Review: Titanfall

Ever since I first saw footage of Titanfall I had been excitedly standing by for a chance to play it. When a friend of mine got access to the beta on his Xbox One I went over to his place and tried it out. It did not take long for me to realize that Titanfall was not as incredible as I had expected it to be. Still though, when the game came out I bought an Xbox One Titanfall bundle and hoped that more time with the full experience would prove better. It did, but not as much as I would have liked.

Everything in Titanfall feels like it could have been expanded upon. The so-called campaign is just a series of nine multiplayer matches, one on each of the game’s nine maps, with about 90 seconds of voiceovers beforehand when you are picking your loadouts and some more sprinkled throughout the match. The story that Titanfall tries to tell does very little to engage you and feels incredibly contrived and rushed. There is only one mission (mission 8) where I felt they had woven the narrative into the match in a way that was interesting. For the most part, the campaign only serves as a way to pick which map you want to play on as there is no map voting system in multiplayer. However, even in this regard the campaign is a failure because each campaign level has an assigned game type preventing you from picking the game type you want to play on the map you like.

            The maps themselves ultimately don’t stand out that much though. They are nice looking when you stop and actually examine them, but the gameplay is so fast paced and you move so quickly with your sprint, double jump and wall-run/climb abilities you miss most of the details. There was one map where I had played on it at least 20 times before noticing that there is a massive ship in the background by the docks. Another distinctive characteristic of one map is that there are flying monsters in it. Unfortunately this is another instance of Titanfall coming-up short. They introduce “dangerous” wildlife, but they can’t hurt you and they don’t even get in your way. Instead they just fly away like pigeons when you show up. The only thing they do that is even remotely interesting the first time you see it is at the end of the match when they swoop down and snatch up the AI troops of the losing team.

            Titanfall has a number of small flourishes like this throughout the game. Another example is that you occasionally find a lone AI on each team engaged in a special animation, such as a Spector (robot soldier) picking up a human soldier and breaking his back over his knee. These things look cool upon first glance, but sense you can’t activate any of those special close quarters kills yourself and they can’t happen to you they are rather pointless.

            Titanfall is very focused on making your multiplayer matches feel like they have more going on in them than the usual fare. The one way that this goal actually manages to improve your gameplay experience is through the inclusion of AI soldiers. The AI units are numerous and very incapable; they are basically just fodder. This may sound like a bad thing (dumb AI) but it is actually why they work so well. The maps are fairly large, which allows you to make use of your traversal abilities and have everyone fit their Titans in comfortably. However, because of this if there were only the 6 players on each team the maps would feel rather empty. The AI serves as a way of keeping the action rolling as you move around the map. It also allows less skilled players to contribute to the game’s standard deathmatch type called Attrition as they can go around killing AI rather than players (player kills are worth 4x as much as AI kills in order to balance the two).

Another part of Titanfall that the developers nailed is your character’s speed and maneuverability. It is remarkably fun to wiz through your surroundings in Titanfall. Your double jump and wall-running/climbing also makes you think vertically and gives you numerous ways to get to different positions and go after your enemies. You aren’t forced to head up a set of stairs into a death-trap of an enemy waiting to shoot at you. Instead, you can drop down from the roof or leap in through one of the windows.

            Now obviously there is another big aspect of Titanfall that is meant to set it apart from its competitors, and that is the Titans. At the beginning of each match there is a timer displaying how long you have until your Titan is ready, which you can shave time off of by damaging opponents. So long as you arrive at or around the beginning of a match you are essentially guaranteed at least one Titan. Titans offer a fun change up to the action as they are obviously far more powerful than pilots. That is not to say pilots are powerless against them though. In fact you have multiple ways to fight back against Titans. You have an anti-Titan weapon, which can do a lot of damage so long as you stay out of sight and can be a great help when there is a friendly Titan distracting your opponent. Another option is to try and board enemy titans, which can be dangerous as it requires going right at the Titan. 

            Obviously the simplest way to take down a Titan is to pilot one of your own, but if you don’t consider yourself very good at Titan piloting then you can still make your Titans useful by having the AI takeover them.  That way your opponent has to focus primarily on your AI Titan as you bring it down with the previous two methods. You can also set your Titan to hold a position, which comes in handy in objective-based game types. Overall Respawn Entertainment did a surprisingly good job of balancing Titans against pilots and giving them a number of different uses. Unfortunately, as this is the running theme with Titanfall, even the Titans feel like they are missing things. There are only 3 possible Titans (one is faster with less armor, one is slower with more armor and one is in the middle of each stat) each with their own distinct Titan Core ability, but that 1 ability is all that really sets them apart as they don’t feel that different when you use them and they all have access to the same secondary abilities and weapons. I expected to be able to take parts from each Titan and build my own custom one or at the very least give it a cool paint job and swap out parts for cosmetic purposes, so that is stands out in some way and isn’t just another big gray mech walking around. I expected too much on both accounts.

Titanfall is a fun multiplayer game, but one that feels incomplete. When the game launched you couldn’t even create custom lobbies to play in with just your friends. There is no single player and the so-called “campaign” is a joke. If you are a fan of multiplayer shooters then you should consider Titanfall as it is one of the better ones I have played, but if you aren’t already this isn’t likely to make you one and there are better games to start with. I had high expectations for Titanfall and despite being a good game, it failed to meet just about all of them.

Score: 3/5