Review
Titanfall 2 is a science fiction first person shooter heavy on the action game which is available for xbox one, playstation 4 and Windows PCs. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA the game uses a modified version of the source game engine. The game was released to the Australian market on the 28th of October 2016.
Technical Bollocks!
For this particular review I played the game on a PC. The computer's specs are; Windows 10 pro as the OS, an i5 4690k CPU, a Nvidia GTX 970 video card, and 16 gigs of DDR3 ram.
For the most part I ran the game with everything on the highest graphical settings, vsync turned off, and anisotropic filtering turned to 8x (the game recommended 16x but AF can be a real video ram whore). The game ran at over 60 frames per second constantly.
The game does not allow you to use borderless fullscreen on the PC, only fullscreen or windowed with borders, which is a pain in the ass if you want to watch something on a second monitor while playing, or like me, are trying to keep notes on the game.
I can not speak for how the console ports perform, but I guess both ports run at least 30 frames per second.
Single Player Mode
Spoilers ahead for the single player portion of the game, obviously.
In Titanfall 2 you play as Jack Cooper on the alien world known as Typhon in the Frontier galaxy. You play with the faction the "Militia" (think the rebels from Star Wars) and fight against an evil corporation known as the IMC (That's the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation from Earth).
In the intro to Titanfall 2 it's revealed that Typhon is a prospering colony where it's citizens may lead a peaceful life. However one day the IMC decides that Typhon would be perfect for fracking and manufacturing, which means the IMC can generally be dicks to the current inhabitants.
The IMC is also developing a weapon called the "fold weapon" which can destroy an entire planet, you have to stop them using it before they destroy another prospering Frontier colony planet known as "Harmony".
There is also a Macguffin known as the "Ark" which has time travel properties and powers the fold weapon...I think.
Deciding they like their little planet and don't want it to be turn into just another destroyed manufacturing planet with no natural life and industry everywhere, the current people living on the frontier's planets of Harmony and Typhon decide to take up arms and fight back against the Corporation.
Okay so the story may not be the most in-depth and original thing in the universe but the main draw of most games is the gameplay, no?
The main "gimmick", or hook if you'd prefer, of Titanfall 2 is the titular "Titans", human piloted Mech's with many abilities that give you a strong advantage over your enemies.
In the tutorial and first mission of the game you are introduced to Captain Tai Lastimosa, who is quickly killed off, but who gives you the reins to "pilot" his Titan "BT-7274", which you get to control for most of the rest of the game.
However for most of the game you will be playing as Cooper on his own, but this is not necessarily a bad thing as both Cooper and BT control very well despite both having very different control schemes, with the transitioning between Mech and Soldier is very natural.
When you control Cooper you get the option of any 2 of the game's infantry weapons at once to control, as well as grenades, and a stupidly overpowered melee attack.
All the infantry weapons from automatic assault rifles, to shotguns, to energy lazer pew pew guns are all very satisfying to use and have a real kick to them, they also sound awesome!
You also have many ways to manoeuvre Jack including, a sprint that lasts a while, a double jump to get to high ledges, the ability to "wall walk" where you can walk on walls mid air to go through a large gap, and a dive which coupled with the melee attack can be an extremely fun way to take down enemy infantry units.
When you pilot BT you get the option of multiple loadouts which give you vastly different weapons and abilities. For example the "Tone" load out gives you a one round burst rifle which is great for getting headshots off enemy titans, you also get a shield that you can deploy that can take damage and let's you fire at enemies safetly.
Manoeuvring your titan is a lot slower and tankier than controlling Cooper himself, you cannot jump as BT but pressing space lets you quickly dodge out of the way of danger, or catch up to an enemy titan to punch it in the face with your melee attack.
There are multiple enemy types in the game, there is the standard IMC Infantry which are quick to take down but come in droves, Robotic Infantry which are harder to take down and usualy come in groups of 2-5, Spider explody things which scutter along the ground and can sneak up on you and kill you if you are not paying attention, but which can be used as effective explosives against other enemy types if you kill them quick enough, Alien Hound enemies which can take a lot of damage and attack you in droves, Reapers which are big robot enemies which can be tough to take down if you're on your own, but fairly easy when you're in your Titan, enemy Titans which can only be killed while you are in your Titan and can kill you easily if you are not careful enough, and finally Bosses, which come in the form of an enemy Titan with a lot of health.
There are 5 Bosses spread throughout the game, each wielding a different titan class and each can be a real challenge to take down.
There are 9 levels in total, and you should only take you about 4 hours to complete the entire single player campaign, I played on regular difficulty (1 above easiest and 2 below hardest), but I recommend playing on hardened difficulty if you have played an FPS game in the past 5 years.
My personal favourite level is level 3 "Blood and rust" where you must traverse an IMC manufacturing plant and platform across various assembly lines, and at the end survive a wave of enemies in a VR simulation.
At the end of the game you defeat the final boss Slone and get launched towards the Ark, however at the last minute your Titan throws you onto a platform and sacrifices itself so that the fold weapon cannot be used on Harmony and you can get off Typhon safetly before the planet explodes. You get off Typhon in a militia ship and the planet explodes destroying the rest of the IMC forces in Frontier as well, for the most part anyway.
Graphically Titanfall 2 is gorgeous, at least on the PC. I found myself just stopping and looking at the scenery for a good while, there is one area where the graphics fall short, however. Don't look at the non major npc's for too long!
Overall the single player campaign of Titanfall 2 is pretty good, it's as long as it needs too be, the story is a little cliché and hard to follow sometimes, but game play wise it's very satisfying. However for 90 Australian dollars it's a very hard pill too swallow for the campaign alone.
Multi Player Mode
So here's the multi-player side of titanfall 2, the mode that 90% of people purchased the game for.
If you have played an online multi-player first person shooter in the last 5 years than you probably know what's packaged inside here. A handful of game modes, typically player vs player, sometimes with an objective to achieve as a team. Multiple guns, perks, attachments and other stuff to unlock and equip your character. A levelling system like an RPG and a whole lot of fun and rage filled moments. The multiplayer of Titanfall 2 is an attempted improvement on the first Titanfall, but in my honest opinion the multiplayer mode of Titanfall 2 is a little worse than the original.
You may have realised that I did not mention Titanfall 1 once in my review of the single player campaign of Titanfall 2, this is because if you are farmiliar with Titanfall 1 at all you will know it has no single player campaign! So comparing the single player content of Titanfall 2 to Titanfall 1 is redundant, I will however be comparing the multi player content of Titanfall 2 to its predecessor.
Firstly game modes; it has been over 2 years since I last played Titanfall 1 so my memory of it is a little fussy, however I do believe there are more game modes in Titanfall 2 than there were in the original.
The main game mode which I know for a fact wasn't in Titanfall 1 is "Bounty Hunt". In it you must eliminate other players to gain money, with this money you must go to a little device that will spawn randomly on the map and deposit the money you have collected. During the round enemy banks will spawn where most enemies will be at, making them a good place to kill enemies, other times your banks will spawn, then you have to deposit money at them. And it will change which team's bank spawns one after another until the round ends.
At the end of every round a ship will spawn in the game which carries the losing team back to their headquarters, if you destroy the ship as the victor you get a bonus. And if you get away on the ship without dying or without it being destroyed by the winning team you get a bonus, so losing games may not have to sting as much as losing in most other games.
The other main game mode is "Attrition", which is a basic team of 6 versus another team of 6 to try to see who can kill each other the most. With the adition of Titans you can call in if you do well during the match and NPC guys running around the map which you can kill to help earn your Titan and help the maps feel not like a barren waste land, it becomes a far more engaging game of team death match than what Call Of duty and Battlefield offers.
There are other game modes but good luck trying to find a game in them, I spent a good while searching for a game in each other game mode, but only "Bounty" and "Attrition" contains players. Even "Bounty" has just barely enough players playing to actually find a game. There were about a little over 100 people searching in "Attrition" and just shy of 20 people searching in "Bounty", so unless you really REALLY love team death match you will spend a while searching for players.
Be prepared to see this screen a lot and for a while.
Considering the game is not even a month old yet and it's already hard to find an online multiplayer session it shows how grim the community is already. Though you're hard pressed to find any game mode but team death match on Call Of Duty on PC, and there's always Christmas and sales to boost the community size a bit, it might not be completely doom and gloom for Titanfall 2 multiplayer.
I also don't really like the map roster in Titanfall 2, they're not the worst designed maps in gaming history but they're not particularly good either. Most of the maps feel the same with a wide open field area, a building area, and a cave area. Also most of the outside sections of the maps incorporate a very autumn-y aesthetic with short yellow grass and lots of bloom from the sun which is very unappealing to me.
Comparably Titanfall 1, which again didn't have the best maps in history, still had some very memorable maps which stick out in my mind to this very day (Anyone remember that one TF1 map on like a huge satellite dish at night?)
One area Titanfall 2 succeeds over Titanfall 1 is in the variety of weapons, Titans, and just things to unlock. Titanfall 1 felt very samey and you practically unlocked everything after about 10 hours of play, there were also 3 Titans which felt very similar to each other, whereas now there are 6 and each feels different to each other with some Titans exceling at different roles.
Final Thoughts
If you want a good multi-player game I'd say buy Overwatch, if you want a good single player FPS game I'd say buy the new Doom from this year. However if you're looking at the 3 FPS's that were released stupidly close together this year, (those being Battlefield 1, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare and of course Titanfall 2), I'd say definitely buy it over Call Of Duty this year. I don't particularly think it beats out battlefield 1 as there is a huge thriving multiplayer community on battlefield and it's not hard to find a match at all, and every game of battlefield 1 feels different.
The campaign has been compared to Half-life 2 and other great games in the same genre and I have to disagree with this entirely, the campaign to me is just good not great, and for being 4 hours long I do not think it is worth paying 90 dollars for!