Fellow gamers, we have all bought into the hype on a particular title at one time or another, only to be disappointed by the game once we actually started playing it. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a good example of a highly anticipated turd, GTA IV was way overrated, and I personally shelled out eighty bucks for the Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel Edition... it happens to the best of us. Titanfall is another game that, despite its “believe the hype” ad campaign, wasn’t worth all the drooling and nipple twisting over screenshots and trailers. Titanfall does not live up to to the hype.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wkOM4QlZZY[width=650,height=366]
Where’s The Rest of the Game?
Many developers have received criticism for releasing a game with only single player content. Even 2K was slammed for the lack of multiplayer in Bioshock Infinite, despite the fact that the multiplayer side of Bioshock 2 was a bit on the blah side. If a single player experience is only half of a game, why would gamers be satisfied with only the other half of a game?
Very few games are able to balance the MP vs SP experience. Concentrate on a compelling single player campaign and the multiplayer suffers. Great multiplayer games generally feature shallow, abbreviated single player experiences. I would have enjoyed Titanfall more if I didn’t have to play it with other people every fucking time I wanted to play it.
Hey, Let’s Gang Up on Sarcasmo!
The lack of any type of single player means a trial by fire in online lobbies. I’m no slouch at shooters, but getting my ass handed to me on every single match tended to devalue my Titanfall experience. Inevitably, I would be paired up with people who were just as shitty as me or with dickheads who quit two minutes into the match, leaving me and some eight year old to fend off a cohesive clan of veterans. The learning curve is appallingly steep and there is no place to get better at the game without the humiliation of being serially executed in public. I was on the losing side of every single match and never even made it to an evacuation point. Fucking backshooters.
Titanfall could benefit from a rating system that paired players with opponents of similar skill and experience. Let the noobs fumble around until they get their bearings, then upgrade them to the next tier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7WKp1BGcOA[width=650,height=366]
You Call That a Campaign?
In lieu of a single player campaign, Respawn has provided a multiplayer campaign experience. I played the campaign, as both Militia and IMC, and still don’t know what the fuck happened. There were two guys chattering over the radio, but I’m pretty sure one of them was already dead. Maybe he was just playing dead. Didn’t he die again later near the end? I’m pretty sure they knew each other but it was kind of hard to tell with all that dying going on. That guy died nearly as much as I did. I would have expected to have a better understanding of what happened by the end of the game, especially since I completed both campaigns. So much for the art of storytelling.
Toilet Tutorial
I had the same problem with Titanfall that I experienced during my Crysis 3 playthrough: there was just too much shit for me to remember. I thought I had it all down, but during the course of the campaign I forgot how to do that jetpack wall thing and how to change grenade types. I never really knew when to use burn cards and had trouble differentiating between friend and foe titans at close range. I wasn’t real sure how to capture one of the building things: was I supposed to just guard it for a while or something? There were computers there and some guy yelling at me over the radio. Was I supposed to hack it? Fuck it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4deb_n3gcn0[width=650,height=366]
Is Titanfall Really That Groundbreaking?
What innovations doesTitanfall bring to the genre? The non-existent plot thing has been done. There have been other mech games. I’ve been shot to death in other online shooters. The cloak thing has been done. Sonic had a wall run thing, and he did it faster. Metal Gear and Fallout had people babbling over a radio, so that’s been done. I guess the only new thing I can think of is being able to eject from your Titan. Yeah, that was worth sixty bucks.
Devil’s Advocate
Titanfall is an immensely popular game right now, but I cannot see folks playing it for years like Halo or other shooter games. It’s lopsided, it’s short on environments, and provides a very weak case for continuing to play other than just shooting shit. If the game hadn’t launched when it did, it would have found itself struggling against some more formidable competition, and Respawn should be thanking the gaming gods for the "rush to gold" tactics of Battlefield and CoD Ghosts, and their disastrous launches. I’ve played all three games, and I’m still waiting for the must have shooter of the Xbox One generation: Titanfall ain’t it.
