If the above image makes your eyes glaze over, you aren't alone. Despite the interesting story behind Titanfall as a franchise, I largely skipped the first entry when it was released. The entirety of my experience with the first game is condensed into one marijuana hazed night at my brother's house. I didn't own an Xbox One for a majority of its life cycle (is it too early to speak of the console in the past tense?), mostly because by that time I had moved on to PC gaming. Titanfall was one of the console's showcase exclusives, one banking on its history as much as its neat concept.
Before Titanfall, lead developers Jason West and Vince Zampella where heads at Infinity Ward, developers of Call of Duty (in particular, games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, i.e. not the Treyarch games like Black Ops and World at War). They had negotiated a deal with corporate overlords Activision that, if they released Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, they would be given a much larger salary, bonuses, and creative control over the Call of Duty franchise. Activision agreed, on the condition that if they were ever fired, control would revert to Activision. You can imagine what motivations were at play after that deal. What followed was a he-said, she-said mess that included accusations that West and Zampella attempted to conspire with EA games to damage Infinity Ward (accusations settled out of court), and various lawsuits regarding improper firing of the two studio heads. Zampella and West created a new studio which included many of the former Infinity Ward staff that left in mass exodus after the pair's firing, which they called Respawn Entertainment, where they worked with EA.
I have no clue as to when or whose decision it was to make Titanfall, their Call of Duty competitor, an Xbox/Windows exclusive, but I can't say it was the brightest of ideas. Call of Duty reigned supreme as the highest selling shooter across the consoles in part because it was cross-platform. Still, the decision was made, and as such I didn't play much of the first game. (It is worth noting the game was eventually ported over to Xbox 360, meaning I could have played it relatively soon after launch, but again I had largely abandoned consoles in favor of PC). Titanfall was essentially Call of Duty with parkour, with hints of other stuff for flavor. You were given a loadout with whatever guns and perks you wanted, and while on the field you could eventually earn a Titanfall drop, a mid-sized mech that could turn the battle around if used properly. The mechs themselves worked a lot like the killstreak bonuses in Call of Duty, but with less variance and, hopefully, less balancing issues. Notably, however, there was no single-player campaign to the original Titanfall. The game's quick turn-around is partially to blame, trying to release near as possible to the launch of the Xbox One, but that didn't stop people from laying the criticism down. Titanfall 2 aimed to fix that.
Titanfall 2's campaign has received a surprising amount of praise over the years, mostly for that one level, but regardless, in a time when single player FPS campaigns are considered conciliatory unless you're fucking Doom, it was notable enough to gain it some new fans. For a PC gamer, however, it was a hard sell limiting its release to only the EA owned Origin service (not as bad as it once was, but still far from ideal) or the Xbox store on PC. Recently, with EA and Steam brokering some sort of weird deal, Titanfall 2 has finally released on Steam, and no longer does it quite have the bite it normally would in order to own it. (Disclaimer: I do own games on both the Microsoft Xbox Store and Origin, and obviously GOG, but only when they are worth splitting my games library such as with The Sims - I'm not just a Steam simp).
Titanfall 2's campaign follows a group of mercenaries who are on some planet you don't care about fighting a militia in order to save another planet you don't care about. The crux of the story follows your player character, who is a trainee that quickly gets promoted to "pilot", the designation for those that get to pilot a Titan. Titans are the mechs the game tries to sell its individuality on, sentient robots that bond with their pilots and can turn the tides of battle. The story largely revolves around military hoo-rah criclejerking and this growing relationship with this Titan, nicknamed BT. If that isn't enough to predict the entire plot of the 6-hour campaign, then perhaps you are new to blockbuster stories and might I recommend Star Wars first, since it has nearly the same story but done a lot better.
As dismissive as I sound right now, Titanfall 2's campaign is surprisingly good, it just isn't the lazy story that really sells it. Though I briefly described Titanfall's gameplay above, there is a meatier description that fits a lot better: it is Call of Duty meets Halo meets Tribes. Mobility is perhaps the most important (and most fun) aspect of Titanfall, and, not coincidentally, one of the most tedious flaws of Call of Duty. Getting around any given map is a blast, and the campaign really lets this shine. Wall running lets you zip around the map and climb around, giving you verticality usually reserved for much faster PC shooters like Quake III. While running, you are given a slide ability which feels like a slightly neutered version of skiing from Tribes, which can still give you that thrill of zipping around the map. Guns feel pretty good, although it follows the Call of Duty formula, which is to say that half of these are virtually worse versions of the other half. Slightly making up for this is the Titans themselves, which allow for a tank-type position on maps and in the campaign, though their balance and usefulness is somewhat questionable. It is hard not to feel like these are more of a flavor than a core, competitive contribution. They do, technically, change the way the game is played, but I never found them to be more than dressing.
The campaign's levels are well equipped to give you the ropes of mobility, while giving you enough stuff to shoot at to get your bearings on all the weapons, pilot and Titan alike. Recognizing routes you can traverse is incredibly fun throughout the campaign, even if the game tries to hold your hand and tell you the route if you take more than a few seconds figuring it out. The fact that these hologram guides that show you the route require you to push a button to actually see is a considerate choice, but I played the game on Hard and would have rather they left it out on the top two difficulties. Like you probably expect from most FPS campaigns in this day and age, the AI is pretty damn dumb. Even on Hard, I found the game rather breezy so long as I was paying attention. The decrease in difficulty was a mild disappointment, but considering the real strengths of this campaign lie with testing your movement and wall running, I can't say it amounts for a whole lot as far as demerits go.
The real golden goose of this campaign is the "Effect and Cause" level smack dab in the middle of the game. Spoilers for that sequence in this paragraph, but you've probably heard about it before. In this level you are given a device that lets you jump back and forth through time, usually in order to avoid obstacles such as crushed in doors and walls on fire. The rapid pace you need to switch and be thinking in two places at once is an absolute thrill, and the worst part of it all is that this level is probably only 30 min long when it could easily have been the whole game. Maybe limiting the mechanic is part of what makes it so magical, but either way this sequence may not act as a worthwhile reason to buy the game on its own, but it certainly gives a good reason to play it if you can. Platforming hasn't felt this mentally straining in a while, by my account, and adding in combat - which has you essentially fighting two fights at once - is just awesome.
Titanfall 2 manages to be a good game not so much through innovation (outside of that one level), as through being incredibly solid at what it does. The game just feels really good to play, and while the Halo-esque story (hey, there's an Ark here too!) and the lack of challenge will convert literally no one, the gameplay is bound to give you a thrill. Titanfall 2 is a testament of how making a good game can literally just be you being good at what you do, rather than reinventing the wheel (or adding gimmicks) every few entries. Gimmicks run amok in Titanfall 2, but they are played as gimmicks, as fun diversions to give you an excuse to utilize the fun core gameplay they've tuned to a near perfect pitch. Great as I may praise Titanfall 2 for how surprisingly fun it is, this is pretty well just a game for people who like shooters. It will convert no one, but please those predisposed for what Titanfall 2 has on offer.
8.5
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