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REVIEW: TITANFALL 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC - PS4 Version Tested)

1/11/2016

30 Comments

 
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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?"
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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.

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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.

​

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEW: BATTLEFIELD 1 - PS4, XBOX ONE, PC (PS4 VERSION TESTED)
​
REVIEW: GEARS OF WAR 4 - XBOX ONE
​
FIRST IMPRESSION: NINTENDO SWITCH
30 Comments
Terry Dactyl
1/11/2016 08:58:13 am

I had not expected Doom to be beaten this year from a single player FPS POV. I also expected scorn to be poured upon any Titanfall single player campaign, so maybe I'm just completely out of sync.

P.s. the reviews are still the luncheon meat in my disconcertingly moist digitiser sandwich.

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Chris
1/11/2016 10:14:19 am

I see reviews as the cucumber in my disconcertingly moist Digitiser sandwich. I'm never quite sure if I like them, but I know they're good for me, and they're worth eating (reading) as sometimes you find it's not cucumber at all, but gherkin.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
1/11/2016 10:53:14 am

Luncheon meat? We only eat goujons around here.

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Terry Dactyl
1/11/2016 11:35:42 am

But Goujon Johns Goujons taste bad (...BAD!). Who doesn't love a sweaty luncheon meat sandwich?

Wicked Eric
1/11/2016 09:24:07 am

Has anyone played Doom's new arcade mode? I want to give it a go but I uninstalled Doom from my PS4 because I'm not made of Gigabytes and it kept asking for more and more please sir.

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Sean Buckingham
1/11/2016 10:19:20 am

Now I want to see a list of 10 Wasps That Live Inside Pac Man's Mouth.

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J
1/11/2016 10:40:02 am

But I don't even like pork pies.

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Ganapan
1/11/2016 11:54:47 am

This is why I read your reviews.

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GB
1/11/2016 12:11:51 pm

If there's a failing of nü-games journalism (which has otherwise been a much-needed shot in the arm) it's this: too many people talking about how a game makes them feel personally and not enough people who can convey how a game might make *the reader* feel.

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Ganapan
1/11/2016 04:17:30 pm

That would be guessing, isn't it? What reader? We'd end up with reviews written for projections, not real people.

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GB
1/11/2016 08:13:30 pm

Are you saying that it's not possible to convey an emotion to an audience through use of the written word? Because if you are, you just made every poet sad. Sadder, I mean. They were a pretty melancholy bunch already, truth be told.

Barrybarrybarrybarry
1/11/2016 12:15:34 pm

I AM A SUPER-COOL DUDE AND ALSO APPARENTLY A MENTAL

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Euphemia
1/11/2016 12:23:29 pm

I always read the reviews.

Mostly as validation.

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Kara Van Park
1/11/2016 12:33:04 pm

How long does the single-player campaign last?

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Matt N link
1/11/2016 01:00:22 pm

I got a good 5ish hours out of it. +1 to the "this surprised me with how decent it is" crowd.

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Kara Van Park
1/11/2016 05:53:48 pm

Maybe worth a purchase if it drops down to £20, doubtful if there's any legs in the multiplayer (which I've got no interest in)

Voodoo76
1/11/2016 01:00:08 pm

You've started doing reviews? Brilliant, that's the one this I always thought this site needed to reach perfection. When will we be able to read them?

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Bruce Flagpole
1/11/2016 01:34:21 pm

I rarely bother reading reviews anywhere else, as I find the opinions here match my own much more than other sites, so would appreciate if you kept some kind of detail within them. I don't need too much techno-mumbo jumbo, but a bit more about the game would be nice.
This one skirts a bit too close to flimsy for me. In saying that, you still conveyed a joy that put this game on my interested list where previously it was on the automatic 'yet another bloody FPS' ignore list.

Also, I always eat the outer edge of a pork pie first, saving all the 'goodness' for last!

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JB
1/11/2016 01:48:31 pm

You won't like this but if you want ereviews to be more poopular then you should bring back scores out of 10. It's a useful yardstick that people feel safe using. Just sayin...

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Scott C
1/11/2016 08:52:50 pm

I was going to suggest the same controversial thing. Give a score out of 5 or 10, and a one or two sentence summary. Done.

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RichardM
1/11/2016 02:52:39 pm

I read for the social commentary and other semi-off topic stuff within the reviews, given that I don't own a current gen console or a PC fit to play any of these games. So from my perspective the best reviews are the ones with least review content.

Unless you start reviewing phone games?

Blech. Phone games. This is what I'm reduced to.

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Keith
1/11/2016 03:26:20 pm

The thing I like best about the reviews here are that they, uniquely in game reviews, are in part about how a game fits into the life of an adult male with other interests and responsibilities aside from gaming - not many games realise that a brilliant game that involves a lot of grinding isnt brilliant for people without the time to grind.
That, compared with the depth to reviews (we can gather enough from reviews to make a good guess about whether we would like a game even if you dont) are what set your reviews apart, so if you do change the way they do them, please try to keep those.
Your abiguous/slightly negative slanted review of the witcher was written in a way that made me sure I'd like it - not in a "ha- he doesnt like it so I probably will" but because your bugbears with it were things I knew wouldn't bother me too much, and your review of PSVR led to me taking the plunge on it and being glad i did - the reviews might not get the numbers, but i reckon they carry more weight than a lot of other reviews

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Kelvin Green link
1/11/2016 04:59:31 pm

I've said this before but I like your reviews, for much the same reasons as Keith, up there, does.

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PeskyFletch
1/11/2016 05:08:23 pm

I must be in the minority then, reviews are my favourite bit, bar that series of retrospectives you did about working for teletext

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Super cool dude
1/11/2016 07:11:08 pm

Perhaps the review could accurately predict which of the big FPS shooters will still be around post January? Can't buy all of them and I don't want to wait a few months to find out which has legs coz yknow everyone will have levelled up and stuff.

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Paulvw
1/11/2016 07:40:26 pm

I never want to club a supercool member or whatever

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CdrJameson
1/11/2016 09:33:44 pm

I always read the reviews, but probably don't show up in the stats because I use an RSS reader.

LIKE ALL THE COOL KIDS.

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Jolly
2/11/2016 12:42:57 am

"just reiterating what other sites are already saying"

With regards to the characters, story and writing in games your reviews are exceptional. Someone already mentioned The Witcher 3 review which heavily criticised the storytelling while almost every other site just slapped a 10/10 on it.

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Hedges
7/11/2016 12:27:38 pm

The reviews are pretty much the only thing I read here so would be very sad if they ceased to exist.

Basically, what that Keith chap said, yeah?

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Damian Boocock
25/3/2017 10:39:21 pm

I went back to this tonight, Zelda is great and all that ... but the same game for a few weeks means i needed something different to chew on before i delve back in.

I replayed the story mode for 4 hours. Its top drawer, no underpants on running around the front room fun and a chronic indictment of the way this industry works that Titanfall 2 was so poorly scheduled and badly marketed that essentially (although i do hope otherwise) we wont see a number 3. Shame on the suits.

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