Respawn is a development studio known best for Apex Legends. Apex exploded into the battle royale genre and is still very popular today. I love the game like many people but I can’t help but feel a little wrong when I consider the context around Apex Legends.
Respawn is a development team formed by ex-Call of Duty (COD) devs after a not-so-clean breakup with Activision. Respawn’s first project was Titanfall, a game that saw decent success. It launched as a console exclusive on Xbox One and also on pc. It sold around 10 million units, nothing to scoff at, but the game wasn’t a complete success. Here in 2021, a game launching as just a multiplayer experience is common, but back in 2014, Titanfall was one of the first of its kind. The game had a story but it was told within the multiplayer. To myself and people on the outside, this seemed kinda like the story was an afterthought, and honestly, I don’t blame Respawn. They were the people that developed COD, a series that popularized the multiplayer shooter genre. I know that to me back then the major draw to COD was multiplayer, and it was obvious that many people just bought the games just for the multiplayer and not the campaign. Honestly, when Respawn did attempt a traditional campaign in Titanfall’s sequel, I don’t blame them for not bothering.
Now that’s not me saying Titanfall 2’s campaign is bad, in fact, it’s fantastic and obviously, a lot of love went into it, but if Titanfall felt like it didn’t make a huge impact on gaming, Titanfall 2 flopped hard. Titanfall 2 was even launching on PlayStation unlike the last game and the game still got buried. The game launched on a third, larger platform than the original, and didn’t even sell half as much.
Now for my experience with the series, I had a friend in college who loved the original and was super hyped for Titanfall 2 and one day when we were hanging out playing smash, as one does, he mentioned how the open beta for Titanfall 2 was live and told me I should give it a shot. I did and I liked it. At the time I was really kinda burnt out on shooters, being the prime age demographic that the COD games had a lock on during their initial dominance, so I kinda just thought it was a rad shooter with advanced movement. Despite my burnout, I still decided to buy it at launch.
So I don’t remember much of what happened during this time period because I was heavily into going to smash tournaments AND FAILING… but I put a lot of time into playing smash and not other games but I do remember Titanfall 2. I remember playing a lot of the multiplayer. It was fun. I loved the movement. Even with me not knowing the advanced movement, I found just sliding around, running on walls, and grappling to be so much fun, but then I remember moving away from the game. I eventually wanted to go back probably about a year after launch. So I booted up the game and tried to find a match on my favorite mode, amped hardpoint, and I couldn’t find a match. That surprised me honestly, but then I remember how everyone talked about how the game really got destroyed in sales and thought it was a real shame that the game was already dead.
A few years, a smash game, and a move across the country later and I heard that Titanfall 2 is going free on PlayStation Plus. I remembered how I wanted to play the game again and booted it up on ps4. I looked for a game of Amped Hardpoint, still no luck, but then I just set it to search for all modes and found a match rather quick. I didn’t really play much beyond Amped Hardpoint when the game came out cause I didn’t like grunts, but honestly, I just didn’t care anymore, I just wanted some Titanfall 2 and was willing to settle for the basic mode, Attrition. I fell in love again. The game was even better than I remembered. I loved it so much playing on PlayStation, but I had just built my first gaming pc and I was wondering how this game would handle on keyboard and mouse. So I bought the game for dumb cheap on pc and was surprised to find a pretty decently sized player base.
This game thrives with a keyboard and mouse. The game is at its fastest needs the speed and precision of a mouse. At first, I just got my buds to get the game and we would play private matches (ALSO HOW IS IT STILL IN BETA???) but eventually, I would join pub games. I started seeing what the good players used, started noticing how they moved and just how they played. And I came to the conclusion, this is the best shooter ever.
Why is it the best shooter ever? Because it’s so versatile. While the game isn’t the best-balanced game (Smart Pistol, Spitfire, etc.), a player that is moving at max speed and exploiting the game’s physics to their fullest will be able to dominate no matter what gun they or their opponent is using. It’s honestly a shooter game mixed with Sonic. You just gotta go fast. I don’t even always use super spray and pray weapons, but I’ll still zip around with a DMR and when I see movement, I’ll stop and shoot. And that’s why this game is so excellent. It’s so easy to play how you want. As I mentioned before, I play smash and smash is a game where you as a player define what your character plays like and multiple players of the same character will look different (not so much in ultimate but that’s a whole other topic), and Titanfall feels like that. It feels like that freedom you have in smash. And even when you start to get good at one playstyle, you can switch it up. I started using the Softball, a grenade launcher that will one-hit-kill a pilot if you hit them, but it’s really hard to do, and the splash damage is really bad if you just shoot around them. Combine this underwhelming weapon with movement and some luck, you can really destroy some people.
That’s what’s great about the game. Like I said the game isn’t 100% balanced, the community will tell you as much if you dare use the forbidden weapons, but that’s the thing, the community is so small and hardcore, that most public matches are just people zooming around with off-meta weapons trying to style. I’ve definitely have started falling into that. I will always run around trying to get grapple kills and I’ll use the Softball because it’s fun. This game is just pure fun.
Making your own fun
Titanfall 2 is special because it not competitive for most of the hardcore players, at least not traditionally. I’ve been part of smaller game communities and it seems like this kind of culture develops a lot in these smaller communities. Titanfall has community rules, obviously, you can break them but when you want to impress, you avoid breaking these rules. In a game when you’re competing with others, you want to win, so you look at Titanfall 2’s guns and options, and you see things like the Spitfire, the Smart Pistol, and Monarch, and you want to use them. They are extremely strong options, yet a majority of the community does not use them. Instead, the majority tend to take the weaker weapons, maybe even meme weapons, and try to dominate with them. I love the DMR. It’s a 2 shot sniper and honestly feels really out of place in the game. This game is fast and a sniper that needs to hit twice is a very risky weapon to use, but if someone kills you with a DMR, then you straight got outplayed. Even the 1 shot kill Kraber is a hard gun to justify in a game like this, but it’s a very popular gun to use because you know when you get a kill or get killed by it, it was a good play. And Honestly, I have no problem with someone using a Spitfire, CAR, or any meta gun, but it gives me pride if I can outplay the people using those guns. In fact, I welcome it, because it only improves my own gameplay. And that’s what this game is about, making your own fun.
This game is a sandbox. It’s how people like to describe Smash as well. The game is a sandbox and what you do with the tools, defines you as a player and people can do amazing things in this game. The movement is so free compared to other shooters, just like how platform fighters have so many more options than a traditional fighter. So in Titanfall, you can deck out your loadout like in most modern shooters and then use those tools in the sandbox of the game to express yourself. You can get up to so much speed in this game and reach such heights vertically, that playing really speedy on the ground, flying around up top or hunkering down to try and hit the people zipping around is all viable.
This all leads to some of the sickest things you can do in a shooter. I love the exhilaration of dodging through gunfire and landing a killing blow on someone and then zipping away. I love dueling someone on the top of the map and landing a grapple on them. I love zipping right up to someone and meleeing people. Also, the melee system is so amazing in this game. It’s got a really strong lock on, and it’s an OHKO, but I think that’s because of the movement system. It’d be almost impossible to land a melee kill otherwise. And when you land one… oh boy. It sounds so satisfying. A nice meaty “Thunk”.
The feel of the game
This game has such a great art style. While in many ways it looks like a generic video game, like what your parents probably think video games are, it’s got such great subtlety and charm. I love the sleek look of the grapple pilots. I love the look of the weapons. I love the ways they incorporate a hud into a ton of the guns. The guns sound amazing. The sound design is so good. Titans could stand to look a bit more distinct, but you can pretty much tell most of them apart immediately. Ronin and Northstar Legion and Scorch are easy enough to tell apart. But Ion, Tone, and Monarch are harder to tell. Luckily when you focus on them on the field, it says their name quite large.
The Maps are amazing and beautiful. I noticed this when I came back to the game, I still knew a ton of the maps. And you know how Nuketown is a signature map of the black ops franchise? I know that map so well and they know it’s a classic because it’s been in every black ops game. I think almost every map in Titanfall 2 is a classic. I know these maps. I couldn’t tell you which one is the one that speaks for the game like a Nuketown, because they’re all so memorable. I love the dynamic of Kodia. The sniping wars up top and the close-quarter fights inside. I love the look of Exoplanet and the dynamic of the 3 mains structures in the middle of the map. Every map has a distinguishing feature and, they all change up the dynamic. Some maps don’t have tons of verticality, but a lot of horizontal sightlines and some the opposite. They all culminate in a diverse experience that is not likely to get boring fast.
Titans
The Titans are in the name, but honestly, I feel like they’re one of the less exceptional parts of the game. Don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, but when you’re zipping around as a pilot, with super speed and mobility, hopping into a titan kinda breaks that up. Lore-wise, the titan-pilot relation is very cool, but gameplay-wise, I don’t think it meshes as well.
Titans are slower-paced, obviously and with the firepower and heath pool they have, they should be. When the game becomes titan v titan, the game turns more into a hero shooter than a COD-style multiplayer game. And it’s a damn good hero shooter. The titans are decently balanced amongst themselves and they all have very distinct playstyles. They can be customized but not to the extent as pilots and the changes are more specific.
When playing the game, you get your titan by scoring points. Killing other pilots, grunts, playing the objective, all of it raises your Titan meter and once the first titan drops, that is a huge thing. Titans kill pilots easily unless the pilot is very skilled. Pilots need to use their speed and mobility to chip away at titans. It’s usually best to counter a titan with another titan, but pilots can get it done. The truth is, you’re supposed to die in this game. The game is designed that way, and it reconciles that by getting you back into the action quickly. And you’re supposed to go in on titans as a pilot and get as many shots on a titan as you can to whittle them down, and eventually, the Titans will fall. If they don’t have many titans, a few pilots can easily overwhelm a titan if the titan doesn’t have support. Yes, they kill some people, but it’s like how insects act. Insects will attack a larger threat knowing some will die but eventually they’ll take it down. What I’m saying is, every pilot, get on those titans and vibrate until they are cooked by your heat… Oh.. that’s wasps…
Where titans fail is ironically where Titanfall succeeds. While being a pilot is like being in a sandbox and making your best sandcastle. Playing a titan is way more limited. It’s like putting together a model. Maybe you can paint it differently, but yours is gonna look similar to mine. Why would you want to jump in a titan when playing as a pilot is so much fun? I like the dynamic, but many don’t and I totally understand. I don’t know if the series could ever solve this though without rebranding, but maybe with the success of apex, maybe respawn could move away from titans. Maybe an Apex game that’s not BR, but a traditional shooter. Idk if maybe it could be a hero shooter, but idk how you justify the movement of Titanfall 2 and have heroes…maybe turn the tactical classes into characters instead of pilots… I feel like it’s a problem that can’t be solved, but respawn has been on a roll recently, so we’ll see. Honestly, I don’t want to see titans gone completely but I can’t deny they mess with the pace of the game.
Pilots
In Titanfall 2, you play as a pilot. Pilots are agile, super soldiers. Every pilot can double jump, wall run slide and each one can have a tactical ability. My favorite is grapple and trust me, it’s the most interesting, but there are other abilities. Cloak, Stim, Holo, and more are key abilities that you use frequently in gameplay. Each one changes how you play substantially. Each one has certain things to learn to perfect the ability. Grapple hook specifically requires a lot of knowledge to perfect movement. I’m really just now getting into how to perfect slingshotting with the grapple and even within grapple, there are different ways of using it to traverse. It’s all part of the sandbox.
Playing as a pilot is powerful. The movement alone gives you a sense of agency and power that other shooters can only accomplish through weapons. The weapons also feel powerful for the most part, but your power is less tied to your weapon in this game than in any other shooter. While a gun like the EPG is a powerful launcher that can kill in one hit, it’s a weaker weapon unless you can perfect your movement.
Good pilots will use every wall to get around. When you wall run, you go faster, and when you boost off a wall, you go super fast. Using this combined with B-hopping to maintain momentum, you can obtain ridiculous speeds. B-hopping is also pretty complicated in Titanfall 2. To B-hop correctly, you need to jump and crouch before you hit the ground. Sounds simple, but it takes time to get used to. When I first learned how to do it, I hopped in a custom game by myself and practiced B-hopping like labbing a combo in Smash. It took some time, but now it’s second nature.
Pilot combat is really where Titanfall 2 shines. There is a mode just for Pilots vs Pilots, but it’s not as populated as Attrition. It’s a shame honestly. Titans, while fun, break up the pilot gameplay. Even if you don’t call in your Titan in a Titan game mode, you are subjecting your team to a rather major disadvantage. As a Pilot, you’re an easy kill for other Pilots in Titans and while you can damage a Titan, you won’t be doing as much to the enemy Titans compared to being in a Titan of your own.
Play Titanfall 2
So, if you are even remotely interested in Titanfall 2 after reading this, good. I did my job. If you have any interest in shooters, it’s worth a look. It’s always on sale. It’s also on steam now. The game really deserves a chance and after its horrible launch, Respawn needs to see how much people still love the game. Apex is wonderful too. It’s easily my favorite Battle Royale, but nothing can beat the arcade, fast-paced gameplay of Titanfall 2.
Bernard Lamar Rice 