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Review: Titanfall

Pilot, your Titan will be ready in two minutes.

Through the cacophony of battle the words crackle through your earpiece. Bullets fly past, far too close for comfort. The blood in your veins flows with adrenaline and your heart almost pounds out of your chest. Your comrades swarm around the battlefield, engaging in minor skirmishes here and there. You see them fall and the thirst for revenge consumes you.

Pilot, your Titan will be ready in one minute.

Just one more minute until you can wreak terrible vengeance on your enemies. One minute until you can stomp them into nothingness. You’ve felt the power of a Titan before and like an addiction, you crave — nay, need — more. Inside those terrible machines, men do horrific things. But in war those who can stomach the terrible things emerge victorious.

Pilot, your Titan will be ready in thirty seconds.

You can almost taste it now. A metallic, bloody flavour at the back of your throat. Scaling a nearby derelict building you pick off a squad of enemy soldiers with ease. The building — long since abandoned — stands half destroyed, providing only minimal cover. A relic of the time before the war. You’re only vaguely aware of when that was or how this conflict started. All you know is this is the way of the world now. All you know is the thrill of battle, the sweetness of victory and the bitterness of defeat. The clock winds down. Using your jump-pack you nimbly make your way through the streets jumping between walls and climbing to the tops of other broken buildings. All while murdering enemies and narrowly avoiding death. The time has come. You hear the words in your earpiece…

Pilot, prepare for Titanfall.

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If you’ve been a long-time reader of Stevivor or listened to the Friendly Fire Show you’ll know that I am not much of a multiplayer gamer. In fact you could say that I actively despise online multiplayer, especially of the first person shooter variety. But Titanfall has made me rethink my stance. It’s familiar enough that those who regularly play online shooters will feel right at home yet different enough that rookies and veterans alike will find something to love.

I’m somewhere between those two extremes and I’ll admit it, I love Titanfall. It’s not without its flaws, but even with them, Titanfall stands as one of the best — if not the best — current-gen experiences available. I’m also Stevivor’s resident PlayStation fanboy, so when I tell you that the best current-gen game is currently an Xbox One title, you know I’m being honest.

Titanfall is a strictly multiplayer affair. Ignore the rumblings you’ve heard of a campaign. There isn’t one. In reality the “campaign” is merely a handful of the game’s maps and modes played in a specific order with the “story” being told via voiceovers during the countdown to the next round. No matter the outcome of the match the “narrative” continues unchanged. It’s perhaps Titanfall’s biggest misstep.

On the Friendly Fire Show we talked about how excited we were to explore this new sci-fi world, discover why these two factions were doing battle and understand how and why the Titans came about. If Titanfall explains any of this I must have missed it. Twenty or so hours later and I’m none the wiser. It doesn’t detract from the gameplay, but it could have been the cherry on top of an already delicious ice cream sundae.

While the campaign is a missed opportunity and an example of what Titanfall got wrong it’s a minor complaint. When it comes to gameplay, that’s an example of what Titanfall got rightSo many shooters fail to properly address balance. Deaths and losses can feel cheap and undeserving in these games. The unbalanced nature of play can turn players off (like it did me) and ruin what could otherwise be a fun game. Not so in Titanfall and the controversial 6v6 limit plays a massive role.

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Killing another human-controlled player feels like an achievement in Titanfall yet being killed by one never feels discouraging. Instead it only increases the desire to get back into the action, get revenge and mount a comeback. The tide of battle is fluid in Titanfall and at almost any point during a match it’s anyone’s game.  The limited number of human controlled players coupled with the AI grunts and the powerful yet still vulnerable Titans make it so.

In every match, aside from the 12 human pilots there are dozens of AI soldiers contributing in their own way to the battle. They are often cannon-fodder, but help to flesh out the maps and make the match feel more alive. Don’t underestimate them either. While they’re very dumb, they can take you down if you ignore them completely. There’s nothing more deflating than being killed by a grunt. In Attrition mode — Team Deathmatch — killing grunts, pilots and Titans nets you points which count toward your team’s final score. Grunts are not worth many points, but they’re so easily killed and so plentiful that ignoring them in favour of more prestigious pilot and Titan kills will see you quickly lose the match.

Titans on the other hand seem unstoppable, but in reality are not the invincible machines they appear to be. A skilled lone pilot can easily take down a Titan as can other Titans. It’s a delicate balance that Respawn could have failed to nail down, but thankfully they’ve locked it up perfectly. Whether you’re running, jumping and flying around the maps as a pilot or stomping around as a Titan you always feel a sense of power. The secret is to learn where their power lies and how to best exploit it.

Pilots are nimble and quick. Able to free-run between, up and over and through buildings. The freedom of movement is incredible. Upon first booting up Titanfall it will be one of the first things you notice and something that sets it apart from other games. It’s also important to learn and master this new freedom. Maps are designed almost exclusively around the pilots’ movement skills. By playing it like any other shooter you’re doing yourself and Titanfall a disservice. More importantly you’ll fall behind other players who make use of the pilots’ skills. They’ll quickly run circles around you and give you a quick death, over and over.

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Aside from their movement skills, pilots are equipped with a primary weapon, sidearm and Anti-Titan weapon. Assault and Sniper rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns and other standard guns fill out the weaponry list with new ones unlocked through the obligatory XP system. Playing into Titanfall’s balance is that new weapons are not necessarily more powerful, just different. There’s a surprising wealth of options when it comes to pilot loadouts and changing weapons or perks can significantly alter your play style.

Titans are massive, imposing and impressive. Watching your Titan descend from the stratosphere, hit the ground and wait for you to jump in is spectacular. Once on-board, you have you primary weapon, a secondary attack, a utility and melee. Titans can’t jump, but they can boost. Boosting is handy for out-manoeuvring other Titans, dodging attacks and getting out of dangerous situations. Titans are strong, but one Titan going up against two or three others is doomed to fail. The primary Titan weapons range from machine guns to plasma rifles and even rocket launchers. There’s a flavour for everyone.

Secondary attacks, utilities and melee are all quite context specific and should only be used at certain times to ensure maximum efficiency. The first secondary attack you have access to is a rocket salvo. Once fired it requires a cooldown before firing again. Hitting a Titan with a full shield with this attack is almost useless, but hitting a Titan with little to no shield will devastate its precious health bar. Likewise the first utility, the Vortex Shield. The Vortex Shield catches any and all bullets, rockets, missiles etc that come your way for a short period and then hurls them back at the enemy. Timing it right will see you destroy your enemy. Timing it wrong and they’ll destroy you. Titan battles are more like a delicate game of chess and those who carefully calculate their movements will emerge victorious. Those who rush in will be crushed.

For all its depth and wealth of gameplay, Titanfall is disappointingly a little light on content. The final retail product includes 15 maps and six game modes. The maps are all meticulously designed and varied. During my play time I never once groaned about one map or another. They’re all winners. Respawn has clearly spent many hundreds of man hours designing and perfecting these battlegrounds and it shows.

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It’s going to be a long while before people learn all the tricks and traps of these maps, but unlike its contemporaries, it’s unlikely that Titanfall’s maps will be as exploited. The nature of the game precludes it. So shifty campers beware, Titanfall won’t be taking your sh*t lying down. As good as the maps are though, eventually you’ll be craving more. DLC is planned and will undoubtedly include new maps, hopefully they are as excellent as those included on disc. While the 15 maps are brilliant fun and will keep you going for now, the six game modes are more of a sticking point.

The problem is that some of them are simply forgettable or not very fun. The far and away best mode is Hardpoint Domination. A capture and hold mode, Hardpoint Domination sees three locations placed on the map with both teams fighting for control. It’s a tense affair that sees the lead change hands many times during play. Upon winning it truly feels deserved. Other modes include the aforementioned Attrition, Capture the Flag, Pilot Hunter, Last Titan Standing and Variety Pack (a playlist of the other five). Last Titan Standing is another winning addition which sees each player spawn in a Titan with one life. The team with the last remaining Titan wins.

The other modes are more forgettable and after sampling each multiple times, I found myself sticking only to Hardpoint Domination. It’s easily the best, most fun mode. Hopefully the forthcoming DLC will introduce some other game modes. The six — or five if you’re picky — currently on offer do give a range of play, but at least three of them are mostly forgettable.

Titanfall is the best experience currently on offer on current-gen. It’s a sublime shooter that manages to avoid the pitfalls that so often plague other games in the genre. It’s fun, balanced and familiar. Yet it feels new. It’s exciting and that’s something that I haven’t said or felt about a first person shooter in years. This is the reason to own an Xbox One and it’s a major coup for Microsoft. This generation’s console war is far from over, but Microsoft has fired an impressive salvo early on. Sony will need something truly special to unseat Titanfall as the king of current-gen.

Pilot, your Titan is ready and I suggest you jump on board.

 

Titanfall (Xbox One)

The good

  • Incredible freedom of movement
  • Superbly balanced
  • Titans

The bad

  • Some forgettable modes
  • Campaign is a wasted opportunity
  • Single player purists will find no love

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