Titanfall
Posted: Sun May 11, 2014 4:19 pm
So after two days of Titanfall, I have formed some opinions.
1) It's pretty fun with a good group
2) Player skill can make the difference
3) Stop treating it like a normal shooter.
For those who don't know: Sci-fi war, way in the future, titans--giant war machines--are the centerpoint, but there's other technology. Pilots--PCs when they're running around on the ground--get cloaks and double-jumps and wall-runs out of the box.
The wall running and double-jumping is actually pretty cool; you cross horizontal distance more quickly. There's also a way to hang onto some pipes up a wall.
You have a countdown until you can call for your titan to be deployed near you, but fighting--killing people and things--speeds it up. Once deployed, you can get into your titan, or you can set it to defend the spot it landed, or follow you around.
Pilots aren't completely helpless against titans. They have a cloaking device which will make 'em invisible to titan optics and make them harder to see by other pilots. You get an anti-titan weapon--my favorite so far is the rocket launcher which shoots mini-rockets like an assault rifle shoots bullets--and you can "rodeo" a titan by jumping onto it. When that opens, your character will pry open a hatch on the titan and allow you to shoot directly into its engine. The titan can't get you off, but the pilot can jump out--or get someone else to do it.
Titans are fairly mobile, their only real limitations being they don't jump--they have a booster dash--and they can't fit into everywhere. They come with their own tricks, like the vortex shield. If you ever played Bioshock Infinite, you know that power which catches and holds bullets until you decide you want to throw the whole wad of bullets at them? Same deal.
I haven't unlocked all the gear yet, but so far I've got a few options. I've got a group of Xbox buddies, and we're playing through the campaign (which is also multiplayer) together.
So far, I've come up with two tactics.
1) Get allies to feed you bullets into the vortex shield. It works, it just makes the shield deplete much faster than normal. But if you're near an enemy, it can serve as a free sucker punch they won't be expecting.
2) Grab onto a friendly Titan and ride on its shoulder. It keeps other people from getting at it to rodeo, and you can pick off NPCs on the ground, or help it against other titans (the anti-titan weapons do enough damage to worry a titan).
The game goes a lot better with coordination among the party. If you've already got two or three people you play multiplayer games with, you're good.
1) It's pretty fun with a good group
2) Player skill can make the difference
3) Stop treating it like a normal shooter.
For those who don't know: Sci-fi war, way in the future, titans--giant war machines--are the centerpoint, but there's other technology. Pilots--PCs when they're running around on the ground--get cloaks and double-jumps and wall-runs out of the box.
The wall running and double-jumping is actually pretty cool; you cross horizontal distance more quickly. There's also a way to hang onto some pipes up a wall.
You have a countdown until you can call for your titan to be deployed near you, but fighting--killing people and things--speeds it up. Once deployed, you can get into your titan, or you can set it to defend the spot it landed, or follow you around.
Pilots aren't completely helpless against titans. They have a cloaking device which will make 'em invisible to titan optics and make them harder to see by other pilots. You get an anti-titan weapon--my favorite so far is the rocket launcher which shoots mini-rockets like an assault rifle shoots bullets--and you can "rodeo" a titan by jumping onto it. When that opens, your character will pry open a hatch on the titan and allow you to shoot directly into its engine. The titan can't get you off, but the pilot can jump out--or get someone else to do it.
Titans are fairly mobile, their only real limitations being they don't jump--they have a booster dash--and they can't fit into everywhere. They come with their own tricks, like the vortex shield. If you ever played Bioshock Infinite, you know that power which catches and holds bullets until you decide you want to throw the whole wad of bullets at them? Same deal.
I haven't unlocked all the gear yet, but so far I've got a few options. I've got a group of Xbox buddies, and we're playing through the campaign (which is also multiplayer) together.
So far, I've come up with two tactics.
1) Get allies to feed you bullets into the vortex shield. It works, it just makes the shield deplete much faster than normal. But if you're near an enemy, it can serve as a free sucker punch they won't be expecting.
2) Grab onto a friendly Titan and ride on its shoulder. It keeps other people from getting at it to rodeo, and you can pick off NPCs on the ground, or help it against other titans (the anti-titan weapons do enough damage to worry a titan).
The game goes a lot better with coordination among the party. If you've already got two or three people you play multiplayer games with, you're good.