Titanfall – a touching love story behind man and machine

It’s one of the biggest games of the year, and the most important Xbox One exclusive so far, but what does Titanfall get right and wrong?

We already reviewed Titanfall earlier in the week, and you can read our full verdict here, but if you want the short version we’ve provided a quick rundown of the best and worst of EA’s new shooter.

Of course the big question now is whether it’ll actually work on launch day, considering it’s an online-only game, but even assuming it’s up and running without any problems do the positives outweigh the negatives (hint: they do)?



PROS:


It’s actually something new. It might be a first person shooter very much in the Call Of Duty mould, but not only is Titanfall not a sequel but it’s also not a modern day military sim and it does have plenty of new ideas. It doesn’t look or play like anything else out there and yet isn’t so abstract or weird that anyone can’t immediately sit down and start playing it. Which makes it pretty much unique amongst other big budget games at the moment.

Being a 20 foot giant robot is awesome. Titanfall’s first big new idea is that you can pilot your own robot exoskeleton, called a titan. Usually in games giant robots are slow and fiddly to control, but apart from not being able to jump the titans handle just like a regular soldier. Except they can take a lot more damage than mere humans and the average squaddie doesn’t get to shoot heat-seeking rockets from his shoulder, before pulling the arms off a rival mech and squashing grunts for fun.

Forget Mirror’s Edge, the game has the best first person platforming ever. Platform games usually never work from a first person view because it’s really difficult to judge where your body is in relationship to where you’re jumping – which is why so many of them are still 2D. Titanfall though finally gets it right, and by giving you a jetpack you can double jump and wall run just like the Prince of Persia. Except while wielding smart pistols and rocket launchers instead of a scimitar.

Respawn know what they’re doing. Many of the people working at developer Respawn came from Call Of Duty creator Infinity Ward, so it’s a given that the controls and game balancing are absolutely pitch perfect. In fact they’re such sticklers for accuracy that they actually got Microsoft to change the sensitivity of the Xbox One controller just for them. Everything in Titanfall feels like it’s been tested and fine-tuned to perfection, with nothing left to chance.

There are tons of maps and they’re all really good. You get 15 maps with Titanfall, which is a lot more than most multiplayer games – and yet there’s not a stinker amongst them. Some are better than others of course but they’ve all been expertly crafted not only according to the usual requirements of first person shooters but to accommodate both the titans and the parkour abilities of the Pilots. Plus they’re really easy to learn your way around, with identifiable landmarks and no bottlenecks.



CONS:

There’s no single-player mode. Everyone’s known this since the game was first announced but it’s worth repeating because some people are still acting surprised about it. What is genuinely unexpected though is how bad the campaign multiplayer is. This was supposed to merge ‘cinematic storytelling’ with traditional multiplayer but all it’s ended up as is a bunch of actors jabbering over the radio about nothing of consequence, and putting you off when you’re trying to play.

There’s not enough play modes. Titanfall’s main multiplayer option only has five play modes: versions of Team Deathmatch, Conquest, and Capture the Flag; plus a knockout mode where everyone’s in a titan and another where you only win by killing Pilots. And that’s it. Compared to some other games that’s not bad, but with the campaign multiplayer being a wash it’s disappointing. Especially as none of them are anywhere near as innovative as the actual gameplay.

You don’t get to paint your titan red and blue and call it Optimus Prime. In fact there are no customisation options at all beyond picking what gender you play as. You can outfit your character with different weapons, perks, and equipment but you can’t change anything about what they look like or personalise them in any way. You can’t even do something as simple as rename the custom loadouts.

The graphics aren’t that great. According to Respawn Titanfall was never originally designed with the Xbox One in mind, and it shows. Although the graphics aren’t by any means bad they only look like a slightly beefed up Xbox 360 game, with nothing much to show off the power of your new console. There’s even some slowdown and screen tearing problems, although thankfully they’re relatively rare.


The Titanfall universe is incredibly bland. Fighting people with giant robots and jetpacking around the galaxy are great but the fiction explaining why you’re doing all this is awful. It all feels like a thought experiment to write the most generic sci-fi story, and the most one-dimensional characters, possible. That’s part of why the campaign multiplayer is so lame but the art design is also very unimaginative and looks like it could’ve come from any other game or movie in the last several decades.

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