I haven’t played a fast paced MP shooter since, well, almost forever actually now that I think about it. The last one was COD: World at War (Only because it’s WW II).
I’ve noticed three major things about the game that stand out:
1. The newness feeling of the game.
2. Your average lifespan in a match is pretty long compared to many other shooters where you most likely will NOT run out of your allocated ammo before you die and respawn. Titanfall seems to have created a way to drive up immersion at the cost of having to slay AI 50% of the time. The fact that a single pilot can take down a Titan given specific circumstances.
3. Fighting as Titan never feels like a chore when you know you may bail out anytime and survive if you are outnumbered. When in a Titanfall you lose vertical versatility in favor of horizontal versatility. You also acquire a wider field of view. You eventually realize that when there are other fellow Titans around it is best to huddle up together. However, the maps themselves aren't too big to create the lone wolf tactics (since its Source engine). In Battlefield, for instance, you have to get into a certain mindset when you enter a tank which may become your coffin in an instant. You know fully well you will probably die in that tank but end up benefiting your team in the process.
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Now, the “Campaign” mode of the game consists of 9 chapters. Each chapter takes place on a different planet or different area such as a space station. Each map does look and feel different. The Campaign mode is you, your five team mates vs the other six humans in a specific scenario. There is a short 20 second intro or so before each match and then you go and fight.
The story line is incomprehensible to say the least. How are you supposed to pay attention when you have to stay alert all the time in an MP match? Anyways, all I got was that we first had to steal water from someone, or was it fuel? Or maybe I’m thinking of the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Then we decided to strike back at, was it the MSI? Or something? So we went up and blew up their space station with a giant laser gun, well, not any one of us did personally, we were just pilots running around shooting other pilots and Titans, of course. Then we answered a distress call on another planet, everyone was dead there so we fought the enemy and then evacuated. The scenarios played out by themselves, we were just contextual pawns. All six of us....
Sometimes you get to watch a Sentinel robot breaking a grunt’s neck (You basically get to watch AI battle it out between each other). Oh, that AI.... when the enemy AI’s disperse from a drop capsule they just stand there for a few seconds waiting for one pilot to kill them all off with one mag, seriously. To call them cannon fodder is an understatement. I think the devs should have put the AI to better use, instead of fighting have THEM capture points and stand guard or hack some terminals or what have you because they are 90-95% useless in a battle. They may only serve as a distraction when you mow down 3 of them only to be killed by a human pilot. Killing a human pilot enables you to call in a Titan 20 seconds quicker, by the way. The most exciting moments for me are the first 2-3 minutes of the match which is when the table gets set for which team will start dominating (whoever gets most kills at first gets to call in a Titan faster) and the last minute of match wherein you can no longer respawn and have to rush back to the evacuation ship OR attempt to mow down the survivors in their final dash for safety. In between, the usual pilot on pilot firefights, jettisoning out of a doomed titan plus the satisfaction of riding a friendly Titan OR blasting the enemy Titan’s powercell while riding on its back is fun as well.
The negatives:
The aiming does not require much effort or precision, figures, since the game was made to appeal to the controller wielding crowd. I was able to pick off Grunts/Robots/Pilots easily with an SMG from afar. No holding of breath required, there is barely any recoil, the shotgun has a long range. Hell, even grenade throwing is auto-aimed for you, no joke.I don’t see how sniping is at all relevant in this game.
The respawn time is......one second. Same as in beta. That’s kind of Call of Dutyish.
The graphics aren’t bad by themselves but they severely outdated. The vegetation does not move, the draw distance is terrible (at time I saw items appearing 20 meters in front of me), there is absolutely zero destruction, no physx whatsoever, no environmental or particle effects, everything is static. But the sky is always lit up with some kind of action, dog fighting, and flying aliens attacking drop ships and individual grunts.
I could not play online the first 10-15 minutes after launch. I just could not connect. The best connectivity region was US Central. When I turned off v-sync during match the game crashed. Also, evidently, there is no way to turn off music completely in the game (MAY I ASK WHY?). Even WITH v-sync off I could never go above 60 FPS (I’ve noticed the game was capped at 60 FPS during Beta). In fact, with my powerful rig I sometimes got 45 FPS. So I ended up tuning down the MSAA option, it didn’t help. Eventually the game crashed again. I tried playing again but was stuck as Syncing with Cloud Data at 10% on Origin for 20 minutes (Thanks, Origin). Did the install repair, didn’t help. So I ended up re-downloading and re-installing the game overnight. Hopefully the game will run when I come back from work. Other than these woes which I believe will be patched out I had fun, but somehow I think it will wear off soon and I will go back to BF4.