Titanfall 2 is the most recent (it isn’t new by this point) installment in the Titanfall franchise by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA, in which you get to run around like a badass and pilot and AWESOME robot.
Before this review starts, I will admit that I only played around 2 hours of the first Titanfall game (over a friends house), as I initially found it to be a little gimmicky and felt that the lack of a single player mode meant that I never picked it up for myself. I will also admit that when Titanfall 2 was announced I felt exactly the same way, and it wasn’t until recently that I learned there was a single player campaign, which my cynical self dismissed and stated that it would simply be tacked onto a multiplayer mode like the Call Of Duty campaigns of recent years… With this in mind, I simply felt that it wouldn’t be worth my time, which is also why I feel that:
Titanfall 2 has no right to be this fucking good.
Gameplay
As you would expect, the gameplay in Titanfall 2 is where the game really shines, in the same way as I mentioned in my Doom review; Titanfall 2 does a really good job of making you feel like an absolute powerful badass whilst at the same time allows you to be killed quite quickly in some sections eliminating that feeling of being horrendously overpowered.
Over the past few years, I have played quite a few games with a free running mechanic in the forefront of games (Dying Light, Mirrors Edge to name a few) and I have always felt as though the mechanic needed to be in the background and not have the entire game built around it. Titanfall 2 has made me realise that I am exactly right to think these things as the mechanic is used perfectly as it allows you to traverse the environment with ease in or out of battle which beheld quite the spectacle.
The game also does a really good job of introducing a couple of mechanics (INCLUDING FUCKING TIME TRAVEL) at set points in the game to add huge amounts of gameplay into these sections then takes it away from you before it overstays it’s welcome or breaks the game, I felt this was fantastic to keep the gameplay entertaining and fresh throughout the 6 hours of campaign.
I also felt that the gameplay in the Titans was fantastic as well, whilst you felt all powerful and great, once again there was enough in your way (Normally OTHER Titans) which stopped you from feeling hugely overpowered and breaking the game.
Story
The playtime of Titanfall 2 sits in at around 6 hours (I didn’t really take my time to be fair), but with this in mind this will probably be the shortest section of my review.
The story was probably the weakest part of Titanfall 2, I felt. Whilst the campaign was definitely incredible and the best I’ve played in a long time this was primarily down to the characters and level design & setting (see below) rather than the storyline itself. I personally felt that I was essentially following a number of reasons to take down a handful of mercenaries in order save the planet whilst it was clear (Because, you know… they’re fucking mercs) that they were working for a bigger, badder enemy which didn’t show itself until the endgame.
I did find that the budding relationship between Cooper and BT-7274 was really fun, and allowed for a really nice man & machine mechanic as Cooper would often act sarcastically (at my command) to which BT took at face value and would often literally explain the meaning behind certain things. Whilst certainly not the most original thing in modern media, I will always find this to be both hilarious and charming in spades.
Honestly though? I didn’t care that this was all there was to the story because I only needed the most basic of reasons to push through to get to the next Titan boss fight or section where I was a one man killing machine.
Appearance, Setting & Music
The level design & setting of Titanfall 2 was a real highlight for me, in particular the aforementioned level where I was able to time travel in order to get through certain sections of the level allowed for some absolutely beautiful traversing of the environment switching between when the facility was in it’s prime and to the present day when all that is left are ruins and the prowling critters roaming around hunting you.
I also felt that the design of each of the Titans was really cool (Says the 90’s era kid), with each one having their own unique characteristics that I had to learn in order to progress through the game, each of the varying boss fights brought a new level of ingenuity of the Titans which made it very clear to me that most of the time and effort put into character models was for the Titan models themselves…Which I am more than okay with.
Multiplayer
I have currently played ONE game online of Titanfall 2, I plan on getting more time with this once a friend of mine has also finished the campaign so I will update this section when I have sunk my teeth into the real meat of this.
Verdict
Based on the campaign & vanilla gameplay alone I think that Titanfall 2 is the best single player FPS that I have played since Modern Warfare and sincerely hope that this is the direction that EA and Respawn (LOL) move forwards in, in the future.
9/10