Just a year on from release, it’s slightly depressing that some consider Titanfall another of last year’s next-gen damp squibs. Respawn’s shooter was pointedly ignored in many of last year’s best of lists, and I’ve actually heard fellow journalists who gave it five star or ten out of ten reviews on release describe it as a weak or uninteresting game. But launch Titanfall on your Xbox One or gaming PC and you’ll soon remember why we all got so excited about it in the first place. Even after Destiny, Far Cry 4 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Titanfall is arguably the best competitive shooter of the last few years.
Too many people focus on what Respawn got wrong: the dull narrative, the failed attempt to make a multiplayer shooter feel like a single-player campaign, and the lack of destructible scenery. Instead, take a good look at what Respawn got right. Titanfall mixes two scales of combat together, with the fast-moving, nimble but vulnerable pilots on the one hand and the hulking, heavily armed and armoured Titans on the other, and makes each scale work brilliantly, and mesh seamlessly together. Controls and player movement on both scales are nigh-on perfect, and Titanfall’s maps – the vast majority are excellent – do a fantastic job of providing high-speed parkour routes for the pilots and open stomping grounds and choke points for the Titans.
The subtleties and balance of the gameplay have only got better with each new patch or update. The Titans might seem impregnable and overpowering, with their massive cannons, rocket launchers and chainguns, their heavy armour and their crushing feet, but Respawn counters with the pilot’s cloak and stim (speed boost) abilities, their ability to leap onto Titans and attack them from the shell (the Rodeo manoeuvre) and by giving pilots weapons that can do genuine damage to the stomping behemoths.
Getting into a Titan and kicking ass never gets tired, particularly because the game’s score to reduce the drop time mechanics turn it into a reward for working hard on the battlefield. Yet playing as a pilot is so much fun that losing a Titan never spoils the enjoyment. The groups of AI controlled grunts and spectres ensure that there’s action and excitement even when no other players are in range. It’s hard to think of another shooter where the entertainment to dead time ratio is so high.
Advanced Warfare and Destiny come close, but Titanfall still leads the pack in making movement fluid, effective and exciting in and of itself. Fond as we are of Advanced Warfare’s jetpack glides and ground pounds, there’s nothing to match Titanfall’s chains of wall-runs, double-jumps and seamless mantling manoeuvres. Playing Titanfall you’re not just awed by the skilled players’ shooting or sniping skills, but by their ability to navigate the map. Occasionally you watch the killcam replay expecting to see some cheap shot, only to be dazzled by an acrobatic display that saw your killer wall-run over you and past you, spin quickly as they land and blast you from behind – a move straight out of The Matrix playbook.
Titanfall’s biggest shortcoming at launch was a lack of game modes, but Respawn has fixed this through a series of updates. The basic Attrition (team deathmatch) and Hardpoint (control point domination) modes remain the core of the game, along with Campaign, Pilot Hunter, Capture the Flag and Last Titan Standing. These have now been joined by Marked for Death, where one player on each team is (you guessed it) singled out for assassination as a key objective, Pilot Skirmish, an eight vs eight player deathmatch with no AI combatants and no Titans, Wingman Last Titan standing and a fully-fledged, four-player co-op mode. Join one of the Variety Pack playlists and you’ll find no shortage of the spice of life, and it’s surprising how consistently well each game mode plays.
Respawn has also addressed concerns about performance – never a serious issue on PC, but a problem on Xbox One during multi Titan face-offs. As Microsoft’s system updates have given the development team more CPU and RAM resources to work with, stuttering isn’t so frequent or so game-breaking, and overall the experience has now become quite smooth.
Some might say that Titanfall isn’t the next-gen showcase game we were promised. It uses Valve’s aging Source engine, though with some modifications, and its lighting isn’t as sophisticated or its textures as bursting with detail as those in Destiny, Assassin’s Creed: Unity or Far Cry 4.
Yet going back to Titanfall we’re surprised how good it looks. The unit design and animation is fantastic, and the best-looking stages are ripe with stylish elements and nice details. The worst are victims of the kind of generic, industrial battleground clichés that we’re all familiar with from Call of Duty, Battlefield and just about every FPS since Doom, but even then they function as a canvas for scenes of spectacular sci-fi battle. The sheer scale makes Titanfall feel cinematic in a way that only Battlefield 4 can match.
To see it at its best it’s well worth getting hold of the DLC map packs, specifically Expedition and Frontier’s Edge, which in the Swampland, Wargames and Haven maps contain the best-looking and most innovative maps in the game. Swampland, with its colossal trees, water-logged ground level, ruins and higher-level parkour routes is nothing short of spectacular, while Haven is a kind of Titanfall package holiday in the sun. You can criticise the DLC packs for not including exclusive game modes, but we prefer Respawn’s policy of making new modes available to all players – not to mention its addition of a Burn Card black market that doesn’t involve real cash.
Titanfall isn’t flawless. Despite Respawn’s best efforts some weapons and loadouts still feel under-powered or occasionally overpowered, and while matchmaking is exemplary in terms of simplicity and speed, falling player numbers mean a wait to play on some playlists. Yet it’s still easy to find an active game in Titanfall, and the community is – by competitive FPS standards – friendly, forgiving and abuse-free. It seems a small point, but having had games of Advanced Warfare and Halo 5: Guardians beta spoilt by excessive trash talk and noob-baiting, Titanfall has felt welcoming by comparison.
The Verdict – 1 year on
Don’t listen to the cynics and the moaners: Titanfall was a great multiplayer shooter last year and it’s even better now. Its innovative movement and Titan mechanics put many more recent shooters in the shade, and it’s as fast-paced and addictive as ever. If you’ve just bought an Xbox One this Christmas, put it on your shopping list right away, and on PC it’s an absolute bargain. Titanfall might not be the deepest, richest or most tactical competitive FPS around, but it’s easily one of the most entertaining.
Original Review
How do you judge a game as hyped as Titanfall? Do you deconstruct it, check all the bullet points are covered, pick it apart and talk about the things it doesn’t do? If so, Titanfall might leave you wanting.
Visually, Respawn’s debut is a great-looking game, but not quite a next-gen benchmark setter. It can’t boast certain must-have features, like destructible scenery, evolving maps or branching objectives.
The much-vaunted fusion of single-player and multiplayer action turns out to be a thin layer of narrative that makes virtually no difference to the gameplay. It’s short on innovative game modes, and there aren’t even that many maps.
Yet the experience of playing Titanfall says something different. If you’re bored of online FPS games, Titanfall might make you think again. If you’re looking for something that’s about more than twitch reflexes and sudden headshots, Titanfall delivers.
Sometimes its innovations aren’t that major or that obvious, yet they come together to make a quietly revolutionary game. The guys who transformed the genre with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have done it again.
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