At its worst, Catalyst is sometimes too shallow and predictable in its message about surveillance and information-overload. You've been here so many times before though, in Airstrip One and City 17 and Columbia and Dunwall, and frankly I'm not sure how many more fascist metropolises of totalitarian superpowers I can stomach. It is the pristine facade of a dystopian police state the shining jewel of hyper-capitalism, striking and humongous and soulless, suspended under a cloudless, bright blue sky. The city of Glass is a glossy superstructure of skyscrapers, preposterously perfect with sandblasted concrete and shimmering billboards and a maddening lack of anomalies. Spare a second to stand and stare, however, and just like with the first game you'll come to an epiphany: Catalyst is distractingly beautiful. It’s almost as if the game is telling you to keep up. The on-screen hints of where to go next, meanwhile, come via dashes of red paint that speed off into the distance. Build up enough speed and momentum, in fact, and eventually you’ll enter a state where you’re invulnerable to bullets. Catalyst is unrelenting in its demands that you approach it as fast as possible (I genuinely cannot remember if Faith is able to walk at a measured pace). Lest enemies get their jabs in, you must play at speed. DICE has made standing fights deliberately graceless and tedious in a bid to discourage them. When sliding across the rooftops, for example, the attack command will direct Faith towards an enemy's kneecaps. "The combat is an extension of movement, so that melee attacks can be made from every single traversal move," Miller says.
Speed is key attacking whilst running at full-pelt will result in a haymaker roundhouse kick, and doing the same mid-jump will trigger a pounce manoeuvre where Faith uses an unwitting enemy as her landing cushion. Press the attack button in the middle of a dash, or at the crest of a jump, and Faith will launch herself towards a nearby foe. Like its predecessor at its finest hour, Catalyst will hinge combat on momentum-based melees. I ask DICE senior producer Jeremy Miller if the decision to strip out firearms is a massive commercial gamble.
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