You’ve got a friend in BT – Titanfall 2 Review

Developer: Respawn Entertainment | Platform: PS4 |

Playtime: 5:30 | Platinum: 17:30

Titanfall 2 has had a remarkably enduring fanbase and life cycle especially considering it released a week between juggernauts Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The more recent release of successor title – the battle royale APEX Legends and extended server down time due to hacking has done nothing to dampen the spirit of fans. That’s all on the multiplayer side though, I don’t care about any of that – I’m here for the singleplayer. Titanfall 2’s campaign has been heralded as one of the best in an FPS game and after playing, I’m inclined to agree.

You play as rifleman Jack Cooper as part of the Frontier Militia, a group formed to take down the tyrannical Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation. The names don’t matter too much here, its space rebels vs space empire. Funnily enough the when I say it like that, the story really does echo Star Wars’ A New Hope, but that’s neither here nor there. Following some bad Intel, the Militia find their hidden strike force ambushed and destroyed over the planet Typhon. Jack only survives the slaughter thanks to the intervention of his mentor, Pilot N who too succumbs to injuries. Together Jack and the Vanguard Class Titan BT-7274, BT for short, must travel together to complete the mission they were both assigned.

In the Titanfall universe, Titans are more than just Mech suits, they are robots with their own personalities who share a bond with their pilots. Despite the potential for conflict between the two characters, Respawn play the relationship straight – Lastimosa hands the reigns of BT to Jack, BT accepts his duty and Jack wants to be a Pilot. Save for the chance to be snarky in a couple of the games fleeting dialogue options, Jack and BT start off solid and grow stronger and closer together as the game goes on. It’s quite refreshing, they become a team through circumstance but comrades through shared experience. In this vein, some of my favourite interactions come from when Jack will downplay something he did, only for BT to correct him and commend him. It’s a nice dynamic. There is still the element of Jack using some expression that BT won’t understand, but these are paced nicely and add levity rather than bringing down the atmosphere. Over the course of the game, I came to really love the two characters, celebrating their highs and mourning their lows. It sounds silly and I know it is a bit, but for a six hour FPS game, these two are remarkably well written.

The story is decent enough too, it goes along at good pace. My allusions to A New Hope will probably have spoiled what the game is about so I won’t go into it. The campaign does have its fair share of really cool set pieces though including a massive underground factory or a battle in the sky. Something I’m not massively sold on is the villains – The IMC are the big bad of the Titanfall universe, with the planet Typhon being the domain of a General Marder – an individual barely heard and seen even less. While the main enemies you fight in the game are the IMC army and their robots, the boss fights are against members of a mercenary group hired by the company known as the APEX Predators. These are fairly generic characters – the wild one, the cruel and apathetic one, the er… German one. None of them really leave any kind of impact. Something else that’s a bit weird is that the planet of Typhon only seems to have two forms of wildlife – big pterodactyl things that act mostly as scenery and then these big cats with foliage on them that attack the player. I feel like there should be more types of creature or none, but that’s not really something I feel particularly strong about in either direction.

How does Titanfall actually play then? Really well, is the answer. Respawn is made up of ex Infinity Ward developers, so there is a strong Call of Duty pedigree there – there’s the standard things you expect – two weapons, grenades, the ability to Sprint, jump, crouch (but no prone) but also things

that only Titanfall does (or did, the futuristic CoD titles would add these things). The player can also double jump and run on near any flat surface. This gives the player a ton of options for engaging with enemies, many of which come in overwhelming amounts (the balance being that the enemies do not have the same movement). It certainly helps that Titanfall 2 has phenomenal level design that really lets the player take advantage of their moveset – they can get above or behind their enemy just as easy as moving forward. An odd addition to the player’s kit is a limited invisibility. It’s not mentioned in the tutorial nor is there a dedicated stealth section. As far as I can remember, BT mentions it once early on as something the player can use but never again. It’s helpful on harder difficulties but lacks and real usage. A bit of an outlier in the kit.

Speaking of BT, you’ll spend a good chunk of the game controlling him too. In most cases it’s technically optional, but you’ll want to use him. When separated, BT is fairly competent at taking out enemies but he operates much better if the player gets involved. Over the course of the game, the player can unlock 8 (9?) different load outs for BT that can be swapped (but sadly not mixed) at any time. BT lacks the manoeuvrability of Jack as he lacks a jump, but he does have two rechargeable dashes that can help with spacing and positioning in dogfights.

Each of the games missions have Pilot’s helmets as collectibles, usually located in hard to reach areas. They don’t unlock anything except a couple trophies, so they’re kind of just there for the sake of having collectibles and padding the games run time. If multiplayer isn’t your thing, there’s not much in the campaign to keep you – there’s Master difficulty which was admittedly rather annoying and there’s the leaderboard in the Gauntlet – one of the hardest trophies I’ve ever gotten.

Personally I think I’d put Titanfall 2’s campaign up there with the Halo series. Perhaps not quite as good, but certainly close. I get the same feeling from Titanfall 2 as I do when I think about Reach or ODST. The game is easily worth whatever you can buy it for, and it’s insulting to not get it when it goes on one of the many sales. Its official, I’m on the Titanfall 3 hype train. I’m ready when you are, Respawn.

This game is part of a series of games I’ve dubbed “Finally Playing”, for obvious reasons. All of the games in this list will be subject to ranking at years end in a category of “Worth the hype”, Neutral or “Not Worth the hype”