The Titanfall Beta has come and gone. And while my fellow writer might have played the PC Master Race version I myself have an Xbox One to be inferior with on a TV.
During my time in the beta I played mostly the Attrition mode because I enjoy Deathmatch and I just wanted to kill other players. So these First Impressions will mainly focus on not the game modes themselves, as most of them were pretty standard FPS game modes anyway, but on the things I noticed that separate Titanfall from your normal everyday FPS.
As I played the beta I was very impressed by the sheer movement that the game allowed you as the parkour system and the included double jump did wonders to allow you to move over buildings and scale architecture. When I first saw things about Titanfall I was concerned that the mechs would dominate the battlefield through sheer size and mobility but looks like my concerns were dismissed with the awesome player movement. What else adds to the balancing between players and mechs is that the players get the ability to jump and hold onto the mechs back. This is great when you want to assist another player’s mech by jumping onto a friendly’s back and provide cover fire but it also gives you the opportunity to take enemy mech’s down by ripping off some metal and shooting into the mech’s wires and important electronics. You must beware as this isn’t a foolproof strategy as the player inside the mech will be notified of your presence on his giant might fighting robot and will usually pop out to shoot you in the face. This becomes a lot harder for your opponent if they are fighting a teammates mech but its important to keep this tip in mind. Not to say that you can just jump on them anytime. When a Titan is called into battle for the first few seconds after it lands it will have a bubble shield around it, don’t attempt to jump on Titan while this bubble shield is up because you will die. I know from firsthand experience.
Weapons in the game felt like normal FPS weapons and because of this I really hope that there is a bigger selection of guns besides the normal Assault Rifle, Shotgun, and Submachine gun core but the the Smart Pistol MK5 felt new, exciting, and really got me pumped about the guns they could potentially put into the game. The pistol has a basic sight that locks onto targets automatically and pulling the trigger shoots them on the locks. Its takes on lock to kill any basic AI unit but players need to be locked on 3 times before they are successfully killed which can be hard to do when most of the time meeting other players is through you looking at each other through your iron sights but its a nice change from the standard guns we have been given from shooters for so long. Now if only we can get to the Painkiller level of ridiculous or super high tech weapons.
The graphics on the Xbox One are gorgeous and the frame rate stays stable at a constant 60 FPS which is super nice because during my time in the beta I never had any big frame drops or unexpected lag spikes that I might get during a last gen FPS. Environments are made for climbing and exploring as well as being used for strategic viewpoints and the maps in the beta, although few in number, are well constructed and give you a lot of buildings to take and pile into while also giving you a lot of open space for the Titans to roam.
The Titan’s themselves are fun to pilot and while there was only the basic model available in the Beta I got to pilot another variant through the game’s card system. The light model was fun to use and definitely made it difficult for the other Titan pilot’s to get a read on me but its armor was more delicate as would be expected. The card system is an interesting addition as well. As you complete matches and earn exp you also have chances to earn these Burn Cards that let you give yourself an advantage in a specific way but there can only be 3 set before a match and you can only use them after you die so they can’t be taken advantage of without consequence. These Burn cards can do a variety of things, from giving you a sopped up gun that deals more damage than normal, giving you a different model of Titan, and even taking time off of your Titan repair time. It will be interesting to see what other Burn Cards they will add in the full game and how it can affect matches because they seem to be set as losing gambits for now reserved for when you need extra firepower.
Overall I really enjoyed the Titanfall Beta on my Xbox One and it actually convinced me to pre-order the game. If you want to watch some gameplay of the Titanfall Beta in action my video will be linked below with some minor commentary which will pretty much reflect what I said here but it will show high definition gameplay straight from the beta.
Until then I look to get my hands on the game as soon as it comes out in two weeks but until March 11th, Prepare for Titanfall!
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