Titanfall Beta Preview

There I was in my Titan; I was the lone survivor from my team, it was now three against one and all hope seemed lost. Now, it was all about how I organised myself. I began to slowly move around the map, making sure I was always behind cover and not open to attacks; I managed to find a stranded enemy Titan who looked in a much worse condition than me. Launching a barrage of rockets and unloading my canon into him I managed to take him out with ease. It was now just two on one. Still at a disadvantage though I couldn’t launch a full on assault, I had to continue with my plan, dashing around the map to pick off the enemy at the opportune moments. I managed to find another; it was a harsh battle and I took a lot of damage, but I managed to finally even the odds, it was one-on-one. With less than a minute to go, I thought I’d try a sneak tactic; I got out of my Titan (a risky move) in order to run and find the remaining enemy while my Titan was pretty much on autopilot doing the same. I thought this is it, my time to shine, the chance to win this round for my team. The enemy was in site. But before I had a chance to get to higher ground and launch an attack from above I was squashed. We lost the round, and with it the game.

This is how dramatic every moment feels when you play Titanfall. It’s a game that has had so much hype since its announcement that if developers Respawn Entertainment hadn’t got the game quite right it could’ve been a flop, but the guys and gals have worked tirelessly to make sure they haven’t put a foot wrong, and I’ve got to say so far they’ve got it spot on. I know we can’t base the whole game on the beta as it’s only got multiplayer access and a tutorial that takes you through all the controls, but it gives you a taster of what is to come and that is a brand new shooter that is quite unlike many of its competitors. I mean it still has a chance to fall flat because so far no one is really sure what the single player mode will entail; will it have a decent storyline, will it last longer than the four hours it took to complete the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield or will it be just like the two games mentioned and focus the majority of its effort on Multiplayer leaving single player campaigns to suffer? Until the game launches though I guess we won’t know.

What I do know is some of the great features that the multiplayer game has to offer. There are three different modes available to play; Attrition, Hardpoint Domination ad Last Titan Standing. Attrition is pretty much your normal team death match; you get points for killing enemy pilots and their titans as well as Grunts which are small units controlled by the computer. The more you kill, the more points you get, and whoever reaches their target first or has more points when time runs out, wins the match. Hardpoint Domination is all about attacking and defending set locations; while a location is under your control it gains your points, the more you have under your control the more points you get and the more chance you have of winning the match, pretty simple really. Finally you have Last Titan Standing, which I described in my introduction; each side starts in their Titans and it is a battle to the death. Whichever team wipes out the opponent first wins, and this is done over multiple rounds until someone manages to win four. If your Titan blows up though don’t fear as you can still run around as your pilot to help out your team mates and eliminate the enemy.

So what is different about these modes and your usual shooters I hear you say? Well firstly as mentioned in all modes you have computer controlled grunts; you will be awarded fewer points for killing these because they aren’t the strongest of units, but they do come in handy and can get the occasional kill to help you out in sticky situations. Another difference from other Shooters is when the game ends; usually someone will meet the target score or time will run out and that’s it, game over, but not with Titanfall it isn’t. Both Attrition and Hardpoint Domination have Epilogues; a small extraction mission at the end that requires you to fall back and meet at a target location for extraction from your failed objective. This allows for you to gain some extra XP by either wiping out all enemy units and their ride out of there, or by getting out of the area yourself in one piece. Note during an epilogue though, if you do die you can’t respawn, you have only the one chance for survival.

As part of the multiplayer campaign you will unlock many new weapons, attachments and other abilities which you can assign when customising the load out for your pilots and your titans. The main weapons you will wield are mostly like any other game; you have the likes of your SMGs, Shotguns, Snipers and they all have specialist attachments like scopes and suppressors, I assume more variants of the weapons will be available with the full game. One slightly different weapon that is worth mentioning though is the Smart Pistol; it tracks targets and locks on so when you fire a shot you will never miss. It can lock on to multiple targets at a time to unleash a burst of fire, and can even lock onto stronger enemies multiple times when it knows it will take more than one bullet to kill them. Next you have your side weapons which on the Beta you have a choice of two pistols, nothing special but I am sure with the whole game there will be a lot more choice available. Then you carry a third weapon, one of two anti-titan guns; one is a rocket launcher able to target and lock onto enemies, and a heavy duty LMG that has a higher fire rate but does less damage, but can also come in handy against enemy pilots when low on ammo.

But it’s not just weapons that help you out; your abilities can also have an impact on battles too. One of the most useful titan abilities I found for those of you who like to get into the thick of it was a nuclear explosion that goes off when your Titan is on its last legs and you eject. This wipes out any nearby enemies, and as you fall back to the ground it provides you with the opportunity to land on enemy titans and ride them like a bucking bronco as you try to fry their circuits. If you feel you still need a little extra something on top of your abilities though, you’ll be happy to know Titanfall provides further help in the form of burn cards. Burn cards have special abilities and can be used in battle to give you a little boost when you burn them, which you guessed it, means you can’t use them again once they’ve been burnt. These cards can offer you anything from knocking build time off your titan to switching you weapons for something a little different and enhancing your abilities to help you run faster and jump further.

You will find that running and jumping are very important in this game too because again, something Titanfall introduces unlike its competitors is Parkour. The aim to get from A to B in the most efficient way, and this is done by running along walls, climbing up on containers and ledges, and running from one rooftop to the next to get about the place. It really does make the game 10x more fun than any other shooter because you no longer are able to camp on a difficult to reach rooftop with a sniper, because everyone has the ability to get up there in a matter of seconds to take you out. You are constantly running around due to this to avoid being killed, finding new paths on each map all the time to keep ahead of your enemy. It also comes in handy when enemy titans are on the battlefield as you can run from rooftop to rooftop to place yourself above then enemy and then drop onto them just like you would when I described ejecting from your own Titan. In the event you need extra protection too, you can also mount onto a team mate’s titan and its shield will protect you, but if they are moving a lot you will struggle to aim and shoot.

Aside from the gameplay, the beta also introduces you to a couple of multiplayer maps; Angel City (which I’m sure is the name of the place on the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers) and Fracture. Both environments are full of great detail (and will only get better as it has been limited for the Beta to prevent server overloads) and aren’t too big that it will take you a while to get from one edge to the other, but are still big enough to allow for nice open gameplay. It helps as well that when roaming the map as a pilot you have many different levels which you can fight on, rather than running along the ground and just taking the stairs up to the next floor, you can running along walls to reach rooftops and open a whole new battlefield, which makes the maps seem bigger than they are in some ways. When you aren’t hiding on rooftops or in buildings though hiding from Titans, there is a good mixture of great open spaces and alleyways that allow for epic Titan battles to occur, and if you use your Titan right you will reap the rewards. A favourite tactic of mine is always to set your Titan onto auto mode to lure out enemy titans so I can pounce on them from above. I know it sounds like I’m doing that a lot but there is just something so rewarding when taking down a giant when you’re so small. Just think of it like a classic FA Cup tie where a lower league team manages to beat the odds and defeat Premiership opposition.

So what can I say to conclude this preview; well it’s probably the first game I’ve played where I wouldn’t just advise my friends to go out and buy the game but pre-order it instead to make sure they get a copy on release day. The game really is that good. Graphically it will only get better as it was limited for the beta to avoid any server issues and with more additional content to come to multiplayer and the addition of a single player mode too this is a game that will just keep giving. I really cannot fault a single thing about the game at all, I mean I have tried to think of a negative and all I can think of is one group of players I got stuck with who insisted on splitting up on Last Titan Standing which meant we got wiped out by the opposition because they went round as a unit picking everyone off including myself. I am really looking forward to this release now and the beta has now got me more excited than ever about Titanfall.