Just so you know, this is a review of the single-player mode of Titanfall 2. I've not even played the multiplayer yet, and that's for two reasons. Reason 1 is this: I had to update the game before I could use the "network features". Reason 2 is this: I liked the single-player campaign way more than I expected to.
Given that this is a sequel to a game which had no real single-player mode, Titanfall 2 had no business offering up the best first-person shooter single player campaign in years. Yes, that's right: THE BEST BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA AND SO ON.
In fact, Titanfall 2's campaign is so good that it made my trousers fall off! At least, that's the story I told the security guard, when I was cornered in the freezer aisle of Morrisons, naked from the waist down.
"What are you doing with those gluten free waffles, sir?"
Given that this is a sequel to a game which had no real single-player mode, Titanfall 2 had no business offering up the best first-person shooter single player campaign in years. Yes, that's right: THE BEST BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA AND SO ON.
In fact, Titanfall 2's campaign is so good that it made my trousers fall off! At least, that's the story I told the security guard, when I was cornered in the freezer aisle of Morrisons, naked from the waist down.
"What are you doing with those gluten free waffles, sir?"
SECRET CLUB
Pssst! Are you here? Did you click on the 'read more' bit? If so, you're part of a cool new secret club. It's called "The People Who Read The Reviews on Digitiser2000 Club". Being here means you're one of these: a super-cool dude.
You see, for some reason the only things more unpopular on this site than the reviews are when I write stupid lists along the lines of "10 Wasps That Live Inside Pac-Man's Mouth".
It's interesting to me that reviews aren't hugely popular. I mean, back in the days of Digitiser on teletext, reviews were the main event. They were the filling in the sandwich. And it wasn't just Digi: all games mags were built around their reviews. The battle for exclusives and cover-led reviews was intense back in the day.
Something has shifted in the zeitgeist, and games media is no longer about reviews. Indeed, the whole idea of the games journalist - in this age of social media and YouTube - is evolving. It's up to the industry not to evolve to the point of irrelevance.
Certainly, there's a sort of survival-of-the-fittest thing going on: games journalism has been backed into a defensive position for a while now. The whole "ethics in games journalism" nonsense - the suspicion of games journalism as somehow inherently corrupt - is the same mindset that you see from Trump supporters, a subset of paranoid alt-right drone-think.
I mean, I sort of get it when you apply it to the mainstream media - because, frankly, it matters if those with a media monopoly are attempting the mass-brainwashing of society. But when you're dealing with video games? Get a grip.
In the wake of the article I wrote last week, about Bethesda's decision to only send out review code to journalists on release day, I got a bit of stick for suggesting that games journalists are entitled. Obviously, they're not all entitled, for pity's sake. I was talking about some of them. But the fact so many individuals leapt to the defence of the entire community shows just how sensitive the industry has become to any potential attack.
Nevertheless, the last thing I wanted to do was give the idiots more ammunition.
PREDICTABLENESS
A few other people gave me some grief for apparently condoning the actions of Bethesda. Well, I wasn't. Would anybody condone a corporation trying to maximise their product sales through cynical - albeit wearily predictable - means?
I just think it's always worth remembering that we're all pretty much self-serving. Whatever we do, however we do it, we are usually getting something out of it. Even if that something exhausts us, or stretches us thin. Sometimes - in fact, usually - our emotional drives are more powerful than our own physical needs.
Can't say no? That's often because you don't want people thinking badly of you, or you can't deal with confrontation, or disappointment. Give over all your time to charity? Well, is it really about the people you're helping, or because you need to do it, to satisfy some rescuing tendency? Interrupt a perfectly good review to get defensive over an article you wrote last week, because you felt you were misunderstood, and would like to clarify - or are you just scared that people you respect no longer like you? Don't like that Bethesda won't be giving you review copies until the day of release, because it is "bad for your readers"? Hmm... HMMM. HMMMMM!
That might all sound cynical, but it isn't. Good things happen because of these needs, and I find them fascinating. The masks we wear to hide the things which drive us are the thin ice the entire world is skating across. The sooner that we can all admit who we are, and acknowledge what is driving us, is the day we're set free.
Anyway... the point of all this psychological mumbo-jumbo is to say... I'm going to be having a think about how I do reviews on here. Clearly, there seems to be little need in just reiterating what other sites are already saying. Plus, frankly, sometimes it bores me to the point of diarrhoea to just bleat on about the technical ins and outs of a game. Much more important, I think, to discuss how a game might make me feel.
Anyway. On with the end bit of the review - which is the only part that those who skip to the end to read the summary ever bother with. I bet they only eat the outside of a pork pie too.
Pssst! Are you here? Did you click on the 'read more' bit? If so, you're part of a cool new secret club. It's called "The People Who Read The Reviews on Digitiser2000 Club". Being here means you're one of these: a super-cool dude.
You see, for some reason the only things more unpopular on this site than the reviews are when I write stupid lists along the lines of "10 Wasps That Live Inside Pac-Man's Mouth".
It's interesting to me that reviews aren't hugely popular. I mean, back in the days of Digitiser on teletext, reviews were the main event. They were the filling in the sandwich. And it wasn't just Digi: all games mags were built around their reviews. The battle for exclusives and cover-led reviews was intense back in the day.
Something has shifted in the zeitgeist, and games media is no longer about reviews. Indeed, the whole idea of the games journalist - in this age of social media and YouTube - is evolving. It's up to the industry not to evolve to the point of irrelevance.
Certainly, there's a sort of survival-of-the-fittest thing going on: games journalism has been backed into a defensive position for a while now. The whole "ethics in games journalism" nonsense - the suspicion of games journalism as somehow inherently corrupt - is the same mindset that you see from Trump supporters, a subset of paranoid alt-right drone-think.
I mean, I sort of get it when you apply it to the mainstream media - because, frankly, it matters if those with a media monopoly are attempting the mass-brainwashing of society. But when you're dealing with video games? Get a grip.
In the wake of the article I wrote last week, about Bethesda's decision to only send out review code to journalists on release day, I got a bit of stick for suggesting that games journalists are entitled. Obviously, they're not all entitled, for pity's sake. I was talking about some of them. But the fact so many individuals leapt to the defence of the entire community shows just how sensitive the industry has become to any potential attack.
Nevertheless, the last thing I wanted to do was give the idiots more ammunition.
PREDICTABLENESS
A few other people gave me some grief for apparently condoning the actions of Bethesda. Well, I wasn't. Would anybody condone a corporation trying to maximise their product sales through cynical - albeit wearily predictable - means?
I just think it's always worth remembering that we're all pretty much self-serving. Whatever we do, however we do it, we are usually getting something out of it. Even if that something exhausts us, or stretches us thin. Sometimes - in fact, usually - our emotional drives are more powerful than our own physical needs.
Can't say no? That's often because you don't want people thinking badly of you, or you can't deal with confrontation, or disappointment. Give over all your time to charity? Well, is it really about the people you're helping, or because you need to do it, to satisfy some rescuing tendency? Interrupt a perfectly good review to get defensive over an article you wrote last week, because you felt you were misunderstood, and would like to clarify - or are you just scared that people you respect no longer like you? Don't like that Bethesda won't be giving you review copies until the day of release, because it is "bad for your readers"? Hmm... HMMM. HMMMMM!
That might all sound cynical, but it isn't. Good things happen because of these needs, and I find them fascinating. The masks we wear to hide the things which drive us are the thin ice the entire world is skating across. The sooner that we can all admit who we are, and acknowledge what is driving us, is the day we're set free.
Anyway... the point of all this psychological mumbo-jumbo is to say... I'm going to be having a think about how I do reviews on here. Clearly, there seems to be little need in just reiterating what other sites are already saying. Plus, frankly, sometimes it bores me to the point of diarrhoea to just bleat on about the technical ins and outs of a game. Much more important, I think, to discuss how a game might make me feel.
Anyway. On with the end bit of the review - which is the only part that those who skip to the end to read the summary ever bother with. I bet they only eat the outside of a pork pie too.
IN CONCLUSION
So, just to reiterate, I really bloody love Titanfall 2's campaign. Great, original, meaty weaponry, a steady flow of fresh ideas - at points, it feels like a first-person platform game - and some nice character stuff between you and your giant robot tank friend.
Which is all the more remarkable given the opening moments didn't bode well: my stomach knotted as a VR pod opened, and I found myself aboard a spaceship which looked exactly like every space ship in every game ever.
Yet almost immediately following that disappointing first impression, Titanfall 2 marked itself out as something new, something fresh, and something utterly, beguilingly, playable.
The variety alone keeps you from ever getting bored, and given that its main selling point is the giant robot tank thing, the fact that the on-foot sections are as playable - if not more so, with their double-jumps and wall-running - is nothing short of remarkable.
And I've still got the multiplayer mode to get stuck into.
SUMMARY: Freshens a woefully stale genre, and probably tops Doom as this year's best FPS campaign.
SCORE: Sublime excellence out of wonderfulness.
So, just to reiterate, I really bloody love Titanfall 2's campaign. Great, original, meaty weaponry, a steady flow of fresh ideas - at points, it feels like a first-person platform game - and some nice character stuff between you and your giant robot tank friend.
Which is all the more remarkable given the opening moments didn't bode well: my stomach knotted as a VR pod opened, and I found myself aboard a spaceship which looked exactly like every space ship in every game ever.
Yet almost immediately following that disappointing first impression, Titanfall 2 marked itself out as something new, something fresh, and something utterly, beguilingly, playable.
The variety alone keeps you from ever getting bored, and given that its main selling point is the giant robot tank thing, the fact that the on-foot sections are as playable - if not more so, with their double-jumps and wall-running - is nothing short of remarkable.
And I've still got the multiplayer mode to get stuck into.
SUMMARY: Freshens a woefully stale genre, and probably tops Doom as this year's best FPS campaign.
SCORE: Sublime excellence out of wonderfulness.
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