require you to get from one point to another within a certain time limit. They’re actually pretty challenging, so don’t expect to complete most of these on your first try. However, these will give you a good grasp of the controls, and teach you the basics of jumping and wall running.

Don’t Always Follow the Red

When you have Runner Vision activated, you’ll see a red path directing you to your next direction. You’ll also see this during races and delivery missions. However, what the game doesn’t tell you is that the red path isn’t always the most efficient path. It might get you to your destination safely, but you can almost always find an even faster way to get there.

When doing deliveries, follow the path on your first attempt to get a feel for the route, and figure out where the endpoint is. You probably won’t complete the delivery on your first run, but you can start to look for alternative ways of getting to your destination on subsequent runs. The cool thing about these delivery missions is that most of them are designed such that you’ll never be able to get to the endpoint with time to spare. This means that most of the deliveries actually require you to explore and look for better paths.

Even when you’re on the run from enemies, some of them will try to predict your route and head you off. To prevent this, consider ditching the red path from time to time, and look for more efficient routes.

You Can Soften Your Landing

Faith is prone to hard falls in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and these can cost you many precious seconds, especially if you’re attempting a time-based challenge. However, you can actually soften your landing and save a few seconds. You’ll still take a while to recover from the fall, but softening your landing will actually shorten that recovery duration and also prevent you from taking any damage.

To soften your landing, simply hold L2 whenever you’re just about to land. Faith will throw her hands out to the ground, softening the landing, and also protecting any fragile goods that you might be carrying.

Get the Skill Roll

This is the skill that you want to acquire as soon as you’re able. Holding L2 allows you to soften your landing, but the Skill Roll will cancel out your landing recovery time and even push you a bit forward as you’re free running. This skill allows you to roll forward whenever you take a hard fall, and immediately resume your running. Simply hold L2 just as you’re about to hit the ground, and Faith will perform a roll forward.

You can also roll out of your slide by tapping R2 just as the slide ends, shortening your recovery time as well. This is extremely handy for time-based missions and also when you’re on the run from enemies and need to make a quick escape.

Choose Your Skills Wisely

Aside from the Skill Roll, which is essentially mandatory for all types of players, you’ll want to spend your upgrade points in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst very wisely. To start, you need to first decide if combat or movement is more important to you. If you’re not very good with the game’s parkour mechanics, or if you need help in being more efficient with your free running, the movement skills will help you out a ton. For instance, one of the skills allows Faith to tuck her legs when she jumps, and this will let you clear small obstacles with no problem at all, saving a few seconds.

On the other hand, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s combat can be pretty challenging too. Her combat skill tree will let you upgrade her health bar, and reduce damage taken from certain enemy classes, which can prove to be a lifesaver in tough situations. Take a second to experiment in the game and decide which is your weaker area before spending your upgrade points.

Collect All the Things

In order to get more upgrade points, you need to level Faith up. You can earn experience points by simply playing the main missions and doing the side activities like races and deliveries. You can also speed up this process by picking up in-game collectibles like Gridleaks, documents, and control chips.

Most Gridleaks are easy to spot. They’re large golden orbs usually just hanging out in the open, and you should definitely make it a point to pick these up whenever you see them as they don’t get automatically marked on your map. Control chips and documents will be highlighted in red, and they’re pretty easy to spot. Whenever you see a red door, make sure to enter it and explore, as you’ll usually find some sort of collectible in there.

Rest Your Eyes

No, seriously. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a beautiful game, but it loves to assault your senses with insanely bright colors and gorgeous lens flare. When you combine that with the high speed running, wall jumping, rolling, and climbing, the game can become a bit of a sensory overload. Not to mention, the game loves to trigger and end its cutscenes with a bright, white screen, and all of these things can cause strain on your eyeballs.

If you figure out a way to play this game for more than three hours straight without getting motion sickness or a migraine, do let me know.