Titanfall: My Late Early Impressions (Shut Up)

I’ve had Titanfall (Xbox One) for like, almost two weeks now, but haven’t really played because of work and traveling and toddler and something-something liquor.

But, today, I cracked into one-half of the campaign.

Here, then, are my impressions:

The Awesome:

The game is easy. Or, feels easy, at least.

It’s orchestrated toward Awesome Moments. First match, I got blown up, ejected out straight up into the air, fired an anti-titan missile straight down and killed the big giant robot that had blown my ass apart in the first place. Again: this was my first match.

Pilots are nimble-footed. Game feels like there’s nowhere you can’t go. The wall-running and double-jumping give your movement a very fluid sensibility, which is nice.

Fast to respawn. Minimal downtime as a result.

Titans are not immortal killing machines. A single pilot can take one down. Not easily, though.

It’s really fun. That sounds simplistic, but it’s a game, so that matters.

Short matches let you just jump in, shoot some motherfuckers, then go do something else.

I GET TO STOMP AROUND IN GIANT ROBOTS WITH GUNS AAAAAAH YAY

The Less-Than-Awesome:

It’s very, very fast-paced. More Unreal than Halo. Curiously, as I get older, my reflexes in video games slow equally to mine in life — I prefer a slower, more methodical game. I like the slightly plodding run of the soldiers in Call of Duty. Pilots here feel like ninjas running around, and they’re hard to shoot. (Piloting a Titan feel more fun because of this, actually.)

Game matches tend to be frenetic.

Sorely lacking a single-player game.

Multiplayer on Xbox One has nobody talking. Likely due to the fact none of us have mics/headsets, and it won’t use the Kinect that way — and why do we need the Kinect again? As a result, it feels like a multiplayer match of individuals, which is not super-great in a team-based game. It’s mostly just a bunch of assholes running around playing their own game.

You start the game underpowered, and it shows. That first match it’s like, every time you pop your head out, somebody is shooting it off. Though by my fourth game I was feeling comfortable and with enough option to not feel like a total gopher at the hole.

The campaign is doofy. It’s a veneer of single-player staple-gunned onto a multiplayer-only game, which — y’know, don’t bother. Never half-ass two things — whole-ass one thing. Of course, to unlock things, you gotta play the campaign anyway, soooooo, poop noise.

Overall?

It’s cool. It’s fun. It’s easy-breezy.

If you like this sort of thing, you’ll love this particular thing.

If you do not like this sort of thing, you’ll hate this particular thing.

If you’re looking for single-player: ain’t here. Maybe one day (but I doubt it).