Titanfall fever has seized Ars over the past few days. I can't recall the last time so many of our editors and writers were this psyched about a new game at the same time. Everyone from the shooter veterans to the relative gaming neophytes seemed caught up in Respawn's hype train, and we were all keen on checking out the game's beta—concluding tonight at 9pm EST—ahead of a final retail release for the Xbox One and PC on March 11 (with an Xbox 360 version following a few weeks later).

When discussing the game, everyone here at Ars seemed to take a slightly different focus in terms of what they found interesting about Titanfall's unique mix of team-based shooting, parkour-style platforming, and giant mech combat. We've collected our disparate impressions here in an attempt to explain how we feel about the game's many changes to the familiar first-person shooter formula.

The smart pistol is a smart addition

By Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland

Here's a common situation for me in most first-person shooters: I stumble upon some random wandering player who's running through the map, completely unaware of my presence. I take advantage of my surprise position and let loose a spray of bullets toward him. I get in a few hits, but my general lack of fine aiming control means he survives the first volley and now recognizes my presence. He returns fire and manages to kill me just as I'm reloading and scrambling for cover, maintaining a few slivers of health for himself.

Here's a common situation for me in the Titanfall: I stumble upon some random wandering player who's running through the map, completely unaware of my presence. I tail him carefully, keeping him in my sights for the few seconds my smart pistol needs to achieve three "locks" on his position. When the red circle appears over my target's head I squeeze the right trigger, killing him instantly with a homing headshot.

Judging by the general Internet reaction to Titanfall, some of you readers are no doubt crying at the injustice of the second scenario described. Many see innovations like that smart pistol as just another example of the "dumbing-down" of the hardcore shooter experience, removing the need for the kind of aiming dexterity genre fans have been grooming since the days of Wolfenstein 3D in the name of "accessibility." First-person shooters should be about twitch-reflexes, split-second timing, and the ability to line up and fire a headshot in a single smooth motion, the argument goes. This new homing pistol ruins that in favor of skill-free, aim-free kills.

But after putting quite a few hours into the Titanfall beta, I'd disagree with that argument. First off, the smart pistol is not the skill-free option some have made it out to be. Getting a single-shot lock on a moving player takes long enough that you're pretty much doomed if your target turns around to find you trying to get a bead on them. The smart pistol has a limited range as well, meaning you have next to no chance in a long-range, head-on firefight with any of the game's high-powered automatic weapons.

Using the smart pistol requires stealth and planning to come at opponents from angles they aren't expecting. That makes it perfect for a player like me, who loves the positional and tactical play of first-person shooters but doesn't quite have the hand-eye coordination to keep up with 14-year-olds playing these games eight hours a day anymore. The smart pistol lets me exploit my ability to gain an advantageous position on an opposing player without also requiring the ability to quickly line up a shot on a moving target.

In other words, the smart pistol makes Titanfall more accessible to more players not by removing skill from the equation, but by letting players get value out of skills other than twitch reflexes. Not everyone is going to like that change, but for me, it just might be a game-changer.

Better living through map design

By Gaming Contributor Sam Machkovech

Titanfall's masterstroke is its balance between brutal mechs and nimble pilots. Yes, "masterstroke" is an unexpected adjective for a sci-fi explode-a-rama that seems like it sprung from Jerry Bruckheimer's middle school diary, but the game would be nothing more than a gimmick if it didn't sell the tension between the "Titans" who rule future galaxies and the pesky wimps who ride them into the sunset.

It's not enough to simply dump giant mech suits into a first-person shooter's toy box and expect magic; for proof, look no further than Halo 4's Mantis suits, which rarely turn the tide in online battles. So what's the key to the appeal of Titanfall's titular Titans? More than minutiae like movesets and weapon balance, it's level design.

Slow, beefy robots are a bore in open fields, and they can't possibly make any impact in dense tunnels and corridors. Respawn Entertainment's genius, then, comes from levels that split this crucial difference. The Angel City map's sci-fi cliché of a dilapidated, abandoned future metropolis offers every combatant something fun to do. Wide highways give Titans plenty of room to pick up speed and play Mecha-Godzilla, while dense, multi-story buildings and alleyways play out like paths in an anthill for the less robotically inclined.

The Fracture map, conversely, puts players on an interstellar mining outpost, where blown-up buildings dot a hilly landscape. Those hills and buildings rise and fall at just the right points, such that an army of foot soldiers and a trio of mechs can surprise each other upon peering over a crest.

Fracture doesn't offer as many good places for pilots to max out their wall-jump and double-jump powers as the balcony-loaded Angel City, but it makes up for that deficit with a lot of tight hiding places for pilots to duck under and pull off surprise, anti-robot assaults (many of which require jetpack-powered double-jumps to discover, of course). Even better, the map delivers a good spread of terrain, so competing Titans can dance, dodge, and flank around each other while taking advantage of some smartly placed barriers.

Plain old deathmatch modes feel good enough in the beta, but the maps do a particularly good job of splitting the mighty and mini in Hardpoint, the game's capture-point mode. In the beta's Hardpoint arenas, Titans can only reach and capture one of three control points—the other two points need to be captured by on-the-ground pilots. Once you're in a Titan, you can still make yourself useful by guarding a control point's exit, perhaps, or peering into a building's few open gaps and lobbing rockets at the honey pot within. You can even hop out of the Titan and set it to protect you—yes, your mech keeps working after you eject—as your pilot stands at a capture point's perimeter.

The Titanfall beta doesn't offer much in the way of truly unique battle modes just yet, so this twist to capture-point combat is the game's crucial differentiator so far. It will be interesting to see how other maps force players to make the most of their somewhat capture-nerfed Titans in the retail release.

“This is parkour. Internet sensation of 2004.”

By Culture Editor Casey Johnston



I admire activities that involve climbing, which places parkour high on my list of "things I wish I could do that would surely be the end of me." Much like other aspects of life I'll never get to participate in for lack of opportunity, courage, or detachment from reality (exploring an underwater city, operating a dinosaur, dying repeatedly), Titanfall gives me a video game vector to explore my love of running away from things in all three dimensions without consequence.

Titanfall features two main elements that facilitate a player's Mario-like ability to platform: a rocket-powered double jump and wall-running. Between these two skills, with a little practice, it's possible to scale most of the structures in Titanfall and get an awesome vantage point on the map without vehicles or stairs, making vertical play beautifully uncomplicated. It does mean you have to be unusually careful about snipers perched overhead, but I suspect that once we all get used to the mobility of the game, we'll get some better chases.

Not only do these moves give players a new way to set themselves up, but they also multiply the options for either pursuing or escaping enemies. In a game like Halo, you could run, jump in a beautifully predictable arc, or duck behind something—that's it. In Titanfall, you're almost always a few moves away from a building roof, even if that roof is three buildings away. Even without buildings around, the double jump prevents your movement from being so predictable that an enemy can shoot you out of the air with little effort.

Wall-running can be a little frustrating to learn once you're outside of training. Many buildings on multiplayer maps have overhangs—some even on each floor—that prevent an easy double-jump-wall-run to the top. And while the training prepares you to wall-run and leap between parallel walls, opportunities for those moves seem limited in the beta maps.

Integrating these moves into a game that is likely to attract players used to the comparatively staid movement options of the Call of Duty series may have been a delicate process. But for the amount of clambering I've worked into my play of the Titanfall beta, it tentatively seems like it was a successful one.

Failing in public

By Contributor Jonathan Gitlin

Who doesn't love mechs? Mechwarrior. Warhammer. Epic. Pacific Rim. Even Robot Jox. And now Titanfall joins the collection of games that let you take the driver's seat!

That sounds like fun, even for an occasional gamer like me, which is why I strayed from my normal gaming diet of racing simulations and downloaded the Xbox One Titanfall beta. Sadly, I'm almost too embarrassed to actually play it. The problem, you see, is that I suck.

Even when I was young and had lots of time for gaming, I was never much of a first-person shooter fan. What little skill I might have once had has certainly atrophied by now. Unfortunately, it seems the only way I can practice and get any better in Titanfall is in public online matches (a state of affairs that will extend to the single-player-free retail release).

Beyond the short training levels, I've got nowhere to make mistakes without also dragging down whichever team has the misfortune to have me. There's no difficulty setting to tweak so I don't get shot in the back of the head quite so often. What's more, when I die (which happens a lot) my point-of-view switches to that of whoever just offed me. That may be a common feature in multiplayer first-person shooters, but it seems needlessly cruel to an occasional player like me.

It's a real shame, because there's a lot about Titanfall that I like. It looks great, the Titans look suitably violent, and the smart pistol's auto-aiming feature makes me feel like Robocop when it locks on to multiple targets. Oh, and did I mention controlling mechs is always great? Maybe if the game was just Titan-driving I might feel less defeated by it. Instead, I seem to spend most of my time on foot, looking for bad guys to kill, before someone invariably sneaks up behind me and I respawn somewhere else. Then again, even in the Last Titan Standing mode, I'll often walk my Titan backward off a cliff and have to wait until the end of the match to respawn. Maybe I'm part of the problem...

You can be bad at a particular game and still enjoy playing it, but that sort of enjoyment is best found in a single-player mode, away from the gaze of pubbies and safe from potential opprobrium. With Titanfall limited to online multiplayer, though, there is quite literally nowhere for a beginner to hide. The hours I'd need to invest to stop being an embarrassment in the game would have to be performed on stage, and that's why I don't think there's a copy of Titanfall in my future once the final game launches.