The good and bad of Titanfall 2: gameplay, upgrades and earning your Titan

The multiplayer trailers that have been released show a game that is fast-paced with more than a few crowd-pleasing trick shots utilising the movement and new grapple-hook feature, but how is the gameplay and what are the Titans like whilst playing the two tech tests?

First of all, the movement is still there. The speed and joy of movement with the thrust jumping, infinite running and the ability to wall run has been much imitated since Titanfall’s release, and it is easy to forget just what Respawn did two years ago. There appears to be no real change so far in that area, however there is a new addition of a grapple-hook which allows for even more verticality or speed for getting around the maps. You can also use the grapple to hook yourself onto a Titan and hitch a ride on a friendly, or do some damage to an enemy.

There are a few obvious changes from the original, with the most noticeable being no enemy AI on the maps in all game modes. There are no more burn cards which gave you an opportunity to do things like Amp your primary weapon, scan pulse the map to reveal enemy locations, or reduce the build time of your Titan. Now these abilities seem to be customisable options for your Pilot class along with choosing your primary weapon, Titan build etc. Titans also seem to have a separate class system with two displayed in the tech test: Ion and Scorch. Gone are the Ogre, Stryder and Atlas with their customisable options, now we appear to have tactical Titans with devastating core powers that take some time to build. Ion has a huge laser beam that fires from its chest as well as abilities such as a tripwire mapped to the bumper buttons with a small cool down. Scorch, on the other hand releases a white hot wall of fire, or can place incendiary traps. Both Titans displayed feel weighty and have different manoeuvrability and I will be interested to see what other ones are available in the final version.

One of the biggest issues with the original Titanfall was that there was a lack of unlockable items that kept players interested, but this appears to have been addressed a little bit, although it isn’t clear if the tech test displayed all the items that were available to unlock for both pilot and Titan. There appears to be customisable items for your primary weapon and your anti-Titan weapon, as well as different abilities to map to your bumper buttons. The afore-mentioned grapple-hook for example can be swapped out for a beacon that pulses and outlines enemy players with its radius, or a holo pilot that can be released to fool enemy players of your location. There were too many things there to really get a sense of how they will work in the full game and what differences they will make to the overall game play now that they aren’t just restricted to a one time use Burn Card.

The guns felt tight to use, although there was still only one or two choices in each gun class to choose from – I hope to see more options in the full game. The frame-rate was pretty smooth, but there were some issues of latency over both weekends which weren’t surprising considering this was a test. There were also some features that weren’t working properly including the Networks feature which is a cool way of clan grouping or keeping track of friends and you couldn’t play a game with friends very easily – it worked for a bit, but then didn’t work at all over the course of both weekends.

One of my biggest disappointments with the tech test over the first weekend was the way they changed how you earned your Titan. In the original game you earned it by killing enemy players, or AI grunts. Without the grunts and spectres in the map the build time for your Titan is significantly increased; it felt much more like a killstreak, one which rewards those players with more skill. It is entirely possible that you wouldn’t even earn a Titan in match any more if you are having a bad game or lack a bit of skill. Fortunately Respawn took that feedback on board for the second weekend and the way your Titan builds is more in line with the original game.

Unfortunately, Titans in general seem a bit weaker, far more easily destroyed than in the original game and they just don’t seem to have the same spectacle. There doesn’t appear to be any shield and enemy pilots can no longer rodeo and destroy your Titan by climbing on top and shooting, rather than can remove a battery which increases the damage you take and jump off again. Batteries can be picked up and placed into friendly Titans, but the feedback on what benefit this actually has for the player controlling the Titan or the one supplying the battery is poor and initially I wasn’t too sure of the point.

So far, I am a little disappointed with what was presented in the Tech Test, but this is still only pre-alpha designed for Respawn to test the servers and see how some of the changes played out in real time. During the course of the two weekends they issued hot fixes and made changes that increased the speed of the Titan build time and pilot movement speed, so it’s good that they are listening to feedback. I’m still really interested to see what else Titanfall 2 has to deliver when the final game comes out, and of course what the new single player campaign will deliver, but I do fear that the game is being released at a very difficult time. The current release date is between Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and at present I’m worried that there isn’t quite enough in Titanfall 2 to pull the attention away from those two huge games.