Titanfall is easier. It may only take one well-placed shot to take down a pilot, and it’s not particularly hard to do. Even the standard assault rifle and shotgun feel devastatingly powerful, and a glancing hit from a Titan weapon can kill you immediately. Jump into a Titan, however, and things change drastically: you can soak up serious damage and wreak havoc with missiles and cannons.

And yet facing an enemy Titan isn’t an exercise in frustration, like trying to take down a tank with your bare hands. The incredibly nimble pilots can dart through buildings where Titans can’t follow, use cloaking devices to avoid detection, attack from any angle with their jetpacks, even land on a Titan’s head and fire straight into its robotic cranium. Each pilot is also equipped with an anti-Titan weapon like a missile launcher, so you’ll always be able to defend yourself. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to games like Battlefield where you have to choose a particular class of soldier in order to have anti-armor weaponry.

Titans and pilots each have distinct advantages

Amazingly, the variety of ways you can kill a Titan doesn’t make them any less of a blast to play, in large part because they aren’t walking death traps when they go boom. Not only do the Titans give you enhanced situational awareness, audibly telling you when you’re outnumbered or about to take massive damage, but they also protect you from death by prompting you to eject before they explode. By ejecting, you fly into the sky high above the battlefield and fall right back into the fight again. By stringing together a few kills after landing, perhaps bounding off some walls and blasting foes as you do, you can quickly summon a new Titan and repeat your robotic rampage. "You ride this wave," relates game director Steve Fukuda.