Titanfall review: my buddy

After changing multiplayer gaming forever with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007, developer Infinity Ward partially imploded with bad blood enough to go around. The staff that left Infinity Ward in 2010 went on to form Respawn Entertainment. In the ensuing years, multiplayer shooters have become predictable exercises in minor updates and more graphical polish.

With Titanfall, Respawn proposes a solution. Taking a page from the playbook it created with Modern Warfare, Respawn has taken elements of action games, the online battle arena genre and more, expertly threading them through a shooter base that stands toe-to-toe with the heaviest hitters around.

(Note: This review involved a two-day review event hosted by Microsoft and EA, playing on Xbox One consoles and "retail servers" on March 3 and 4, as well as time spent playing "retail" downloadable copies prior to launch by multiple Polygon editors. Staff also participated in Titanfall's closed alpha and beta in January and February respectively. This review will be updated to reflect any extended server issues, should they arise. You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy here.)

The premise of Titanfall goes something like this: on the future frontiers of human-occupied space, a revolution's worth of angry colonists has had it with their corporate-funded government. In the resulting struggle, both sides fight using Titans: industrial, weaponized armor that sit in a happy medium somewhere between an Abrams tank and the robotic stars of anime like Macross or Gundam. It's got all the trappings of an epic sci-fi shooter, but if you're looking for a multiple hour-spanning single-player adventure, disabuse yourself: Titanfall is multiplayer only. Eschewing solo play, Respawn deeply hooks this narrative premise into a sophisticated multiplayer shooter.

You start each battle as a Pilot dropped onto the battlefield, and are immediately confronted with much more mobility than games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Pilots can double jump thanks to a jet pack, and also run along walls, vault over obstacles, hang off ledges and even fly across the map on well-placed ziplines.

It's an enormous number of mobility options in addition to some very smooth, responsive shooting. But all that complexity is expressed through a streamlined control scheme that doesn't feel complicated. Double jumping is effortless, and wall-running is as easy as jumping toward a wall while running forward. It all comes naturally, and instead of feeling like work, Titanfall feels like a playground.

Each of Titanfall's 15 maps presented a new opportunity to experiment with my environment, to see where I could get to on foot. I found "lines" to take, alternating my wall-runs over extended spaces, making jumps I never thought I would make. Respawn even encourages this behavior — you accelerate as you run along the side of a building, and jumping from one surface to another can build an incredible amount of speed.

Your Titan is being built on a command ship as you play, a process that can be sped up by completing objectives. Once it's complete, you're given the option to call it down and climb in. Titans aren't slow, lumbering robots. They're fast, powerful weapon platforms that offer a different set of considerations than Pilots. Their guns are cannons, and Pilots caught underfoot will be crushed.

Titans are powerful opponents and are often the drivers of a match's crescendo, but they're always vulnerable. This preserves the delicate balance of power that Titanfall maintains between Pilots and their giant, armored counterparts. The most expedient Titan-killer is almost always a "naked" Pilot. Titans are also the only units that can't access every area — their size effectively locks them out of many spaces. Every map feels distinct and provides unique twists on the relationship between Titans and Pilots.

This underscores the complex web of rock-paper-scissors style relationships throughout the game. Titanfall forces serious considerations of mobility, traversal and your relationship with the environment both in and out of Titans. Respawn has found a remarkable sense of equilibrium predicated on a constantly shifting set of strengths and weaknesses.

Then there's the Smart Pistol, which automatically targets enemies including other players. But the Smart Pistol doesn't represent a "win button" — like the auto-Titan modes, it's a way in for those who aren't devastatingly talented or blessed with all the time in the world to master first-person shooters. And it can't instantly kill other players, as it requires time and several "locks".

Instead, the Smart Pistol is particularly well suited to kill the computer-controlled enemies that fill each match. The enemy AI provide multiple benefits; they're a resource for skilled players to farm for more experience and faster access to Titan drops and special abilities. Beginners can also take out grunts and spectres to help their team out, and almost as important, Respawn uses them to give clues to your environment. Grunts call out the presence of enemy Pilots and shoot at them as well, making them an excellent early warning system.

So much of the game's initial appeal depends on the collection of those kinds of small details that make up its presentation. You don't just get into a Titan. You slide underneath and crawl in, or maybe you're like me, taking a running jump so it can snatch you out of the air to tuck you into its belly. Titans rocket down — or, later on with the right Pilot kit, warp in — with thunderous force. When you hack enemy robots, you jam your data knife into them to do it.

These touches, these elements of presentation and experience that are more traditionally rooted in single-player titles lead to a game that's exciting to watch unfold and, honestly, this takes some of the edge off of the moments where you'll inevitably get killed. Call me crazy, but I didn't mind dying so much when an Ogre-class Titan ripped my Atlas's arms off and beat me to the ground with them. Even losing a match doesn't feel like punishment. The opportunity to escape in a drop ship once a match is over is another chance to do something cool. There are rewards and reinforcement everywhere, regardless of play style.

If so many elements of Titanfall seem familiar, it's not surprising. There's a willingness here to borrow elements from other game genres, to take a less traditional route. Modern Warfare lifted role-playing games and MMOs for its addictive character persistence online — which returns for Titanfall, along with the seemingly endless challenges also introduced by Respawn in their former lives. Titanfall also appropriates from non-shooter multiplayer games like DOTA and League of Legends with its fodder enemies. Along with its integration of elements more common to single-player campaigns, it leads to an experience that feels distinct and separate.

If there are complaints to be had, I'd point to performance. Titanfall sits at 60 frames per second most of the time, but when three or four Titans are on the screen at once, firing rockets and arc blasts, things take a dive. It's never not playable, but it is noticeable.

I also wanted more "stuff"  — more options and more customization. For starters, Titanfall is begging for a spectator mode and more complex broadcasting options that have appeared in games like the Battlefield series. I also would have liked to see visual customization for Titans. I don't need potleaf emblems, and I appreciate that the more immature bro trappings that have come to pepper the Call of Duty series are absent. But as attached as I grew to my customized loadout — and I did get surprisingly attached to my Titan — it would have been nice to mark some colors on it or customize the chassis even a little.