I grew up playing competitive shooters like Quake and Unreal
Tournament, but these days, it's rare that an arena-based first-person
shooter holds my interest, as evidenced by the fact that I've failed to
connect with one since my tenure on the battlefields of Halo 3. I've
looked for new suitors, but my efforts to reenter the fold with
military-gilded games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3
never lasted more than a couple of hours at best. I thought they were
good on their own terms, but they didn't deliver significantly different
experiences from other games I'd played in the past. I came close to
reconnecting with the genre in 2012, when I thought I'd found a shiny
new friend in Tribes: Ascend,
but I was let down by maps that didn't capitalize on Ascend's style of
movement; they simply made room for it. With Titanfall's promise of
parkour-inspired mobility mixed with intense man-on-mech combat, I was
hopeful I had finally spotted my boat back to shore. It was another
military shooter, but one set in a futuristic conflict with massive
mechs that I could interact with by leaping into and out of the cockpit
as I pleased. If any shooter was to appeal to my tastes, this was the
one.
The transition back into the world of competitive
shooters wasn't easy. At first, I felt that I was unfairly at the mercy
of other players because I couldn't grasp exactly how they were spotting
and killing me. After several rounds and educational deaths, I knew
why: I was looking at Titanfall through old lenses. Unlike in other
shooters, gravity is much less of a hindrance when you have a propulsive
jump kit that allows you to run on walls and double jump onto the top
of buildings. While I was busy running on the ground, peering around
corners, my opponents were leaping off of billboards, scaling buildings,
and hanging on walls above doorways, handily shooting me when my back
was turned. Before I learned the importance and nuance of using every
inch of the environment, I was a sitting duck. A brief tutorial
introduces the concepts of wall-running, double-jumping, and piloting a
titan, which is useful from a mechanical perspective, but it only taught
me what I was capable of. When it came to learning how to survive
against other players, there was no better classroom than the
battlefield.
Thankfully, there were a few tools that gave me some much
needed aid, including the smart pistol, which I quickly learned could be
my best friend during a difficult match. This handy weapon lets you
lock onto multiple targets if they spend enough time in the pistol's
generously sized reticle, subsequently delivering lethal hits to ground
troops. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to spend more time
learning the ropes of movement and less time worrying about precision
aiming at the start. Eventually, however, the smart pistol began to feel
like a crutch that was limiting my potential. Given the time it takes
for the smart pistol to lock on to enemies, I would eventually have to
switch to less-forgiving but faster-firing weapons in order to remain
competitive, and that would require target practice. Luckily, most modes
incorporate simple, AI-controlled enemies, which are an easy source of
experience points and target practice, allowing me to unlock more
powerful weapons and bolster my proficiency with traditional guns.
Titanfall
also incorporates temporary upgrades known as burn cards, which grant
power-ups that can give you an edge beyond your current abilities. Burn
cards affect weapons, skills, and cooldown timers for both pilots and
titans, and they're doled out steadily at the end of each round, but
since you're working with limited inventory space, it's best to use them
as often as possible. Learning which burn cards are best suited for
your style of play is important from a strategic standpoint, as they
allow you to access weapons and powers that may lie five or ten levels
ahead of your current rank.
Despite having to learn a few new systems, most of the
competitive modes are immediately familiar: you vie for enemy flags in
Capture the Flag, you claim and protect disparate strongholds in
Hardpoint Domination, and in both Attrition and Pilot Hunter battles,
your only goal is to kill your opponents. Both titans and pilots are
targets in Attrition mode, but Pilot Hunter only rewards pilot kills,
which significantly alters the importance of titans in battle, making
them more of a means of defense than offense. Alternatively, Last Titan
Standing pits teams of titans against one another over the course of
four rounds. Fall in the middle of battle, and you're stuck on the
sidelines until the next round.
Attrition is by far the
most exciting mode of the lot. The mix of titans and pilots is thrilling
and chaotic, and though pilots are dwarfed by titans, their agility
should not be underestimated. In the right hands, a pilot's jump kit can
be advantageous during close-range combat, allowing them to mount a
titan (referred to as rodeoing) and attack its most vulnerable spot,
potentially destroying it and forcing the pilot to expose himself during
ejection. Sometimes this occurs when two titans are in a face-off and a
pilot slips in unnoticed. Less aggressive pilots may do well to use
their heavy anti-titan weapons from the safety of distant cover if
they've grown too familiar with the underside of a titan's foot,
however.
Marksmanship is an invaluable skill, but Titanfall elevates
the importance of environmental awareness, and this shift enables a new
type of player to succeed and revel in the competitive arena. The entire
world is your sidewalk as a pilot, but it takes an experienced eye to
recognize the subtle paths that run through the ruined cities, buckled
space structures, and massive, derelict airships. You can brute-force
your way across a map, but these environments are waiting to be
exploited by fleet-footed and keen-eyed soldiers. Experienced players
have a small advantage, but years of aiming down sights and
understanding traditional maps can't prepare you for wall-running
combatants with invisibility cloaks. It's important to keep moving,
because your opponents are just as likely to come from above as they are
from your side.
Jumping into a titan introduces a whole
other series of lessons, since you can no longer leap off of walls and
onto the tops of buildings like a pilot can. Unless you're playing the
Last Titan Standing mode, titans become available after the first few
minutes of a match. You can summon them immediately to your side if
you're in an open area, or the game will automatically choose the
closest locations with proper clearance for you.
Although
you can order your titan to follow you on foot or roam freely, you'll
undoubtedly spend a lot of time in the cockpit. Titans control like
massive soldiers without jump kits, but they can still be relatively
nimble when they need to be. Rather than solely marching with a heavy
foot, titans are capable of dashing in short bursts to avoid fire and
pop into or out of cover, and different classes mix up the ratio of
speed and armor to suit different play styles. Titans also possess
extreme abilities--like the vortex shield that lets you catch and return
enemy fire--which make for explosive and riveting exchanges between
enemy titans.
Once I'd grasped the extent of my new abilities, which took a
few hours, Titanfall became everything I'd hoped it would be. Fighting
on foot as a pilot with the ability to run along walls and leap into
second-story windows felt liberating, and when the mammoth titans came
into play, I was David or Goliath depending on the moment, and each
perspective came with its own sense of empowerment. Titanfall delivers a
compelling competitive experience by mixing these two types of units on
the battlefield, culminating in explosive and chaotic matches unlike
anything I've experienced before.
The only thing missing
is a rich single-player campaign. It simply doesn't exist. Titanfall is a
pure multiplayer experience, and while it excels in that regard, it
fails to form a meaningful link between you and its world. There's a
story that provides the necessary context for a military conflict, where
two human factions vie for resources and territory, but the events that
take place during the online-only campaign are largely meaningless. You
have no identity, there's no source of emotional inspiration, and the
sole motivation for playing the campaign--twice--is for the new titan
chassis that unlock at the end. These add a little variety to your titan
loadout options, but it's not so great a prize as to justify forcing
you to play through vapid and paltry narrative trappings.
Campaign
issues aside, Titanfall's expert mix of light-footed pilots and massive
Titans brings something entirely new to the competitive arena. These
systems mesh perfectly with existing shooter tropes, and the combination
of new and old has reinvigorated my interest in a type of game I had
all but written off. If getting back into shooters after Halo 3 was
challenging for me, I can only imagine how hard it will be to find a
game that can live up to the new standards set by Titanfall.
Source: gamespot.com
Rating: 8
