I'm a bit sad. Not so sad that I've been unable to get out of bed, and I've taken to the drink, and stuff. Just a bit sad. Little bit. Little bit sad, yeah?
You see, Titanfall 2 hasn't done particularly great sales-wise in its first week - landing at number 4 in the charts behind FIFA 17, Skyrim Special Edition, and Battlefield 1.
It might be that another first-person shooter, arriving scarcely a week or so after Battlefield 1, is one first-person shooter too many. Not to mention that Call of Duty Infinite Warfare - with its Modern Warfare remaster - is about to thrust its bulb into our paddock.
See, the reason I'm sad is because of this reason: Titanfall 2 deserves so much better. Titanfall 2 is a proper video game. And by that I mean this: it's full of ideas. They've really, really thought about it, and coming on the heels of Gears of War 4 - not a disaster, and boasting some decent character stuff, but otherwise a slightly depressing tour of standard video game shooter tropes - it feels like someone's let off a party "razzer" between my knees.
And because Titanfall 2 is so good, I want there to be a Titanfall 3, and that's not going to happen if people don't buy this one. WHY ARE PEOPLE ALL STUPID!??
You see, Titanfall 2 hasn't done particularly great sales-wise in its first week - landing at number 4 in the charts behind FIFA 17, Skyrim Special Edition, and Battlefield 1.
It might be that another first-person shooter, arriving scarcely a week or so after Battlefield 1, is one first-person shooter too many. Not to mention that Call of Duty Infinite Warfare - with its Modern Warfare remaster - is about to thrust its bulb into our paddock.
See, the reason I'm sad is because of this reason: Titanfall 2 deserves so much better. Titanfall 2 is a proper video game. And by that I mean this: it's full of ideas. They've really, really thought about it, and coming on the heels of Gears of War 4 - not a disaster, and boasting some decent character stuff, but otherwise a slightly depressing tour of standard video game shooter tropes - it feels like someone's let off a party "razzer" between my knees.
And because Titanfall 2 is so good, I want there to be a Titanfall 3, and that's not going to happen if people don't buy this one. WHY ARE PEOPLE ALL STUPID!??
BORED
For me, perhaps the most significant effect of Titanfall 2 is how it succeeded in highlighting just how bored I've become with shoot 'em ups.
The opening moments - as I described in my review yesterday - take place on yet another outer space aircraft carrier, with the player in a VR simulator pod, followed by crashing onto a planet's surface in an escape capsule.
There had been a lengthy cut-scene, and I suffered through all of this with a weary sense of encroaching heaviness; here we go yet again.
I mean, I'd really liked the first Titanfall, but it came without a solo campaign, so you can't blame me for assuming that they'd just chuck some token single-player effort in there. I mean, that's what most first-person shooters do these days, right? It's what Halo Guardians did, frankly. The only way that may have deserved the coverage and promotion would have been if we'd wrapped the hype around a brick, and beaten Master Chief to death with it.
But no. Titanfall 2 does something that few video games bother with these days. Something which I have long called The Yoshi's Island Method. Alright, I've never called it that, but when games present the player with a steady stream of new ideas, new gameplay wrinkles, when the developers really think about unique mechanics, it has always reminded me of the way every level in Yoshi's Island, on the SNES, did the same.
Valve's Half-Life 2, I always felt, was a very Nintendo-y game, and Titanfall 2 is a very Valve-y game. After the opening cinematic, there are no cut-scenes - all the storytelling is in-game (as it should be) - and the your character's relationship with BT, your big robot tank chum, is pure Half-Life 2.
For me, perhaps the most significant effect of Titanfall 2 is how it succeeded in highlighting just how bored I've become with shoot 'em ups.
The opening moments - as I described in my review yesterday - take place on yet another outer space aircraft carrier, with the player in a VR simulator pod, followed by crashing onto a planet's surface in an escape capsule.
There had been a lengthy cut-scene, and I suffered through all of this with a weary sense of encroaching heaviness; here we go yet again.
I mean, I'd really liked the first Titanfall, but it came without a solo campaign, so you can't blame me for assuming that they'd just chuck some token single-player effort in there. I mean, that's what most first-person shooters do these days, right? It's what Halo Guardians did, frankly. The only way that may have deserved the coverage and promotion would have been if we'd wrapped the hype around a brick, and beaten Master Chief to death with it.
But no. Titanfall 2 does something that few video games bother with these days. Something which I have long called The Yoshi's Island Method. Alright, I've never called it that, but when games present the player with a steady stream of new ideas, new gameplay wrinkles, when the developers really think about unique mechanics, it has always reminded me of the way every level in Yoshi's Island, on the SNES, did the same.
Valve's Half-Life 2, I always felt, was a very Nintendo-y game, and Titanfall 2 is a very Valve-y game. After the opening cinematic, there are no cut-scenes - all the storytelling is in-game (as it should be) - and the your character's relationship with BT, your big robot tank chum, is pure Half-Life 2.
SPECIFICS
I avoided discussing too many specifics of the gameplay when I reviewed Titanfall 2, for fear of spoiling it, but I can't state it enough: it's a fantastic single-player game, with a meaty multiplayer option that I'm only now beginning to scratch the surface of.
To use one example of the way it introduces gameplay elements, and then proceeds to wring every last dribble of value from them, there's a level where, quite unexpectedly, you travel through time.
That's right: as if a game with big robot tanks wasn't high-concept enough, time travel is thrown into the mix (and this is just one of numerous brilliantly original ideas - others include a mind-bending section in an automated factory that's constructing pre-fab cities, and a level set in and around aerial battleships, with you leaping from one to another).
At first, I think the time travel is going to be just a neat little visual thing, flicking back and forth between time zones against your will - between a ruined installation building, and its pre-disaster incarnation. But no: then you become equipped with the ability to choose when you time travel.
Platforms which aren't there in one time zone may exist in the other - meaning you have to time travel mid-jump, or mid-wall-run, to ensure you don't plummet to your death. And then it goes further; with you fighting battles simultaneously in two time zones, against entirely different enemies.
It's nuts. It's genius. It's a massive demonstration of next-gen gaming. And I wanted a whole game which did this. But no! Because that's not what Titanfall 2's campaign does: it keeps moving. It keeps changing. It never gets boring.
I avoided discussing too many specifics of the gameplay when I reviewed Titanfall 2, for fear of spoiling it, but I can't state it enough: it's a fantastic single-player game, with a meaty multiplayer option that I'm only now beginning to scratch the surface of.
To use one example of the way it introduces gameplay elements, and then proceeds to wring every last dribble of value from them, there's a level where, quite unexpectedly, you travel through time.
That's right: as if a game with big robot tanks wasn't high-concept enough, time travel is thrown into the mix (and this is just one of numerous brilliantly original ideas - others include a mind-bending section in an automated factory that's constructing pre-fab cities, and a level set in and around aerial battleships, with you leaping from one to another).
At first, I think the time travel is going to be just a neat little visual thing, flicking back and forth between time zones against your will - between a ruined installation building, and its pre-disaster incarnation. But no: then you become equipped with the ability to choose when you time travel.
Platforms which aren't there in one time zone may exist in the other - meaning you have to time travel mid-jump, or mid-wall-run, to ensure you don't plummet to your death. And then it goes further; with you fighting battles simultaneously in two time zones, against entirely different enemies.
It's nuts. It's genius. It's a massive demonstration of next-gen gaming. And I wanted a whole game which did this. But no! Because that's not what Titanfall 2's campaign does: it keeps moving. It keeps changing. It never gets boring.
BLUNTNESS
And then on the flipside of the Titanfall 2 coin is Gears of War 4. A game so predictable you could've found it streaked on the inside of Nostradamus's underwear.
And let's be blunt here: Battlefield 1 might offer a setting that is far from typical of most first-person shooters, but the gameplay - solid and exciting as it is - remains pretty generic for the most part. Even this year's other great shoot 'em up, Doom, doesn't really do anything new; it's more a throw-back to the series' origins.
Titanfall 2 is different - and, frankly - better than all of these. It's does what video games should do. It let me do things I've never done in a game before.
Plus it isn't ashamed to be a video game. There's a sense that they really, really thought about it, rather than trying to create a series of interactive action movie battle scenes, which felt like they'd been pressed out of a mould. Rather than just look at what every other game is doing, rather than just creating some levels, and some woefully familiar guns, and dumping the player down, it actually, amazingly, feels like they put some thought into it.
Whereas in the first moment or two of the game, I slightly resented the tired aesthetic - because, frankly, it does have that same brutal technology-with-bursts-of-neon look that most futuristic games adopt - I came to appreciate it. Titanfall 2 invites the player in by not being threatening. Its embarrassment of riches are snuck in through the tradesman's entrance. So to speak.
Unfortunately, if the sales are anything to go by, those visuals might be putting people off. Maybe Titanfall 2 is mistakenly portraying itself as another of those games, when it's actually anything but another Halo/Gears of War/Recore/etc. It deserves far better.
And then on the flipside of the Titanfall 2 coin is Gears of War 4. A game so predictable you could've found it streaked on the inside of Nostradamus's underwear.
And let's be blunt here: Battlefield 1 might offer a setting that is far from typical of most first-person shooters, but the gameplay - solid and exciting as it is - remains pretty generic for the most part. Even this year's other great shoot 'em up, Doom, doesn't really do anything new; it's more a throw-back to the series' origins.
Titanfall 2 is different - and, frankly - better than all of these. It's does what video games should do. It let me do things I've never done in a game before.
Plus it isn't ashamed to be a video game. There's a sense that they really, really thought about it, rather than trying to create a series of interactive action movie battle scenes, which felt like they'd been pressed out of a mould. Rather than just look at what every other game is doing, rather than just creating some levels, and some woefully familiar guns, and dumping the player down, it actually, amazingly, feels like they put some thought into it.
Whereas in the first moment or two of the game, I slightly resented the tired aesthetic - because, frankly, it does have that same brutal technology-with-bursts-of-neon look that most futuristic games adopt - I came to appreciate it. Titanfall 2 invites the player in by not being threatening. Its embarrassment of riches are snuck in through the tradesman's entrance. So to speak.
Unfortunately, if the sales are anything to go by, those visuals might be putting people off. Maybe Titanfall 2 is mistakenly portraying itself as another of those games, when it's actually anything but another Halo/Gears of War/Recore/etc. It deserves far better.
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