Game:

Titanfall (2014)

Duration: 13:40

362 views

2

Ahh, multiplayer campaign. Does it work? Nope, not at all. It's just multiplayer with a tacked-on story. The story is delivered through the comms...while you're busy doing the objective and shooting things. You'll have difficulty following it, unless you read about it on Wikipedia or place your focus on the conversations rather than play the game. Why did they even bother putting it in? They must know it wouldn't work. Sure, there are cutscenes at the beginning of each mission, but they're too short and poorly delivered for you to care. Oh, and if you're having trouble getting into a game you might not see these cutscenes at all since the connecting mechanism may forcibly skip it and make you start at the game proper. I've noticed this happens when you don't see your player progression in-between matches and enter the lobby afterward. This wouldn't happen in offline campaign.

You play as either the Militia or IMC. I think you start on either side at random since I started as IMC while another person said he started as Militia. As far as I know, the IMC are the bad guys. That's all I got. Haha. Completing the story for each side rewards a new Titan design, which means you have to play the campaign twice to get both. There are 9 missions/maps in the campaign and you can't opt to replay the ones you've finished. You can only resume where you left off (maybe this changes when you finish the campaign of both factions). You may find yourself replaying an older level if the game can't find any active server with the level you're supposed to be on.

Titanfall is somewhat beginner-friendly, even when it's a fast-paced twitch shooter, as there are low-threat Grunts and Spectres to engage. It's got excellent gamepad support for those of you (like me) who may never get accustomed to the KB+M setup, at least on a laptop. The buttons are responsive, especially the sprint function -- unlike how it is in BF3 -- and it feels you have even chances dominating with a gamepad as others would with the PC standard. It feels somewhat like COD (some elements, at least) but it's its own thing at the same time.

[RANT]

It's been about a week since Titanfall's release and the major issues I had with the beta still lingers: unbalanced matchmaking and getting stuck on loading screens. Unbalanced matchmaking I can deal with...for now... But being on a loading screen indefinitely (a lot, I might add) with no indication of any progress makes me want to tear my hair out. I thought the whole point of the beta was to get rid of problems like these for a smoother launch. I guess what another person says about betas is true: a beta is no longer a beta when it's close to launch -- it's a demo. However, an article I've read says Respawn found the beta helpful. What problems did they exactly fix?

Successfully getting into a campaign is immensely harder than joining classic multiplayer modes. In my experience, the odds are 1 out of 10 (because there has to be a spot open for a specific side you're playing -- either Militia or IMC). For classic modes, it's 2 out of 5. This is especially frustrating when I want to play with a friend who lives nearby. I think ISPs are also factor here. For example, I can connect using Japanese "Data Centers" but he can't, and both of us have different ISPs. Based on his investigations, however, you won't experience this problem if you live in the US. If you live outside, you're getting the shaft. But I think some regions have worse cases than others. I'm not entirely sure what causes this, but I can narrow it down to limited server availability based on mere observation.

From what I've gathered, the game tries to find an open slot within the list of active servers matching your request. If it couldn't, it will ask Xbox Live to open a new server. There, you will need a lot of patience (at least for the Campaign) since you need to wait for players with the same request parameters as you to join your server. I think the game would only start when both sides has at least four players (it should be 2 for each at least in a 6-versus-6 match). This is where a server browser would be useful, you know.

[/RANT]

The main platform for this game is the Xbox One, as far as the marketing went, so it's pretty obvious which platform will get the most support. Should you get this now? I'd say not yet, unless you live in the US or at least are getting it for the Xbox One. This would be a very addictive entry if it weren't for the iffy server management and support.


*This game was run on the Lenovo IdeaPad Y410p (see MGR: Revengeance Performance Test video for setup).

One more thing: I've turned down the texture settings from "Insane" to "Very High" in this video. "Insane" requires at least 3 GB of VRAM or else it produces frequent framerate hiccups in some maps (like Lagoon and Colony), impeding player effectiveness.

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