FPS + giant rampaging robots + cinematic combat = WIN

If there’s one game that we’ve been anxiously waiting for this year, it’s Titanfall. It’s won numerous awards when it was first unveiled the the Electronic Entertainment Expo last year, and since then it has been steadily building up hype, culminating in the beta test which began on February 14. We managed to get a beta code for the PC side of the game (it will be available for both the XBOX One and the PC on March 11) and took it for a test run.

So what is it? Simply put, Titanfall is a multiplayer game which closely resembles the Call of Duty series, only this time you can call on giant robots to do your bidding. This isn’t a mere coincidence – the founders of Respawn Entertainment were the original co-founders of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella. Players play as pilots, agile combatants that can call down massive robots called Titans to the battlefield. While the game is multiplayer only, it has a lot of single player elements that make you feel that you’re really fighting for your side, such as a plot, character and the interaction of NPCs with your pilot.

6 VS 6 combat never felt this good

One of the major surprises of Titanfall is the focus on 6 vs 6 combat. When we first saw the demo gameplay video for the game during E3, we assumed that the low player count was because of the XBOX One’s hardware limitations, since console multiplayer games have typically have lower playercounts. It seems that limiting the player count to 12 in a match was a conscious decision by the company, as we found out that there will only always be six players per side during the match. As a longtime PC player who is used to duking it out with 64 players on Battlefield 3, I thought that the game wouldn’t be fun with only 12 people in a match.

Boy I was wrong. The action is frenetic, even with just 12 people inside a match. The game plays much like Call of Duty, but with a twist. The action is quick and frenetic. Pilots are able to leap around with jetpacks and run along walls, which gives you different avenues of approach when going around the level. There’s almost no part of the level that’s off limits to players, as you can vault and catapult over nearly everything that you can see inside the game.

The NPCs are surprisingly not useless

Even though you’re just playing with 12 people, the vast multiplayer arena never really feels empty. Aside from the other players, the level is populated by AI grunts and robots that fight along with you. These NPCs react to your presence and are surprisingly helpful, giving relevant audio cues on enemy positions (There’s a pilot in the second floor!), cheering you on (It’s a pilot! It’s about time they send in the badasses!) and sometimes just talking to other grunts. The NPCs fight alongside you as well, shooting other enemy NPCs and Titans when they show up.

Cinematic Feel

Even with the game’s multiplayer focus, the atmosphere of the game feels like a single player campaign. This is mostly due to the aforementioned AI grunts that do the dirty work. In one instance, I saw a grunt execute an enemy grunt that had already surrendered. In another game, I stumbled into a conversation of the AI about their families back home while they were guarding a contested point that we just liberated. It’s those moments that really make you feel that there’s a bigger picture to the battles you’re fighting with other players. There’s a healthy progression and customization system in place as well, which is similar to the one in CoD – do enough kills with a certain weapon in a certain way and you unlock weapon attachments like suppressors, red dot sights and the like.

The robots are big, bad and smart

Each player can call down a Titan, a two-story tall giant robot that they can pilot which falls from the sky (thus the title Titanfall). Titans are massive beasts and surprisingly agile too, and can quickly turn the tide of battle when used properly. Players can opt to ride inside the Titan and spread death and destruction themselves, or allow the AI to pilot the Titan and kill enemies for you. Again, we were surprised at how intelligent the AI of the Titan was, as it regularly killed enemy players by itself without guidance from us, aside from telling it to guard an area or to follow us while we spread chaos on foot. The Titans were so smart that we usually only boarded them when we needed to push a certain area – most of the time we put them into follow mode while we went around engaging other pilots and grunts.

Respawn did a very good job balancing the Titans – they’re not overly powerful, and a skilled player can easily bring one down if they’re smart about it, as the Titan is vulnerable from above and behind. A player can jump on the back of a Titan, open an access panel and wreck its day if a pilot isn’t careful. Each Titan is customizable, and you can modify its loadout according to the role you want it to play – assault, fire support or artillery. There will be different Titans to use when the game launches, but during the beta you’re limited only to the Atlas.

Multiple game modes

There are several game modes in the beta played out over two maps: Hardpoint Domination, where you attempt to capture and hold three sections of the map, Last Titan Standing, where both teams spawn with Titans and attempt to kill off the opposing team’s Titans and Attrition, wherein both teams try to kill off as many pilots, AI grunts and Titans to reach a score cap. All three game modes are more or less balanced and are extremely fun to play, but we found ourselves playing more and more Hardpoint Domination, as it harkens back to the founders’ CoD roots. As far as latency is concerned, we were surprised to learn that we had extremely good ping to the beta servers, with our ping never going higher than 80 during our gaming sessions (PLDT MYDSL, 3 Mbps). That doesn’t guarantee that that won’t change though when the game launches, but it’s nice to know that there’s a possibility that we’ll be able to play the game with a sub 100 ping.

Light on the requirements

The requirements for the PC version isn’t bad either. We were worried that our aging PC Rig wouldn’t be able to handle Titanfall when it launches, but it seems that our fears were unfounded. We managed to get decent framerates and graphics with our ASUS Radeon 5890 and Intel core I5-2500K combo. As you can see in this link, Titanfall doesn’t have steep requirements for the PC version, although you will need a beefy video card to enjoy all the graphical bells and whistles that the game has to offer. Graphically the game isn’t as striking as say Battlefield 4 for instance, as it’s built on Valve’s aging Source engine. It’s the same engine that’s used in the Left 4 Dead series, as well as the Half Life Series and Team Fortress 2. The developers’ decision to use an older engine as opposed to building one from scratch makes the game extremely friendly to older gaming rigs, which opens the game up to more people.

We’re excited for the official release!

After playing the Titanfall beta for about a day, it’s safe to say that the game will be a definite purchase for us when it finally hits the stores on March 11, 2014.