May the fall of titans begin!

Review

Played on: Xbox One
Released: 2014

I mostly played Call Of Duty: Ghosts earlier this year for my multiplayer fix on my new consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. After purchasing Titanfall recently though, I realise I should've picked it up at launch!

It would seem daring to create a new online shooter franchise in today's crowded market, somehow though, Titanfall manages to do things differently enough to end up being a refreshing title for the genre.



Titanfall is a pure multiplayer title, it features no singleplayer part. Perhaps this put me off originally, it focuses on what is clearly played the most in competitive shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield. That said, it features a singleplayer training mode to get you familiar with the new ideas, giving you an understanding on how the Titans work. A perfect way to ease you into the premises of Titanfall.

It plays like a fast shooter should, think Call of Duty, with smooth 60fps gameplay. However, the scale of the maps are larger than CoD, but smaller than a Battlefield map. The player has increased mobility compared to typical shooters, you can double jump, rocket boost for further distances and even wall-run! The latter being a fantastic parkour way of traversing the maps and encouraging players to lift their heads and use the height of buildings, rather than just fight on the ground.

Kills will earn you time deducted from your Titan deployment. A Titan, is a huge robot mech, which gets air dropped into battle after a certain timer has counted down or enough kills have earned you the points. Once your Titan is ready c,you can either make it follow you around, useful when you need to hack or take over an area on foot, or jump into it and battle other Titans!

Using a Titan is incredible fun, blasting away at tiny soldiers below or fighting a huge battle against another Titan. The game really ramps up the action, with Titans, soldiers and explosions flying past the screen. It's chaos at times, but a well controlled chaos, giving me vibes from the excellent Unreal Tournament games.

Maybe it's just the sci-fi look that gives me UT vibes, but I think it's the well balanced movement and fast pace that relies on the player being good at shooting AND moving. Campers will probably hate this.



Titanfall has all the standard multiplayer modes, although standard is bad wording when we are after all using massive robots in them. "Attrition" is team deathmatch, "Hardpoint domination" requires each team to control three areas of the map and we also have "Capture the flag".

More uniquely, however, are the modes built with the Titans in mind. "Last Titan standing", for instance, puts all the players in Titans from the get-go and the aim is to wipe out the entire opposing team. Losing a Titan earns you no new one, so the more people that die in a match, the smaller their team gets! Another fantastic mode, added in a later patch, is "Frontier Defense". This is humans versus waves of enemies trying to destroy a human Harvester building. There are four waves of increasing difficulty and it gets really hectic trying defeat all the oncoming enemies, fantastic fun!

You can also play an online campaign mode too, serving partially as a compensation for a singleplayer. Basically, you play through a set of story based missions for each of the two human factions. The twist to the campaign though: it's just online matches! Meaning that the people on the opposite team are players at home! Just like you, they're equally wanting to win. I really liked this idea, it makes you feel the struggle of trying to get a gold oneach campaign mission a true battle against other players, rather than scripted and pre-defined A.I. fights.

Talking of A.I. I really dig the A.I. soldiers Titanfall puts into it's matches. Apart from the other real online players, all called pilots in Titanfall, there are lots of these computer controlled soldiers and small robots on each team. These are basically cannon fodder, giving inexperienced players a chance to get some kills in. It uniquely rewards players with less skill and fills up the maps with more people, even though they aren't real players.

I also really like that each match continues after the match is won by one team; the losing team must get to an escape point and try to evacuate the map. Giving a great sense of rush towards the end to either wipe out the other team or try escaping desperately!



Are there issues? Gameplay wise not really, I found the game well balanced and the unlock rewards satisfying. Graphically there are some v-sync issues with the game and the lobby system is a little slow compared to the fast Call of Duty ones. While the visuals do their job nicely, the game is no real graphics pusher. It looks smooth and the maps have a modern and cool art style which I like.

The visuals do their job, but could have probably need some more polish and detail to compete better with other recent games. It runs quite solidly at 60fps though, which is the most important for this type of multiplayer game.

Edit: This game is fps boosted on Xbox Series X/S and now runs at 120fps, albeit at the same 900p resolution.

So, Titanfall is one of the most fresh and original shooters I've played for a long time, everything feels so smooth, streamlined and well considered, for making a great online experience! For me, it felt like a cross between Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty; great gameplay, exaggerated movement and encouraging players to improve not just their shooting skills but also their movement and path choices when traversing the maps.

The game keeps pulling me back for more, and "one more round" always ends up as many each time. The lack of singleplayer content is outdated view, but should be remembered when you are looking for a new story driven offline shooter.

Recommended warmly as a great alternative to all the modern warfare shooters that are online these days!