Video Game Review: Titanfall.

Titanfall is a game that does a lot right, most noticeably the removal of camping. Since there are enemy as NPC's well as the actual opponents running around the battlefield, there's little incentive for people to sit in corners being assholes.

 

 

I was lucky enough to have a play around with Titanfall at my friend Murray's house.

After playing the quick tutorial that runs you through the basics of pilot training and running around in a Mech, you can jump straight into multiplayer and start shooting people in the face.

It's actually pretty hard. However, map navigation is less of a problem given that you can get around by double jumping from building to building which is incredibly fun. Wallrunning mixed in with existing game mechanics makes this a game of skill. This is both fun and rewarding.

In terms of graphical fidelity, the games textures look relatively crisp and there would be a clear contrast if put alongside a PS3/Xbox 360 title. There is, of course, a mild bloom effect which leaves the trees looking ever so slightly whitewashed in one particular level, but that's all I really have to complain about on the graphical/pretty side of things.

Piloting a Titan is incredibly enjoyable, especially with the ability to customise your loadout. I was a bit concerned about that lack of model varieties as it seems to current stand at a staggering three different Titan meshes.

I said to Murray that I wished for the ability to paint and customise sections of the Titans, making chunky ones with tiny legs of one with tiny heads built like a tank.

Basically, I wanted to build Bumblebee.

Or Jetwing. Or Optimus Prime.

When my good friend told me how I should play a Transformers videogame if I wished to do that, I simply rolled my eyes and emphatically expressed how it wouldn't be the same. I needed to make a Transformer in a non-Transformers game in order for it to be fun and/or enjoyable.

My friend also asserted that making a custom titan out of individual components would be hard for the developers to properly balance. I conceded his point, given the incredibly detailed single player that had been made for the game. It is pictured below.

So that's why I have a hard time letting the devs off on this one. There is no single player. Whenever Robot-Man showed up in the corner of my screen, telling me that my Titan was online in two minutes, I asked Murray who he was and he had no choice but to shrug. When African-General-Man insisted that we all pull together and win the match, my emotions were not particularly riled because I have no idea who he is, what I am doing, what my motivation is, where I am, where all these robots have come from, the story behind my surroundings and environment and much more.

And this is where you decry me as being too story-oriented in a game which should be intensely focused on a gameplay element as it's solely multiplayer. And that's where you're right.

I am just too old fashioned at the grand old age of twenty.

Back in my day, a solely multiplayer game was a tech demo.
Back in my day, big-head-mode and colour palette alterations were an integral part of the game or hidden cheats instead of downloadable content that would have cost the cost of a brand new gamein small micro-transactions.

My friend let me load up Project Spark and I was dismayed to find 75% of the content was micro-transactions. For a beta. Not even an actual game yet.

I get so jaded sometimes.

But shooting things in a robot makes things a little bit more ok.

And it's the Y button to kick and the baddies explode into red goo.

That's kinda cool.