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Keep calm and pre­pare for Titanfall

Hel­lo, pilots and wel­come to the Fron­tier. The long-antic­i­pat­ed Titan­fall is up for review

William Har­ri­son, GI con­tribut­ing editor

and let me tell you, I had a lot of fun with this one and so will you. It posts a few unique inno­va­tions as well as an online only style all of its own. And, of course, giant robots … every­thing is bet­ter with giant robots. The cam­paign mode is weird at first but it’s noth­ing that can’t be handled.

Titan­fall takes place in the dis­tant future and in anoth­er col­o­nized area of space. Two war­ring fac­tions, the IMC and the Fron­tier Mili­tia, are fight­ing for con­trol of their lit­tle pieces of space and the place they call home. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the IMC seem to be look­ing to con­trol the area under the flag of Ham­mond Indus­tries, a galac­tic wide­spread com­pa­ny that has its hands in … well, pret­ty much every­thing. Then in comes the Fron­tier Mili­tia, who believe the peo­ple are bet­ter off with­out the watch­ful eye of the IMC and Ham­mond Indus­tries telling you what to do.

Titan­fall is a very impres­sive and beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered game. It’s cur­rent­ly out for the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. I have it for Xbox One and it’s about the only first-per­son shoot­er that I cur­rent­ly play. The game­play is pret­ty much like Call of Duty, but that’s to be expect­ed when Infin­i­ty Ward closed its doors and reopened to a split in the com­pa­ny not called Respawn Enter­tain­ment and Sledgham­mer Games. Respawn Enter­tain­ment is pret­ty much made up of the devel­op­ers that made the COD series sto­ries and games what they were.

The addi­tion of the Titans (25- to 30-foot-tall robots) and the abil­i­ty to either pilot or have the AI con­trol it makes for a new num­ber of things that can be done. There is a cam­paign mode but it is mul­ti­play­er-based, mean­ing that the sto­ry is con­trolled by the out­come of the win­ning team in some mis­sions. It only allows for 6v6 (12v12, if you include hav­ing the AI-con­trolled Titans on the map as well) so that the games can remain as lag free as pos­si­ble. Don’t want to ride inside your own Titan, well hop out and switch your Titan to either guard or fol­low to help hold a posi­tion or for a lit­tle back­up. I must admit that I am rarely rid­ing inside my Titan when I play. They have a nice selec­tion of weapons for the pilots but only about six for the Titans them­selves, which is fine by me.

The mul­ti­play­er is done real­ly well, but right now there are only sev­en play modes, with the sev­enth as a mash-up vari­ety pack that con­sists of all play modes on all maps ran­dom­ly select­ing both. I believe the Xbox 360 ver­sion is miss­ing a mode or two.

Here is how I see it: Titan­fall is one of those games you hear about and think it would be awe­some if they can pull it off right. Respawn did their home­work and came up with a game that is fun and immer­sive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it kind of hin­dered itself by being online only, and although the down­load need­ed to play it on Xbox 360 isn’t as mas­sive as the GTAV down­load (1.3 GB ver­sus 7.9 GB), it’s still a bit annoy­ing. How­ev­er, you don’t have to delete data to play. A match­mak­ing option that puts you with peo­ple in the same skill lev­el would be a nice idea, too. If you haven’t played it, then you should def­i­nite­ly “Pre­pare for Titanfall.”