April Edition Live Magazine - April 2014 Issue. | Page 62

review

Titanfall
On consoles, the online shooter
landscape has been dominated for
years by a trio of franchises: Call
of Duty, Battlefield and Halo. Other
franchises have come into the mix at
one point or another, but few have
managed to survive in the shadows
of the three FPS juggernauts.
After leaving Infinity Ward (And taking several key staff with him) Vince
Zampella (creator of Call of Duty)
announced a new studio and a new
sci-fi shooter in development to be
published by EA Games. That studio
is Respawn Entertainment, and that
game, is ‘Titanfall’.
Finally, after millions of gamers have
been “standing by” for an unbearable amount of time, ‘Titanfall’ has
landed. With no single-player offline
campaign, it seems as though Vince
Zampella and his team of ex-Infinity
Ward staff have focused on what
they do best - online multiplayer. Is
Titanfall the sci-fi messiah we’ve all
been waiting for? Or have we been
lead astray by the recent hype?
After pressing start at Titanfall’s title
screen, a video introduces players to
the world of Titanfall. Actual recorded footage of people, life events and
space exploration met with realistic
animated cut scenes of advanced
spaceships and planets, which was
clever and also lends realism to the
game. Watching the video, it isn’t too

outlandish to think that events like
these could happen in our lifetime.
Perhaps it was just the clever use
of real footage beforehand, but the
opening video helps draw a line between the real world of now and the
fictitious future found in Titanfall.
With so much original content found
in Titanfall, it’s inevitable that new pilots (players) will have to complete
an introductory tutorial. Thankfully,
this has been made as painless as
possible, and is over rather quickly.
By the end of the tutorial, you will
know how to move in the game world
both on foot (including wall-running
and double jumping) and in your Titan (mech). You will also get a brief
introduction to the game’s weapons, as well as some of your Titan’s
weapons. From here, you are free
to jump into multiplayer matches of
your choosing, or play the game’s

modern gamer is accustomed to.
It breaks tradition, and instead of
a long-winded series of extremely-scripted story events ala Call
of Duty (where the player either
rushes check points or spends an
insufferable amount of time behind
cover), the campaign’s story events
take place during actual multiplayer matches. For me, this has both
good and bad points to it.
If you consider yourself a competitive online gamer, you can happily
run into the fray of battle and ignore
the mission briefings as well as the
silly bravado that takes place on
your cockpit’s screen. If like me,
however, you would like to learn
more about the world in Titanfall,
you might find that learning the
campaign’s details take more than
one match on a particular map.

“YOU ARE FREE TO JUMP INTO MULTIPLAYER
MATCHES OF YOUR CHOOSING, OR PLAY THE
GAME’S “CAMPAIGN” MISSIONS..”
“campaign” missions, which are also
online-only and a multiplayer affair.
I say “campaign” with quotation
marks because Titanfall’s campaign
is a rather odd affair, because of
both how it was made and what the

There’s so much going on it can
get daunting sometimes, and I must
admit that the intricacies of Titanfall’s story were missed by myself
and other players I know. That isn’t
to say that there isn’t a story - far
from it. It’s just that unlike in other

game’s there are no rest periods
to take the details in, but this also
means that there are no annoying
moments where you feel like you’re
being bludgeoned over the head
with the game’s story like in other
FPS games (I get it, I get it, the Russians are bad! Now stop blocking
my way!). Perhaps Zampella and
Respawn thought that they should
focus on the balance between a
campaign and multiplayer, and not
deliver yet-another tired FPS story. I
mean, aren’t we all sick of the same
old military shooter stories by now?
I know I am, but here’s the thing:
Titanfall is the one shooter that
doesn’t have a story that has the
potential to have an mind-blowing
story. Seriously, the world looks like
something out of a Ridley Scott scifi movie, I just wished it had a single-player story to match, as it feels
like a missed opportunity.
The story itself tells the tale of two
warring factions. The IMC is a major corporation, which has come
to the frontier to extract valuable
resources, and the Militia are the
civilian military of Titanfall, and act
as the resistance against IMC’s evil
corporate empire. The Militia’s main
characters are Mac, a Titan war veteran and former mutineer, Bish, the
intel specialist and Sarah, a Militia
marauder corps leader.