Take cover last generation shooters, Titanfall is ready to make its entrance into the static team vs team shooter genre like only a giant low orbit deployed armored mech could; with a pavement cracking, expectation crushing boom.
EA & Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall explodes into life March 11, and is gunning for top spot in a genre dominated by long standing franchises like Battlefield, Gears of War, Halo and Call of Duty. Titanfall made a huge splash last year when debuted at E3, garnering an unprecedented number of awards. With all of that positive reception and press, it had set the bar very high even for itself. As it turns out, reaching heights isn’t much a problem when you’re riding a two-story tall armored mech, but the real show-stealers are the pilots themselves.
From the moment you set virtual boot to ground in the training simulator, you’ll find out how wallrunning, cloaking and double-jumping put the unarmored pilots on even ground with their giant armored mechs – and ahead of the competition. In an instant you’ll see maps in a whole new dimension and find yourself looking for ways to chain wall grabs, runs and jumps together with ease and discover the true heart of a Titan is far from soft.
The beta contains just a select few maps and competitive game modes, saving the best for release along with the highly anticipated multiplayer story mode. Still, what was shown was solid, highly playable release-quality gameplay that distances itself from the frequently buggy competition – a huge relief from the recent norm. At present, the modes available to test include Attrition, Hard Point and Last Titan Standing.
Attrition is described as a classic Titanfall game mode and is recommended as the best mode to start with. Featuring gameplay style made famous by the footage from E3, you start as a pilot and earn points by killing either AI or players on the opposing team. With each kill you decrease the amount of time until you can call in your Titan, which enters the battlefield with a spectacular sonic boom and annihilates anything that happens to be nearby. You can then choose to pilot it or set it to guard or follow mode to continue the fight. If you happen to die while outside of it and it survives, it will continue it’s last orders while you respawn. Once the points-based objective is met, the losing team must scramble to reach evacuation points to earn an epilogue XP bonus – although you get just one life to make the escape.
At a glance Hardpoint might seem similar to Attrition, except that points are earned by capturing and defending objectives. As these objectives are almost always in a location only a pilot can reach outside of her Titan, a different level of coordination is required by both pilots and Titans to effectively attack or defend an objective. Additionally, little or no reward is gained by fighting away from the objective – wander off on your own and you could cost your team the win even if you technically outskilled your opponents. Like attrition, it ends with a bonus epilogue chase to an evacuation point.
Last Titan Standing plays like it sounds – 6v6 Titans, multiple timed rounds, no respawn on pilot death and everyone starts in a Titan. It’s Titanfall TDM, with a brisk no-mistakes pace.
All three modes were a blast to play – featuring just the Atlas class of Titan out of the three available at release, as well as three sample pilot buildouts and numerous innovative weapons. It is easy to pick up but shows it will reward those with the skill to master both pilot and Titan abilities to their maximum. It will also challenge players to unlearn traditional “two dimensional” shooter gameplay habits – where even your Titan can outmaneuver yesteryear’s corner to cover positional warfare.
Stand by, your Titan will be ready for launch on March 11 on Xbox One and PC, March 25 on Xbox 360.
discordian bliss 