I play a lot of games. More than I probably should, actually, considering all of my daily responsibilities, but that’s neither here nor there. I can honestly say I haven’t played a game quite like Titanfall.
That’s definitely a good thing, as I have become increasingly bored with first-person shooters as of late: Call of Duty: Ghosts has, in fact, lost my interest faster than usual. I’ll buy an FPS, play the campaign, and then spend several weeks on multiplayer until I either find myself eclipsed by everyone else online or just lose interest, and while it’s true that I haven’t been playing Titanfall very long (since the beta opened last Friday), I don’t see myself doing that here. That’s because Titanfall is something that other successful games are: different.
Created by Respawn Entertainment (a group of developers who once worked for Infinity Ward and helped create Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which also succeeded because it was different), Titanfall has a lot going for it. You’ve got gameplay that is obviously inspired by Call of Duty, mixed with giant robots, mixed with parkour and double jumps. It’s like Respawn took the best parts of several franchises: Killzone/Halo, Call of Duty, Gundam, etc., and combined them into a giant amalgamation of fun.
That’s not to say that Titanfall is perfect, unlike what most game journalists are saying right now. There are some flaws: first of all, no single-player campaign mode. While it’s obvious that most FPS fans don’t buy for the campaign, some people (including myself) do, and it’s really hard for me to justify dropping $60 on a game without a single player mode. Especially if you’re like me and play for fun instead of out of a need to be insanely competitive, which means that a multiplayer-only game would be useless to me after a couple of months, dropping replay value.
To their credit, Respawn seems to be trying to assure folks like me why they went this direction, and claim that you’ll be able to see a story open up in multiplayer. My problem with that answer is that it would require me to stay still long enough to hear the conversations and story details they speak of, which would only get me shot faster.
Also, there’s the specter hanging over the title that is EA, the publisher that everyone loves to hate. If you play on PC, that means you have to have an Origin account, something a lot of folks try to avoid (although truth be told, Origin‘s pretty okay to use and even offers refunds on certain digital purchases). Origin‘s a free download and shouldn’t deter very many people from playing, but you know it will have an impact.
You could always play on Xbox LIVE via an Xbox One or Xbox 360, but it’s been noted in the past I’m not a fan of that option.
So in a long way of making a short statement: Titanfall is good. Very, very good. However, I won’t likely be buying it at full price… I’m just not sure there will be enough replay value there to justify it. I could be wrong.
I hope I am.
