I skipped the first Titanfall due to a lack of single-player campaign and I almost made the same mistake with Titanfall 2, having assumed it would be more of the same.

I am incredibly glad that I picked the game up over the Summer and sat down to play through the solo story. Being a fan of shooters (Gears, Halo, Metro, etc), I assumed it would be entertaining, but nothing special. I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised! While short, the campaign stays focused and keeps serving up a blend of action and enjoyable parkour. The controls were tight and well configured, making double jumps and wall running a snap even with keyboard and mouse.

All the weapons I tried were balanced and felt good to fire at human and robotic enemies alike. Also, the variety of unique grenade types was both fun to employ and entertaining to watch (Looking at you Gravity Grenade) as enemies got trapped in their blast zone.

In addition to normal shooter combat, you frequently had the option to make use of a Titan. Titan combat was satisfying and engaging and while you couldn't jump by normal means, the movement was fast enough to use cover and tactics against enemy titans and bots. Being able to switch between character and titan at a moment's notice was pure genius from the devs.

The story overall was engaging and while there were a handful of quiet moments, the game supplied an almost overwhelming stream of pulse-pounding action sequences. I found the story entertaining and the dialogue with BT mildly humorous as well.

A special mention for the time-traveling watch. During one arc in the story, you can time travel at will between two time periods. I found this ability endlessly entertaining, escaping through time to avoid gunfire, then returning after moving to a different spot to ambush the enemy. Fantastic and I'd love to see that mechanic used again.

If you're a big fan of the shooter genre and you like big robot battles, I recommend giving this title a shot. At the often cheap price point and the low time commitment (Maybe 8 hours? I left my game idling overnight by accident, so Steam says 15.), there's no excuse not to join forces with BT and smash bots.

Note: this review only covers the game’s single-player campaign.

Titanfall 2 is the 2016 sequel to Titanfall, developed by Respawn Entertainment. While the original attempted a fusion between multi- and single-player, this time around the sequel does have a proper single-player campaign. In an intergalactic sci-fi setting, you play as soldier Jack Cooper, who as a member of a militia group fights the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation for planetary control. After witnessing the death of his superior on the battlefield, Jack becomes the pilot of his Titan, a huge mecha that enhances the pilot’s fighting ability greatly. Now on their own, the newly made pilot and his Titan have to uphold the previously assigned mission.

I’m quite sceptical of Modern Military Shooters (MMS). With Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s commercial success, the cinematic, spectacle-focused storytelling approach in shooters took the industry by storm. The approach itself isn’t inherently bad, but in this case, what it mostly resulted in is a bunch of formulaic uninspired copycats.
While Titanfall 2 doesn’t outright reject this story-telling approach, it seems to treat its story more as a means to an end. That end being fun gameplay. The story primarily serves as the vehicle to logically connect the locations and events that you see throughout the game, and that’s it. While I do think that MMSs took it too far with scripted story sequences every few minutes, the pendulum doesn’t need to swing back the entire way either. I’m not advocating for games to return to the days of Quake or anything. What is unfortunate however is when games seemingly put their story first and the gameplay into a subordinate position. So I’m quite happy with Titanfall 2, which finds a much better balance for story and gameplay than anything else in the genre that I have played.

As a base for its gameplay, Titanfall 2 takes the CoD embossed MMS core with extended movement capabilities. Your character can double jump and run along walls for a short amount of time. By chaining your wall runs, you can pass through a corridor, without ever hitting the ground. For weapons, the game adopts the MMS script fully—you get all your familiar weapon types: automatic rifles (some with burst fire), shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers. TF2 adds some futuristic quirks to most weapons, but they don’t deviate from the MMS norm in regards to how they feel to play.
The game features automatically regenerating health, which is another popular design choice for an MMS. This is something that I generally don’t like. It encourages playing defensively—you sitting in cover, occasionally raising your head to shoot for a bit, until you are hit badly and you return back to cover, only to continue the routine once your health has replenished again until all the enemies are dead. Luckily it’s much better here. Health regeneration is quick, and since the game puts an emphasis on movement, it is generally a better idea to just dodge your opponent’s firing than to cower away. This results in a pretty energetic gameplay loop, though whenever a level converges into a corridor, you will probably have to resort to sticking to cover if you don’t want to die.
The fast gameplay has a downside, however. It makes the overall combat situation less legible, and with enemies that can basically hold all the weapons you could, it’s hard to make out which enemies pose a threat to you in what way. Add to that a messy combat situation overall, with enemies shooting at you from all angles, dying in this game without understanding how it happened is not an uncommon occurrence. Generally, I’ve died like this about once every mission. Fortunately, the game sets checkpoints quite often, so whenever that happens you won’t lose a ton of progress. It’s still frustrating when it happens though.
So far I’ve only described how the pilot feels to play, but there is another major component to this game as the title implies: the titan. It helps you out whenever you are running around as a pilot, shooting at your enemies the same as you. But you also have the opportunity to manoeuvre the titan yourself, by boarding the mecha. This fundamentally changes the rules of the game.
The titan is immune against light fire from infantry troops and can only be matched by other robots/titans. Fighting these kinds of enemies is what the titan will mostly be used for. The titan features a hybrid health system, with an automatically regenerating shield and after that a fixed health system, where health can only be replenished by picking up power cells that are spread across the level.
Movement within the titan feels heavy. Your movement is greatly restricted and except for being able to unlock a temporary flying ability, you are bound to the ground walking. It creates a nice contrast with the movement heavy pilot.
Your titan can freely equip different loadouts once unlocked. Loadouts feature different main weapons and secondary abilities that you can use. This allows for a lot of variety in how you can approach combat in the game, with each loadout feeling distinct. It keeps gameplay within the titan fresh, despite the stiff manoeuvring.

The game is structured into self-contained levels, each one trying something different. At the start of the game, you get introduced to the core mechanics and controls. Once those are mastered, during the middle section, the game remixes its gameplay in small ways to keep your attention. Then, towards the end, the game steers more towards spectacle where you get to fight some big battles with breathtaking scenery.
TF2 starts somewhat slower than I would like it to but takes up the pace after about half an hour. Levels are generally shaped after their purpose, being small and simple when movement is the focus and spacious and multi-levelled for combat arenas, which allows you to employ your movement abilities to cleverly outflank the enemy. In-between those sections, sometimes you can chat with your titan, giving you more insight into your environment, or reminding you of what you have to do. The writers certainly try to emotionally bind you to it, which is a tough ask, considering it’s a machine. And while the attempts at adding charm to the robot, by having it interpret figures of speech literally, are quite old and played out, they still make it work. This type of game doesn’t need a lot of emotional involvement to work, but the game fosters enough for the titan, that key scenes in the game produce a good sense of involvement.
But again, you don’t just run around as the pilot. Sometimes during a mission, you are advised to enter your titan and some missions are played exclusively within it. Whenever such a section comes around, the game gives you a new loadout to play with, to keep things fresh.
In titan form, you will fight multiple boss fights against other titan pilots throughout the game. And to my surprise, they are quite good. Boss fights are not a thing you often see in MMS games, and for good reason: the gameplay usually doesn’t lend itself well to a sustained fight. Those games that have tried this in defiance, have rarely been good in these sections. The way TF2 makes them work is by having these battles exclusively in titan form. Having slower fights in an environment where things are already moving slower than just as the pilot—it just feels natural. Another factor that helps is that the fights don’t last too long. Your titan does very visible damage to the enemy titan and it’s usually over after about a minute. This makes these boss fights just another form of added variety to the gameplay, instead of an occasional annoyance.
The levels that stand out the most by a wide margin are all located in the middle section of the game. After having mastered the core mechanics of the game during the beginning, the player is provided with new gameplay components that mix things up in each level. The first is a giant assembly line with many moving parts that challenge your acquired parkour skills. After that follows a level with two separate timelines that you seamlessly travel between, and for the second part of the level, you get to control the time at the press of a button. This makes for excellent new movement challenges and combat moments, as you travel from one battlefield to the other across time within the blink of an eye. The final level in this outstanding middle section gives you a tool to manipulate machinery in your environment. This gives you the power to make obstacles disappear, walls and platforms appear, and convert enemy robots to your side—again, at the press of a button. What makes these levels so memorable is that they remix the core gameplay in pretty significant and fun ways and being contained to just one level, they never overstay their welcome. Another thing in their favour is that each level is very visually distinct: going from big machinery, to an overgrown abandoned facility, to the top of a mountain range. It’s a bit of a shame that after that the game goes more with the genre typical spectacle of big and impressive looking battles, but that doesn’t mean the end of the game is bad by any means. The game still has all of its good core mechanics to fall back onto.

In conclusion, Titanfall 2 is a good game. It has good, sometimes excellent, gameplay and level design. The story on the other hand is mostly forgettable, doesn’t say anything beyond the typical sci-fi tropes, and serves more as a means to an end.
What makes the game stand out, is that the genre it emerged from is largely a sea of mediocrity and sameness. Titanfall 2 manages to establish an identity all of its own, and while doing so gave us one of the best Modern Military Shooters of the last decade.

In summary: 7/10

Yes, FPS games (this one included) are mostly about online multiplayer. But I don't really care about that. What I do care about is a fantastic single-player experience I can run through while my crappy Internet drops randomly in the summer. And Titanfall 2 delivered.

Just everything about this game reminded me of the old glory days of Halo 3. A wide array of weapons that actually have diversity between them, expansive and beautiful level design, a not-human partner that the main character grows to love, and more. And the increased movement capabilities not really seen in older FPS titles allowed some interesting platformer elements to be thrown in too.

The other big reminder is how the game has a sci-fi setting and just throws the player into the middle of a big, ongoing conflict. And it doesn't feel off. Would I like to know more about what's going on? Sure. Do I need to know more to understand what's happening within the context of Titanfall 2's campaign? No, I do not. While there is clearly a bigger story here, the immediate story is compelling enough and has interesting enough characters that you do not feel like you're really missing anything. This is something the later Halo games really screwed up on, making it near-impossible to understand the story if you haven't read the novels and comics and such.

It's not a long game either, I clocked about 6 hours to beat the campaign on Normal, but FPS's never really are. Ever since online multiplayer became such a cash cow (namely microtransactions...especially microtransactions) it's just so increasingly rare to see a game developer put this level of work into a single-player mode. And it's not like this is brand-new either; Titanfall 2 was 4 years old by the time I finally got around to playing it. That seems to be starting to change in the wake of financially successful single-player games like The Witcher 3 and God of War, but that's just now turning around and wasn't really happening yet when Titanfall 2 came out.

So, uh, in summary: Play this game if you like shooters. It's awesome, it includes a good campaign mode that rivals the best the genre has ever seen, and I for one regret waiting as long as I did to play it.

After seeing that Titanfall 2 was on sale, I thought I’d give it a go. I had heard that the story of the campaign was nothing to rave about, which made me a little nervous, as I typically prefer PvE games that have an engaging narrative. But I ended up loving it anyway.

Yes, the narrative is fairly archetypal. While some of the characters are memorable (Ashe, BT, etc), others are quite forgettable. The plot (and a lot of exposition) is mostly delivered through audio, and I found myself just jumping into the fight rather than paying attention to all the dialogue.

However, the gameplay is so satisfying and visually engaging that I didn’t care that the story was lacking. The maps are beautiful, and the wall riding mechanic provides a nice change of pace from combat. The variety of weapons enables variety, and a range of play-styles (I enjoyed switching between Kraber and a mid-range gun). It’s unsurprising that Respawn decided to utilise the same weapons and world for Apex Legends. There is a section where the player has to navigate a broken down facility by switching between two time zones, which was particularly well designed. Who doesn’t love being able to fight inside a giant mech!

I haven’t tried the PvP much, but the game is worth the price just for the campaign.

(Just a small warning: I originally started the campaign on ‘regular’, but after playing for about 45 minutes, I switched to ‘hard’ mode. However, even though I played the whole rest of the game on ‘hard’, steam gave me the achievement for completing the game on ‘regular’ because I had started on that difficulty level. So probably better to just restart the campaign if you’re not that far in)

PRAISE OUR LORD GABEN FOR MAKING TITANFALL 2 COME BACK FROM THE DEAD BY PUTTING IT ON STEAM.

Titanfall 2 has one of the most creative campaigns ever put in an FPS. Story isn't all too special, but the things that really stand out are the characters and the level design.

The level design in both the campaign and the multiplayer is built around the frantic parkour movement that Titanfall 2 offers. And the movement works wonders with it. I loved the mission that that led up to a simulation as you climb up the floors. I loved the mission where you are trying to retrieve the Ark as you're jumping from ship to ship.

Effect and Cause is one of the best FPS levels that I have ever witnessed. The time travel mechanic is so goddamn good that it should be put in every game from now on. Respawn, give me a game where it's just the time travel mechanic along with wall running and you have the greatest game ever created. The amount of potential for the environmental storytelling is boundless with it.

Cooper and BT have a nice relationship. It feels real and with the optional dialogue choices, it does strengthen the bond. I really liked BT's dry humor combined with Cooper's dad-like jokes.

Some problems are that the game is too short for my liking, Cooper can only use the Cloak yet BT can switch to every loadout(maybe Cooper can switch to Stim or Grapple and we could have even more creative level design), switching loadouts breaks the flow of Titan combat, and the ending didn't really have a satisfying conclusion where I was feeling the same way as I did with Uncharted 3.

With former members of Infinity Ward being a part of Respawn, it's no surprise that Titanfall 2 has put every Call of Duty game that came out this console generation to shame. Even after Doom Eternal spoiled me with the greatest FPS experience where I think after playing an FPS is that "It's ____, but it's no Doom Eternal," Titanfall 2 still manages to wow me in a different way. Trust me, Titanfall 2 is so good. Get this game. And with the Steam playerbase rising, I really hope that we get Titanfall 3 soon.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

9.5/10 (though I want to give it a 10 in a way).

I need to start this off by saying that EA has done everything they can to kill this. I mean, I'm not in the industry and they haven't released sales data as far as I know, but I can speak from my own experience on the PC version: this game is not lively. This is only a problem because there are literally game modes that I have been unable to play. My general routine with Titanfall 2 is that I go on, I try a few modes like Mixtape, the 8v8 Mixtape (guess they changed the name), Capture the Flag and maybe one or two others... and I can't connect to a game. I couldn't even get into Pilot vs Pilot, which seems weird to want to play a lot but I actually just enjoy the pilot vs pilot combat a lot, so I deem it a good departure from things like Attrition. But I ultimately end up playing a couple rounds of Attrition, maybe one of Bounty Hunt, then I turn it off. It's a game I could play for hours if I could get into other modes.

I feel bad for Respawn because they have released one of the best shooters that I've ever played, and I'm not saying that lightly. Yet the release date puts it right in the middle of the two biggest shooters this year. Way to go EA! Do they have some vendetta against Respawn? I don't know, but it's frustrating.

Anyway, the campaign is around 5 hours on normal difficulty but I saw it described as the "best Mega Man in years." I never thought of it that way but it's kind of true. You do battle enemy Titans and gain their loadouts, and I hear that they're especially challenging on harder difficulties. It's an intense campaign that doesn't overstay its welcome, and it has plenty of set pieces that are exciting as shit. The ending areas are fantastic but even stages like the time travelling one (which is early) means that the game doesn't save all its best stuff until the end. It reminds me a lot of the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, where it was short but they--to use a wrestling term--got all their shit in. Awesome stuff.

The core gameplay is what you expect if you played the first one. It's fast, there's jumping on walls, crazy acrobatics, fun platforming, lots of violence, grappling hooks, cloaking, other objects, giant robots... and it's all incredibly smooth. That's what Titanfall 2 has over recent CoDs; it's slick whereas CoD has suffered a little bit in making the transition to the futuristic. Seriously, it doesn't get much better from a gameplay perspective then it does here, if this is the kind of experience you crave.

Multiplayer is multiplayer. It's a lot of fun and seems pretty balanced. Every time you level up you get some shit, and you level up quick (at least at the beginning), so you're always gaining stuff. I'll never put the hours into this that some do, but I'm impressed thus far. I enjoy the maps in context of the game, meaning that they're designed well for the platforming and crazy actions, though I wouldn't say that they'll go down in history for me as some of the most memorable. I don't think this game needs that, because they seem to be designed more to work on a fundamental level, to push the action along, because that's where Titanfall 2 shines. You'll always do something neat, even if you suck. Even little things like the music that plays before you drop (or the drop itself because it feels cool) adds to it.

I hate that this game is struggling already. As Chris from PC Gamer said, he thinks that people will "remember it as an underground favourite rather than the hit it deserves to be." That's a perfect quote. I just wonder if there will ever be a Titanfall 3.

I still need to play the last Doom titles and dive deep into the Halo saga, but god damn if Titanfall 2 isn’t the best FPS I’ve played so far. Incredible game from Respawn, who after Fallen Order is starting to become a serious name in the gaming industry for me (it’s actually pretty easy to pick up on the similarities between both games, especially when it comes to visuals and movement mechanics). Every single thing Titanfall 2 does, it does it remarkably well: the gameplay is tight, the combat feels amazing, the systems are flawless, the level design is impressive, the puzzles are really cool, the world looks great, the sense of humour in dialogue is well integrated and never feels out of place, and the story is really good even outside the shooter genre. If there is one thing against it, it’s that the game is too short to really develop your feelings towards the characters on either side (you can easily finish the whole thing in less than 7 hours). But this is really nitpicking in a game that offers you this much.

Highly recommended, even if you’re not particularly a fan of FPS (I’m not either). Titanfall 2 is easily a 9/10 for me, and since it’s on Game Pass or often on sale for $3, there’s really no excuse not to try it. Awesome stuff.