Now that NBA superstar Steph Curry has turned an emoji into a real-life adjective , we might as well just run with it. “Fire” is an apt fit for my first hands-on with Titanfall 2

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You'll spend a lot of time running in Titanfall 2.

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I played four rounds of the new Bounty Hunt mode on a map called “Boomtown.” In Boomtown, enemy Titans will get marked with bounties, which you can collect by melee executing them from your Titan or rodeo-ing them as a pilot. The biggest change to the gameplay seems to be the way the rodeo mechanic works. No longer will your on-foot pilot hop up -- or use the Front Rifleman class’s grappling hook -- on top of the enemy Titan and empty lead into its brain after mashing the X button to pry off its protective covering. Instead, you’ll drop a grenade down a hole in the top of the enemy mech and walk away with a battery.“You’ve essentially taken a chunk of its health,” producer Drew McCoy told me. Yes, rodeos are no longer quick pilot-on-Titan kills. It will take a while for a solo pilot to bring down a Titan all by himself or herself. Instead, the reworked mechanic encourages teamwork by making it so that the extracted battery -- now strapped to your pilot’s belt -- can be given to a friendly Titan to heal it or power it up.Titanfall 1’s way “furthered a shortcoming of Titanfall 1 that made it very lone-wolf-y,” said McCoy. “[This is] our chance to try and bring friendlies together to try and work together.” Studio head Vince Zampella added, “It’s a better mechanic to get that kind of cooperation.”The demo had two Titans: Scorch and Ion, both of which I tried. The former deals heavily in fire-based attacks: a mortar shell that explodes into incendiary flames for its primary attack (it packs a big punch but its one-shot clip has a long reload), a power attack with a cooldown that sends out a line of fire in the direction you’re aiming, a flame shield (similar to Titanfall 1’s Vortex Shield) that melts incoming projectiles, a defensive move that sets a radius area around you on fire, and an ultimate attack that lets you send out a massive wave of flames in a huge arc in front of you. “Scorch is an evolution of the Atlas,” according to Zampella, noting that the original game’s Titans are not returning and are instead replaced by evolved versions in this sequel. “As war progresses, so does technology,” he said, offering narrative justification. “We’re in the future from Titanfall 1.”Ion, meanwhile, uses a Splitter Rifle that drains its energy to fire up to three shots at once. Ion also has the familiar Vortex Shield, while critical hits to weak points on enemy Titans restore a bit of energy. Ion’s impressive ultimate attack unleashes an X-Men Cyclops-style red mega-beam directly in front of it, dealing huge damage.Titanfall 2 takes a noticeable step forward in the visuals department, with Zampella telling me that the engine powering the game is an evolution of the original’s Source-based tech. “We like to call it a ‘heavily modified Titanfall engine.'” It still runs at a buttery 60fps (I played on PS4), while the wall-running locomotion feels as good as ever. Titans now have to be earned -- they’re no longer on a timer -- so gun down as many grunts and enemy pilots as possible in order to get your giant robot on the field ASAP. I got a thrill from twice managing to land my summoned Titan directly on top of an enemy’s auto-Titan, crushing it instantly. Interestingly, the giant mech-sword shown in the pre-E3 teaser trailer was absent from this demo, likely indicating that it belongs to one of the other four unique Titans.On foot, I enjoyed the new grappling hook used by the Front Rifleman class. It has a bit of weight and momentum to it, making it feel a bit less video game-y than you might expect -- in a good way! I was able to use to to rodeo up on top of an enemy Titan several times, though a few others the same tactic resulted in me getting splattered by Titan rounds. The energy rifle of the Hardtracker required a bit of skill as you need to lead your target, but it’s good for impressive damage. And the third pre-fab class on offer here, the Countersniper, packs the D-2 Double-Take, effectively a double-barreled sniper rifle. You will, of course be able to unlock the ability to create your own custom classes in the final game.Ultimately, I came away extremely impressed with my first few rounds of Titanfall 2’s multiplayer. It refines the extremely appealing Titanfall core by fleshing it out with what so far seem like welcome changes. Though my one complaint so far, and maybe this is just me, is that every time I called in my Titan, he landed facing me when in fact I wanted him facing in the opposite direction, where the action was. It meant I had to immediately do a 180 when hopping in, costing me a few precious seconds in a battle.As for the single-player campaign, on paper it is most welcome, but I did not get to see it outside of the trailer, nor did I play it. Zampella promised that “you don’t have to have played Titanfall 1 to understand anything,” and that “it’s a fairly long experience.” According to McCoy, “It’s meaty, memorable, and offline. It’s definitely not training mode in multiplayer with bots.”So can we expect to see cross-pollination between the game's two halves, i.e. monsters from single-player crossing over to multiplayer and elements of multiplayer (like multiple Titan types) appearing in the campaign? “There’s some cross-pollination, but there’s some stuff that’s unique to each mode,” Zampella said. “It’s such a different gameplay design than you’d expect from a single-player FPS of 2016,” added McCoy. “Our designers asked themselves, ‘What’s fun in Titanfall to do by yourself?’ And that taught the designers a lot about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a very gameplay driven experience.”Finally, I asked about the multiplayer stress test Zampella announced on stage at the EA Play conference. While he didn’t confirm any platforms, he did say, “You want to get as many people as possible to stress test.” Added McCoy: “We really need tons of people to help us break it.”

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Podcast Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.