The Case

After coming full circle, the creators and former makers of Call of Duty have founded a new game studio, aptly named Respawn, under Electronic Arts. Four years later, their first game – Titanfall – is now available. It is a multiplayer-only shooter focusing on infantry combat both on foot and inside large armored mechs called Titans.  Without further ado, let’s take a look at what Respawn has been working on for the past few years and see how well it panned out.

The Trial

Titanfall is a multiplayer shooter that combines many different elements to provide its own unique experience. The player gets to play the role of a pilot that has the ability to use advanced weaponry. Pilots are very agile, with the ability to run along walls as well as double jump. The 12-player limitation may seem too small, considering the size of the maps, but pilots are not the only things you’ll find on them. There are AI controlled Grunts and robot Spectres, which, similarly to creeps in a MOBA, provide little extra danger, without being as damaging as a real player. The NPC presence and some pre-determined situations also make the game feel more alive and cinematic. Obviously the main attraction of Titanfall are the bipedal mechs – Titans. These bipedal mechs can be controlled from inside, but also can act autonomously without direct control. There are three kinds of Titans, covering the whole spectrum: from the fragile and quick, to slow and damage resistant.

There is a limited selection of weapons for the pilots and Titans. Pilots can choose from standard arms like assault rifles or shotguns as well as a unique smart pistol. They also always get to choose one powerful anti-Titan weapon. The tradeoff for the smart pistol (that keeps it from being unbalanced) is that while it can quickly deal with any of the AI opponents you come across, you have to lock onto a player three times before you can fire the unique homing bullets. This can take quite a bit of time when you’re in a fast-paced firefight with people constantly running out of your line of sight. If you are seen while locking on, you are likely to lose the skirmish. Each weapon, except the anti-Titan ones have attachments, unlocked by completing weapon specific challenges.

Even with all their power and durability, Titans are the fragile kings of the battle. The level design is good at providing both open spaces for mech combat and tight spaces and ways for pilots to hide and maneuver. While anti-titan weapons can do a considerable amount of damage, the rodeo is the most dangerous thing a pilot can do to enemy Titan. By riding on it, shields can by bypassed and the core health of a mech is attacked directly. Unless taken care of, a pilot on rodeo can destroy a Titan very quickly.

There are five different game modes available. Attrition seems to be the most popular, being more-or-less a standard Team Deathmatch scenario. The Pilot Hunter mode is similar, but only killing the pilots themselves count towards the total score. Hardpoint mode is a territory control mode, which gives points to the team controlling the majority of three available bases. Last Titan Standing is a single-life mode consisting of several rounds, where everybody spawns in their Titans and at the end, the team with no Titans left loses the round, even if the pilots are still alive. Due to low player count, the team which gets numerical superiority ends up winning the round most of the time. Finally, there is a classic Capture the Flag mode. Matchmaking system in place only allows you to constantly play one of them or rotate through all of them.

There is a progression system which unlocks new weapons and abilities as you level up. Just like in CoD games, there is a prestige system called “generations”. After reaching level 50, and completing some challenges, you can reset your level to get additional badge in front of you name and an experience boost to level up and unlock stuff again. Burn Cards are a bonus that you can earn by completing either matches or challenges. You are allowed to pick a maximum of three before each match and they can either last until your first death, or in some cases, they last until the end of the game. The total number of Burn Cards you can carry are limited so you’re encouraged to use them as much as possible. The bonuses given by the Burn Cards vary from being straight benefits to your weapon’s power to more interesting things like having all AI controlled units ignore you. The end of each match provides the last interesting activity – evacuation. The losing team must reach the evacuation shuttle in time, while the winners try to kill them all or destroy the shuttle before it takes off. This element softens the loss and thus makes the game more enjoyable.

There are 15 maps in the game, each of which is distinct and has its own story played out on loading screens and in the level design. The maps range from a section of a large city and a military base to a destroyed vacation resort, but there are more map themes in game as well. Nine of the maps are in the multiplayer campaign, which provides some additional story to them.

The campaign itself is quite disappointing. Each mission is simply a standard attrition or hardpoint match with some storyline additions in the background. The maps in campaign and classic multiplayer differ mostly just in the pre-round cutscene and starting locations. There will always be some chatter from characters during the mission and some small scripted sequences will happen. These cutscenes do not affect the gameplay in any meaningful way. No matter who wins each level, the main story will not change except for small details in the dialogue. If you want to unlock all of the Titan chassis for custom loadouts, the completion of the campaign for both sides is required. The campaign just serves as a tour of the game to familiarise yourself with maps while playing the same enjoyable game modes. There can be problems with matchmaking, as the game can sometimes throw you back to earlier levels if it cannot find a lobby for the part of the campaign you’re on.

The technical side of Titanfall is unimpressive. Fortunately, unlike some other EA games, Titanfall works well and seems to be bug-free. In terms of graphics and system requirements, the Source engine, even with all of Respawn’s modifications, still shows its age. 3 GB VRAM requirement for the highest quality textures comes as a result of the lack of texture streaming. All textures are loaded constantly and if your card does not have a large enough memory, constant swapping with RAM will drop framerate even on the very capable GTX 770.  Fortunately, Respawn has adjusted the textures in the settings below maximum after Beta, giving more priority to the textures often seen up close, while sacrificing the quality of environment textures. The particle effects provide some life to the levels, but there are some quite noticeable draw distance disappearances for smaller objects. One spot where Respawn really succeeded was in the game’s animations, which feel very fluid and natural.

The audio in Titanfall is decent. The distinct sound effects for movement, weapons, and Titans allow you to hear and understand your surroundings quite well. Due to the small teams, the voice communication is quite simple to use. However, Respawn’s decision to force everybody to keep 35 GB of uncompressed audio on disk is very annoying. They did this to meet quite low minimum CPU requirements by avoiding audio decompression, but annoying everybody else in the process. Finally, there is a way the game handles servers. Microsoft’s Azure cloud server platform is very robust and powerful, and can scale based on demand. As many different users use it, there should not be any problems with Titanfall servers even when everybody decides to play the game at the same time. On another side – as soon as EA drops Titanfall’s support, they will stop paying for the servers. In addition, depending on where you live, there might not be any Azure servers close to you and you will be out of luck.

The Verdict

Overall, I found Titanfall to be a very enjoyable action shooter that brings something to the table for gamers of any skill level. There are AI controlled bots which will provide self-esteem for less successful players, while the best will find a lot of flexibility. Do not expect to play competitively in public matches, as random elements can change the situation too far from perfect balance. The graphics are nothing too be too excited about, and the forced matchmaking system is too limited compared to freedom of user-run servers in other games. However, as long as EA supports the game near you, Titanfall should consistently remain playable without problems. If you like short matches and playing just for simple fun, Titanfall is a good game to get.

Case Review