Titanfall is shaping up to be an absolutely fantastic game that answers a lot of the complaints that have been thrown at the FPS genre since Call of Duty became the go-to title for fast paced arcade style shooting. Â It’s unique, memorable, and makes players genuinely feel a part of something intense and epic which makes it tough to complain given how that’s everything you could possibly want from a game. Â But between all of these radical mechanics are a few issues that do make the Titanfall experience feel somewhat incomplete. Â Some patchable, others a victim of overall design, and others may yet still be in the final version of the game, but until we know for sure here are a few things that make Titanfall a little less fun and a little more frustrating.
Burn Cards Need a Facelift
The tutorial runs you through how to run, jump, shoot and pilot your Titan but never once are burn cards mentioned which makes it pretty darn confusing when they just show up out of nowhere a few matches later after enough experience has been earned. Â Though the burn card deck is fairly straightforward, and using burn cards requires little explanation, how they’re earned and how many there are is a complete mystery otherwise.
Doing well in a round is bound to earn you a few cards every time, but it would be great to have a more detailed layout for the cards and how players manage them. Â A grid sorting by type, a way to auto-discard cards you’re not interested in collecting, and maybe even some information on how to earn cards that we specifically enjoy using would all go a long way in helping make Burn Cards a more interactive feature than something to micromanage between rounds.
High Learning Curve
If you’re the type of gamer to have a hard time in games like Call of Duty and are prone to quick frustration then perhaps it’s best to skip Titanfall altogether.  Not because it isn’t fun, but rather because the game isn’t remotely forgiving.  Despite its patient tutorial there’s a lot of things happening in each gametype, and while many players try to keep the game on their own terms by hiding in a corner or sticking to a particular objective Titanfall’s free flowing movement and open multi-entrance buildings make it almost impossible to keep safe from ambush unless you’re constantly on the move.
This makes Titanfall’s greatest strength its greatest weakness, because there is no real way for an average gamer to simply catch up if they’re unable to grasp what the developers want from the player. Â Granted, they’ve done a wonderful job masking a lot of these issues in the fluidity of the game’s controls. Â Wall running, jumping, climbing and piloting the Titan’s is all a very smooth experience; but the difference between a good player and a great player is vast, and getting pummeled to death by a team of four uncontested enemy Titans is hardly a fun experience.
No Single Player
It’s an interesting complaint in an era of multiplayer design, but the usual excuses for why a single player campaign wasn’t created don’t really apply to Titanfall. They’ve developed a scaling AI for both Titans and grunts, though it may be very simplistic, and maps all feature a story-like epilogue that further accents the war torn world design they’ve worked so hard to cultivate.  Both sides of the conflict have a lot of fluff to them, far more than the usual ‘terrorists’ or ‘counter-terrorist’ theme given by other multiplayer only games.  They’ve even gone so far as to build hype on their soundtrack and its unique fluidity for both teams in game, so why not go the extra distance to design a short campaign?
Perhaps this is just the groundwork for something new and different, but single player and offline missions are what a lot of players rely on to learn the game’s basics before trying their skill against other players, and though Titanfall most definitely has solidified a spot for itself as a premier FPS title the absence of any kind of single player content is admittedly disappointing.
Auto Aiming Weapons
Where the justification for the smart pistol came from is hard to say. Â That new players can have a toy that does all the work for them against grunts or spectres or maybe that the delayed lock on time makes up for its near guaranteed kill? Â You don’t see many players using the pistol in favor of the longer ranged assault/sniper rifles, but once you enter shotgun or SMG range the pistol becomes more viable at max distance or at any angle that isn’t dead-on.
Even the Titan’s auto-lock missiles have their own disadvantages in range, speed and staggered deployment, to which the pistol only has lock on speed (which can be further reduced). Â It’s a slippery slope when it comes to balance, and the smart pistol may take a place in the halls of overpowered sidearms right alongside Halo’s magnum; particularly in modes like Attrition where the weapon shaves a lot of time from running and gunning.
