Titanfall might make a multiplayer gamer out of me.
The first-person shooter, developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts, is a Microsoft exclusive with editions for Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. The full game will be available on March 11 (March 25 for the Xbox 360 version) but the beta is on the verge of release. It’s multiplayer only; six against six.
I know everyone’s into it, but I’ve never been much of a multiplayer gamer.
It might be because I’m too old. It might be because I’m not very good. (I recognize that those two excuses are related.)
It might be because I’ve got two kids and a life that has a rigid schedule of kids activities and getting to school and feeding the kids. It might be because I don’t have that many gamer friends with schedules that mesh with mine.
It’s probably all of the above, frankly. But it’s also because I started playing games for the stories that they were telling. And most multiplayer games aren’t really created to tell stories.
I don’t know if Titanfall will deliver on the narrative front. Certainly there is a story campaign that you play through the multiplayer mode, although Respawn Entertainment cofounder Vince Zampella has acknowledged that it’s short. And the world that’s been created for Titanfall is rich and compelling.
But having spent a couple of hours playing the game in early February, I don’t even know if I care about the story. Because just running around trying to stay alive while creating some carnage of my own was just too much fun.
At a media preview in Los Angeles, I played on two maps, Fracture and Angel City, in two modes, Attrition (kills get you points) and Hardpoint Domination (capture and defend outposts to get points). A third mode, Last Titan Standing, in which each team member gets one life and the objective is to keep one Titan intact, was also in the mix, but I didn’t personally play it.
The game’s narrative framework pits the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) against the Frontier Militia. While it’s a 6v6 game, various “grunts” controlled by the AI fill out the maps, providing more fodder to target.
Justin Hendry says the “chains are off”. In an interview, the lead designer of Titanfall said that they tried to “make something new, make something different, make something fresh, make something fun”.
From the first moment that my pilot dropped onto the battlefield – it was the Fracture map – Titanfall had weight. There’s a somatic intensity to it. I could feel the pilot’s steps on the surface, the pulse of the weapon-fire, the shock of being slammed into a titan cockpit, the vibration of the titans stomping around.
My pilot was fast and responsive to the Titanfall-branded Xbox One controller I was using. The auto-targeting smart pistol meant that I could focus on traversing the landscape and still be able to take down enemies. Hendry told me to wall run as much as possible, because a pilot’s movement speed is almost double when on a wall.
And the titans aren’t like any other mecha I’ve played. They’re fast and simple, with just a single weapon, a single type of ordnance, and a tactical ability. Including the vortex shield, which not only blocks incoming bullets but turns them into projectiles against your enemy.
Hendry gave me another tip, for after I unlocked the slaved warheads, an auto-locking missile used by titans. After target lock has been acquired, he explained, I should aim into the sky. The rockets will shoot into the air and target my opponent avoiding buildings or debris that might be between us. “And they’ll go behind vortex shields,” he whispered.
I didn’t place very well on the leaderboards that afternoon – Titanfall couldn’t make me a better player – but I wasn’t concerned about that. I was having too much fun being in the game.
So I’ll need to find some more gaming friends between now and March 11, so I can make sure I’m getting the most out of Titanfall. Because I may not be a multiplayer gamer, but I’m planning on spending a lot of time with Titanfall.
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A Special thanks to Blaine Kyllo who generously contributed this article to COG
You can follow him at Mind Control Division
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