Titanfall 2: Oh Yes!

[warty goblin]

It's been a pretty excellent fall for games, pretty much no matter what you're into. Between October and November, I've probably got enough pixelated awesome to last me a year or so.

But Battlefield 1, Shadow Warrior 2, Watch_Dogs 2 and Civ VI are sitting neglected. Because I just cannot stop playing Titanfall 2. It's so good it's basically not fair.

I kinda have a hard time putting my finger on why, but a lot of is that movement and shooting just feel astonishingly good. The wallrunning and jetpacking make getting from A to B a very varied and complex matter, with a skill cap about a mile high. Shooting is crisp, precise, deadly as hell, and some of the guns are pretty creative. Combined, and you're flying around the map a million miles an hour spraying lead all over the place like a mosquito of death. And then you call down a giant stompy robot - dropping it on some bastards if you can - and suddenly you're playing a totally different game. Titan health doesn't regenerate, and pilots can get lots of places titans can't, so suddenly you're playing this super-tense deal where you're capable of totally liquifying dudes if you can shoot them, but you're at risk of getting torn apart by dudes in buildings, or getting out-maneuvered by an enemy titan and just shredded. Until you shoot enough dudes, and then shoot a giant laser cannon out of your robot's face to melt some fools down for scrap metal.

And all of this has a pretty deep class and equipment system, for both the pilots and the titans. So just by looking you know roughly what your opponent can do, but not exactly. It's slightly annoying that a lot of it is gated behind a kinda crazy unlock system, but on the upside all the gameplay-changing DLC is free, so nobody's gonna beat you by outspending you. They're gonna beat you because they're some sort of Angel of Death who hasn't actually made contact with the ground since they spawned and can fill your hapless n00b carcass with lead while moving about 90mph. So it's also got some real incentive to improve, but even when I'm getting my ass kicked so hard I taste modem, I'm having a blast.

There'a free weekend this weekend. You should play. It's like Overwatch, but better in basically every way. I'm Godivos on Origin, if you want to play with a legitimately mediocre person having a great time.

[Ninja_Grand]

Yes indeed!

A well thought out post about this game. I find myself spending more time on Titanfall2 then BF1 even. And that's from a man who played bf4 every day for like 2 years!


Also, screw Tone. Ronin (Or as I call him, Ronnie :smalltongue:) Is my go to Titan to take her out. Even if I cant get a core on him haha.

[warty goblin]

Yes indeed!

A well thought out post about this game. I find myself spending more time on Titanfall2 then BF1 even. And that's from a man who played bf4 every day for like 2 years!

I'd never played a lot of online shooters before, but this is just plain dynamite.



Also, screw Tone. Ronin (Or as I call him, Ronnie :smalltongue:) Is my go to Titan to take her out. Even if I cant get a core on him haha.
I rolled Tone for a while, but found her less and less effective as people got better at avoiding the 1 - 2 - 3 missile volley damage combo. Now Ion is my girl, and she's awesome. Solid defense, a good variety of offensive options, and capable against most sorts of targets. Also a giant face laser.

[razorback]

I'm surprised more people aren't mentioning this.
Just got it from my wife and son for Xmas. Played a little multiplayer and started the campaign. I only picked up the first one back in March or so and I'm about half way through getting all the achievements for level 9, so I'll probably finish it off before I go into TF2 full force.
warty goblin, you've been playing it for a while. Any suggestions?

[warty goblin]

Multiplayer suggestions

1) Movement. You should basically always be moving. When remotely possible you should be wallrunning. Even if you aren't any good at shooting people while wallrunning, you're much more likely to survive long enough to get somewhere you can shoot if you are. Particularly if you chain short wallruns together, you go a lot faster that way. I also like to slide through doorways, since it makes you move very fast for a short time and present a very small target.

2) Situational Awareness. You may have noticed, but the guns in Titanfall 2 can kill a person in like zero time flat. This means that if you get the drop of somebody, you can often kill them - and vice versa. If somebody you haven't seen yet starts shooting at you, you are almost certainly better off wallrunning out of that as fast as possible than trying to fight. . Be aware of your surroundings at all times, pay attention to the minimap. At some points in the round, there will be three or more enemy titans running around. Do not go outside if you can possibly avoid it. Titan weapons are too deadly; engage from inside using your anti-titan weapons.

3) Guns. So unless you're a marksmenship god, stay away from sniper rifles. Shotguns are very effective at point blank range, but too much combat takes place over longer ranges. To start out with, you basically want either the R201 or the CAR SMG, which are nearly the same gun statistically speaking. They're very accurate, quite deadly, and perform fairly well in a variety of circumstances. For longer ranges with the R201 you should use the sights, but it's basically never worth it with the CAR. Mess around with other guns and mods as you unlock 'em, or maybe spend some credits on one you're particularly interested in. I for instance splurged on the Flatline, and now pretty much exclusively run Flatline with Gunrunner and Tactikill, because it's a goddamn killing machine indoors.

4) More guns. As soon as you unlock it, you want the MGL grenade launcher for your anti-titan. Seriously, just use it. Other options exist, but the MGL is extremely good for engaging titans from buildings, and as a pilot you want to engage titans from buildings. Because other methods tend to result in getting exploded into chunky salsa.

5) Titans. Despite what the tooltips say, Tone is easy. It's well worth dropping your starting 100 credits on Tone I think, simply because you can nearly always be useful in a titan fight. Shoot a dude three times, shoulder rocket them, drop the particle wall if you need extra defense for you or your team, the sonar shot thing is crazy good and should be used as often as possible. Once you get comfortable with the basics of Titaning, try the others as you unlock them. And when in a titan, stick with other titans. You don't have to be right up next to them, but make sure that if one enemy titan attacks you, you plus at least one other titan can shoot back.

6) Batteries. These are important, but hard to get. If you jump on an enemy titan, you will attempt to remove its battery. Doing so does a substantial amount of damage, and if you can get the battery into a friendly titan, it gets healed, gets an overshield, and about 30% build on its core. If you have a battery, you're very visible, and a prime target, so you want to offload that sucker ASAP. Titans can also deploy electric smoke when a pilot is rodeoing them, which will kill a pilot if you're fast enough at it. Personally I just go with the Backup Battery boost, so my titan always starts with an overshield, and I don't have to mess with extremely dangerous rodeoing.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you've got any specific questions.

[Fri]

I heard mentions that it's a perfectly good game, only screwed by the publisher's decision on things (like putting release date against their own flagship multiplayer game, not advertising it, etc) which is doubly destructive for the game since it's a multiplayer shooter and multiplayer shooter live on its number of player.

[warty goblin]

I heard mentions that it's a perfectly good game, only screwed by the publisher's decision on things (like putting release date against their own flagship multiplayer game, not advertising it, etc) which is doubly destructive for the game since it's a multiplayer shooter and multiplayer shooter live on its number of player.

It's got like 4,000 odd players most evenings on PC, which is enough that I can pretty much always find a good match of Attrition in like twenty seconds. Can
And it really is, so far as I can figure, the best MP shooter of the year. Battlefield 1 is very Battlefield, not enough 1. Haven't tried this year's CoD, but I've never really found CoD to be all that good anyway; something about the gun handling just lacks impact. Both Plants vs. Zombies and Overwatch were way too colorful for my taste, the shooting lacked impact, and the action was way too driven by gimmicky power crap. Plus none of the weapons - particularly in Overwatch - felt or looked particularly good. It's a rocket launcher, not a rubber band gun.

Titanfall 2 is just the complete package. The movement alone would put it above a lot of other games, it's that good. But then they took that and attached it to some best-in-class shooting mechanics. And then they stuck in a mech combat game, which interfaces with the infantry combat in some really nifty ways. And then, just for gravy, they put in some very creative modes. Standing next to a slowly moving cart is boring, running through the middle of an AI ground war and stomping on little Call of Duty soldiers in a giant killer robot is awesome.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

If there is a game that would drag me back to playing FPS games (haven't played one since UT2k4), it would be this one. Hell, it's worth the price tag for the campaign alone (and who would've figured on such an epic campaign in what is effectively supposed to be a multiplayer?).

Unfortunately, I trust Origin only slightly less than <insert politician of choice>, so there's zero chance I will ever purchase this game. Which is a shame, it's an awesome game (my buddy has it), and I'd love to play it. But not at the expense of installing Origin.

[druid91]

If there is a game that would drag me back to playing FPS games (haven't played one since UT2k4), it would be this one. Hell, it's worth the price tag for the campaign alone (and who would've figured on such an epic campaign in what is effectively supposed to be a multiplayer?).

Unfortunately, I trust Origin only slightly less than <insert politician of choice>, so there's zero chance I will ever purchase this game. Which is a shame, it's an awesome game (my buddy has it), and I'd love to play it. But not at the expense of installing Origin.

Can we just disband EA and give all their IP to someone who will do something good with it already?

Like Valve.

[The Glyphstone]

Can we just disband EA and give all their IP to someone who will do something good with it already?

Like Valve.

Does Valve even make games anymore? It seems like all they do these days is add new DotA 2 heroes and manage the Steam Store selling other people's games.

[Tvtyrant]

Does Valve even make games anymore? It seems like all they do these days is add new DotA 2 heroes and manage the Steam Store selling other people's games.

That was prettu much my understanding of the situation. Honestly they should split the company up, now that they are effectively video game netflix.

[warty goblin]

Can we just disband EA and give all their IP to someone who will do something good with it already?

Like Valve.
I'm a bit of a heretic here, but Valve doesn't do much for me as a developer. I've got no interest in DOTA 2, and when it comes to shooters, none of Valve's output has actually struck me as particularly good. Slow, kludgy movement, dull guns*, and a generally uninteresting toolkit. EA has done way more interesting stuff in the shooter space, both with stuff they've developed in-house, and the stuff they've published.


*Including the gravity gun, which is basically just a gun with a goofy reload, that also occasionally solves The Physics Puzzle, by which I mean stacking crap.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Valve used to make mediocre shooters that do a few of the non-shooting parts reasonably well.

Then they decided to go into millinery instead.

EA are inept and heading for an asset stripping, but they can coast along and put that off for basically as long as they want to unless someone rich and malicious enough decides he wants to destroy them. So far nobody with that set of talents has shown much interest in the video game industry.

People under EA have made more good games than Valve has made, but that's of course no measure of anything (EA doesn't make games, sort of technically maybe). Valve has also technically published thousands of worse games than what EA generally puts out which while telling doesn't really measure anything either.

[Professor Chimp]

Slow, kludgy movement, dull guns*Clearly you never played any Half-Life 1 multiplayer. The Tau Cannon fires admittedly boring lasers in primary fire. Ok, they do ricochet off walls. That's neat. But we can do better, because it only gets real fun when you start charging it with secondary fire. Suddenly you've got a 1hko laser that ricochets off walls, pierces multiple players, pierces walls and the recoil can be used to launch yourself airborne at speeds and distances that make rocket jumping cry (and can be chained in mid-air to stay airborne and change direction). Sure, the skillceiling was high, but a fight between good players was anything but slow and klunky (also, generally not on the ground). Sure, it's only one gun, but holy jeezes, what a gun!

Anway, I like Titanfall for the same reasons I like arena shooters like Unreal Tourey and Quake Arena: it rewards skillbased movement. Suits my old school sensibilities more.