If you asked me 10 years ago what my favorite genre was, I would have told you first-person shooter. You can’t blame me, games like Half-life 2, Counter-Strike 1.6, and Battlefield 1942 had brought the genre to unimaginable heights. I fondly remember spending countless hours perfecting my aim in Counter-Strike just so that next time I stepped into a competitive match I would be an even more formidable opponent.
Since then seldom have I found a shooter that compels me to be great. However, Titanfall is here and promises a bold new online shooter experience. Has it landed on its mark?
When you boot up Titanfall, you may be surprised to find that there is no single-player campaign. What Respawn Entertainment has opted to do is present the narrative through the multiplayer experience. You get to play nine missions on the game’s two separate factions: IMC and Militia. Across the 18 total missions you’ll watch some short cutscenes and hear audio logs. While It’s an interesting concept that could have been powerful, the way it’s presented makes it feel like an afterthought. It never really seems like more than playing preset matches with some dialog thrown in.
Really though, Titanfall isn’t here to immerse you in a story, it’s here to do what juggernauts like Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Counter-Strike did: provide you with an enthralling online shooter experience. In that regard, it succeeds in a big way.
Running around as a Pilot in Titanfall is a riveting affair. Movement is silky smooth and fast-paced. You can scale the game’s vertical maps using an extensive toolkit which includes being able to run on walls and even double jumping. This ‘parkour’ style of gameplay lends itself well to Titanfall‘s sci-fi atmosphere where twitchy shooting mechanics are predominant. After an hour or two of building up some dexterity in your fingers, you’ll regularly find yourself experiencing highlight-reel moments. You’ll want to have recording software ready (in the case of the Xbox One you can just say ‘Xbox record that’).
Pilot gameplay could stand on its own two feet, but Respawn has dropped in 20 foot tall mechanical walkers it calls Titans. Similar to the pilot, you get to define a Titan loadout including its weaponry, equipment, etc. No matter how poorly or well you do during the course of a match, you will get a titan. When that happens, you’ll have an opportunity to make a sizeable impact on the match provided you skillfully control your bi-pedal monster.
Titans add a sense of epic-ness to the game that few shooters are able to deliver. They’re large, very well animated, and are capable of causing some huge explosions that demonstrate the game’s excellent audio well. As fun as they are to control, it’s summoning them that’s even better. You get to choose where the Titan falls from the sky, and whatever it lands on is crushed under its weight (as you can see here in my highlight video). Once you hop into the Titan you’re treated to one of many noteworthy animations where your Pilot is lifted into the control pod. When that happens, you’ll be amped up and ready to make your presence known to the opposing team.
Leading up to the titan becoming available, an operator will alert you to how long it’ll be until you have access to your Titan. Among several other things employed in the game, it gets your heart racing for what you know is to come. You can reduce that cooldown by killing other players or the game’s abundance of bots. These bots are an interesting idea that has significant impact on the game experience. While they aren’t intelligent by any stretch of the imagination—seriously, they’re idiots—, they are a source of quick experience and reduce the cooldown for your next titan drop. In that sense, they function extremely well. If only they stayed in school.
Respawn deserves to be commended for the balance it’s achieved in Titanfall. Players who perform well are rewarded, but not nearly as heavily as in a game like Call of Duty where a high kill count killstreak will essentially win the match. Every player being guaranteed a titan and also being able to kill bots to score some easy points leads to Titanfall being one of the most consistently gratifying shooters in FPS history. Seldom do you play a match where you end the game frustrated. You might not be at the top of the scoreboard, but you’ll feel like you aided your team in one form or another even on your worst day.
For those who opt for competitive oriented games, Titanfall fits in that space well. It doesn’t suffer from balance issues and is a delight to watch for spectators. For those who just enjoy their FPS on a Friday night with their favorite beverage, Titanfall is delightful. As long as you belong to the audience that finds value in playing online with other players with no single-player or co-op refuge, you’re unlikely to walk away without a smile on your face.
Playing on the Xbox One version I experienced some issues with framerate drops and screen tearing. These may or may not impact your experience on the Xbox 360 or PC version. Also, while the presentation is great, the visual detail doesn’t meet the high standards of a next-gen 2014 game. Desert maps in particular highlight the game’s ordinary shadows and shaders. This is only made up for somewhat by the game’s clean menus and fantastic animation quality.
Content is hit and miss in Titanfall. There are a few different game modes including the traditional Capture the Flag and Hardpoint styles of play, but there’s nothing really creative to mix things up. The Last Titan Standing mode can be fun if you prefer piloting your Titan over Pilot play. It launches with 14 maps of which I’ve found to be a high mark. Respawn has some great map designers because I can only think of one map that I didn’t find to be stellar.
Titanfall is the best online shooter I’ve played in a long time. I can’t recall the last time I played any online game for that matter that knew how to prioritize entertainment so well. If luck doesn’t go my way, I still walk out of the match feeling like a hero. If I’m on my game, Titans are no match for my agility, and the opposing team will have difficulty tracking my Pilot as I weave my way around buildings at blazingly fast speed.
If you squint and look closely you’ll find some technical problems, and the lack of gameplay modes limits its staying power. But it throws impactful punches where it counts the most. If you enjoy online shooters, this is one you absolutely can’t miss.
Jonathan Leack is the Gaming Editor for CraveOnline. You can follow him on Twitter @jleack.
Xbox One copy provided by publisher. Titanfall is available on Xbox One, PC, and Xbox 360.
