Last week I had the (dis)pleasure of being available for the midnight release of Titanfall on PC (via EA's Origin). Now I know what you're thinking: "But Latency! You told us you weren't going to be caught dead anywhere near that bug-ridden, server-crashing, lag-inducing piece of filth for the first week!" Well, you'd be right except that money talks, and so when Tsaikotyk threw $80 at my PayPal and told me to go pre-order the digital deluxe edition, who was I to argue?
I probably should have though, because the launch was about everything I expected. I spent roughly five hours in the game client and about one and a half actually playing. The developers publicly acknowledged on launch night that there was a 'glitch' that caused the game to 'initialize' when searching for a server connection. This didn't mean anything except that the client was now stuck diddling itself and didn't care much for connecting you. Fucking called it.
For those of you living under a rock without wi-fi these days, Titanfall is the sci-fi first-person shooter with giant robots from Respawn Entertainment - a developer that contains roughly one half of the former team at Infinity Ward. A game drowning in so much hype that most people had to remove its balls from their throat before they could talk to you about it. "It's brilliant! Innovative! Truly breath-taking," and a cavalcade of other bullshit buzz words to make you think that this is the hottest shit ever taken.
Well I'm not going to burst its bubble so much as slowly let the air out until it's become a much more manageable size. Titanfall isn't a bad game so much as it surpasses mediocrity by a hair. Being designed by a bunch of Call of Duty veterans, Titanfall plays almost exactly the same. You're given pre-constructed loadouts of weapons and abilities at the start. By getting kills, stealing flags, dropping Titans and capturing hardpoints, you earn experience that will level you up and unlock more weapons, upgrades, and customization options. This is a bullshit system that I've grown to loathe about most modern shooters. Team-based quick-twitch games like first-person shooters are more competitive and rewarding when every one is given equal footing. The feeling you get from being a better shot is far more satisfying than the knowledge that you have a better gun.
That being said, the customization options are pretty standard. Both pilot and Titan loadouts can be customized separately and there are 5 slots for each (though those are also on lockdown until a certain level is reached). Weaponry is unimaginative. Primaries are the usual suspects: shotgun, assault rifle, smg, sniper, etc. Sidearms come in three flavors: heavy pistol, auto pistol, and revolver. Pilots are also equipped with an anti-titan weapon (various forms of rocket launchers), some kind of explosive ordinance (grenades, flashbangs, fucking bullshit satchel charges), and an activated ability that gives them some kind of edge. The only thing even a little unique here is the "smart pistol", which is quite possibly the worst and laziest design choice imaginable. It's a gun that aims for you by spending less than a second to lock on to a target and upon firing, will never miss. It'll kill grunts with single shots, but a pilot will require three bullets to take down. In a game about aiming at and shooting people, eliminating one of these two things is horseshit.
Titans are an interesting thing to talk about. Respawn has done an excellent job of making sure that the transition from being on-foot to stomping about in a giant robot is as seamless as possible. However, this means that aside from the sudden increase in power and new lack of mobility, there really isn't a difference. Titans have different activated abilities and explosive ordinance, but their weapon loadouts are rather similar. Rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, and snipers make up the bulk of Titan weaponry, and that's about it.
Something that actually does set Titanfall apart from your garden-variety shooter is the Burn Card system. Over the course of matches, players will unlock Burn Cards that grant them extra bonuses to experience, weapon/Titan damage, construction time, or activated abilities. The cards last only until death or the end of the match, so choose wisely before you consume one. It would be advantageous not to activate a powered-up assault rifle right before embarking in your Titan. Cards do have rarities and of course, the more rare a card is, the better its effect. The best players will have a number of powerful bonuses in their reserves, which just makes them win harder.
Of the five available game types, only three are really worth devoting any time to: Attrition is Titanfall's take on traditional team-deathmatch. Hardpoint is the usual point-capture/king-of-the-hill gameplay in which players are fighting for control of pre-designated map areas. Capture the Flag is an absolute classic and Respawn couldn't be assed to include a comprehensible reason as to why we're still fighting over glowy poles in the future, but that doesn't stop it from being enjoyable. The remaining two modes are Last Titan Standing and Pilot Hunter. In Last Titan Standing, all players are spawned inside their Titans and duke it out until one team's mechanized killing machines are wiped out. This can occasionally be amusing and a nice change of pace from the longer, more frantic battles of the other modes. Pilot Hunter doesn't so much round out the bunch as it does drag the game down. This is really just a less fun version of Attrition, in which only Pilot kills count, yet the field continues to be populated by NPC grunts. This mode could have potentially been saved by removing the NPCs or limiting the fights to very claustrophobic maps, but as it is, Pilot Hunter gets trumped by taking a nap in my book.
For those of you who wholeheartedly enjoy the single-player campaign experience of first-person shooters, look elsewhere. Titanfall is an online multiplayer-only game. It does contain two multiplayer campaigns but they might as well have just thrown that out as well. It's hard to care about political struggles unfolding through my pilot's headphones while I'm on the battlefield trying to avoid being shot at and/or stepped on. Respawn laid the drama on thick with its characters being so involved in the outcomes of each battle, and then detracted from the experience by not having branching paths for victory/defeat. It's very clear that while their claims of wanting to devote all of their resources to developing the best multiplayer experience possible and hence eliminating the single-player component held true, having the campaign exist at all feels incredibly tacked on and half-assed.
At the end of the day, it's true that Titanfall did a number of different things: giant robots in a military shooter, an NPC populated battlefield, a pistol you don't have to aim, among others. This does not mean that they're all good. Titanfall does have a good number of flaws, some of which I feel will be corrected in the inevitable 2015 sequel: Titanfall 2: Robot Warfare.
Grade:
C+
Titanfall does a little bit of different and a whole lot of the same. Then again, guys like Respawn aren't known for stepping outside their comfort zones.
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