Titanfall Impressions

Titanfall beta's over, and I have to say it's a load of fun. The first thing you'll notice from its contemporaries is the nimbleness of your character. Unlike the lumbering models of the modern military shooter you have a lot of freedom of movement. You can wall run, and double jump much like the arena shooters of yesteryear. It still works under the framework of aiming down the sight, but you can do just as well with aiming with the crosshair.

One of the potential balancing issues was with the smart pistol, but fortunately it's only effective on the AI 'minions' which give you a low amount of points. It's a good way to cut off the cool down time for launching your Titan, and this is one of the beauties of the game. Unlike Call of Duty's streak based system which gives it a bias towards more skilled players, the Titan mechs are available to every player 4 minutes or so. It lets even the most casual player a fair chance, but still allows for a high skill ceiling.

They are not a game-breaker since the players, no matter what class, have an anti-Titan weapon. The Titan's lack of the wall running and movement speed is supplanted with higher health, but not enough to causes it to be lopsided. The players can even latch and 'rodeo' onto top of a Titan and dump bullets into a weakpoint.

The map design is a bit on the small side, but allows the use of abilities of the players and the Titans. The verticality of movement is highlighted in every map, and allow for different playstyles from the run-and-gunner to the camper.

The three modes Attrition (Team Deathmatch) , Hardpoint (Domination), and Last Titan standing (Round based with 1 life as a Titan) feel like your typical suite in a multiplayer shooter, but thanks to the dynamics of the game give it a fresh take with various character types on the map. It also helps with an opening and closing cutscene to contextualize a match. The announced multiplayer campaign could potentially cause a trend in narrative for this type of game.

The performance of the game was very scalable even for a low end dual core machine I was running on. I was able to still keep up with other higher skilled players, and not become a unplayable slideshow.

Since I played the PC, I was disappointed in the lack of a server browser ,and dedicated server support. It still uses a CoD like matchmaking system so it does bring issues such as lag, mod support, and future online playability. Overall the net performance was satisfactory, but this remains to be seen in the full release.

Overall, I was impressed by the fresh take of using disparate elements into a slick polished package. Do I think it would get me to buy an XBOX One? Probably not, I'll be picking this up for PC.