Okay so we’re going to get right to it: The TITANFALL 2 tech test.
I’ve heard a lot of things from the community even some that have said that this does not feel like the original TITANFALL that we’ve all come to grow and love. I can see their view, but I’m going to go over why it feels like that. I’ll also give my opinion on the improvements that would make the game even better because I think people are being a little bit too hard on this game. It is an alpha okay. This stuff is not final. There is still time to fix issues and people are just being a little too critical.
Maps
The maps available were Boomtown, Homestead, and Forward Base Kodai. They looked fantastic. I’m not going to take that away from this game. The game looks so much better than the first one as far as the presentation goes. Sometimes when you get close to parts of the environment it is grainy and dull but it’s still unpolished and it’s an alpha people. But for now so it’s looking pretty good.
The only real gripe I had with the maps is that they just seem to be way too open. They seem more like last Titan standing Maps rather than hard point Maps or Pilot Hunter Maps. There are so many Wide Open Spaces. TITANFALL is supposed to be about speed and basically you’re going to get speed with boots on the walls not boots on the ground. Because of this a lot of people felt that the game play was slow. You do run faster when you’re on walls, they even stress this in the tutorial. Because of the maps being a bit more wide open, there weren’t really a lot of places to vault back and forth from to gain momentum.
In some of the areas there are panels to vault from and small broken walls to get small bursts, but they felt like they were more in the outskirts of the map. This takes you away from the action. It almost makes you go around in a circle to come from the rear. Even if you do try to come from the side you lose all momentum completely because, hey, there’s nothing to run and vault from just open grassy area. This makes you have to put your boots on the ground and start running. This is where in my opinion the game felt slow because you were forced to run on the ground more than you were to being vertical.
Think back to some of those TITANFALL 1 maps, where you had to master a lot of corridors. There were also a lot of panels to run off of and plenty of flat surfaces. Even on the side of large rocks or boulders you were still able to run but there was just more of them. As well as small cliffs that just gave this feeling of verticality throughout the map rather than just in one section like in the center of Homestead.
Game Modes
You had three modes. Amped Hard-point, Bounty, and Pilot hunter. I enjoyed all three of them but I really liked Amped Hard-point. I’m a domination lover and with the ability to double cap it gave more tension when defending a flag while trying to pick the right wall to hang on, or entrances to strife back and fourth from. It was kill or be killed city. Also Titans were in full effect in this game mode adding to the skirmish…definitely my favorite game mode!
Pilot hunter also felt so new and fresh. One of the gripes people had was that there were too many bots in the first one, now all of the bots are gone and its just insane. Also, in this game mode is where you get your campers.
Since the bots are gone the need to keep moving died out. It also caused spawn camping. Your spawns do change but if you are on a crappy team its basically the same scenario just on the other side of the map. If the bots were still in it would give players a need to move because the bots do shoot at you, so this is the trade off. People complained about the bots so now you have more campers and no titans in this game mode. It’s just straight mano-a-mano.
Bounty was a very unique game type because to me it felt like a futuristic version of Blood money form Battlefield: Hardline. You kill grunts and player enemies and you get loot then deposit it into banks. Defenders can steal from these banks and titans are in full play in this game mode. Titans become bounties for mega points.
The game modes were fun and while some folks may disagree, it was a nice variety and showed that Respawn is trying out some new things, while trying to please some of the community. Like taking out the bots in pilot hunter.
Game Mechanics and Options
The player load out options were a bit more stacked this time around. This is a good sign that we will have a large variety of custom load outs coming. A lack in customization is what hurt the first game. We had more guns and some new gadgets like the Vortex Ninja stars and grapple hook. The game mechanics felt good as well. It felt like the TITANFALL of old besides the momentum part on some of the maps. Sliding is also a nice change. Being able to slide and lower incoming damage is huge for those one shot one kill moments.
The new weapons are also fun to use but the shotty was way to OP as well as the new lazer sniper rifle. I did have a problem with the way player enemies would have this orange glow on them and this should be removed unless its part of a perk. It was very distracting and took away the overall vibe in the environment with some folks saying it was annoying. The hook shot was a hit or miss for me, I think this should be tweaked up. There are times where you want to hook to just zip onto a wall or player like in Bionic Commandob(The good one not the crappy 3d remake.) It didn’t have that feel unless you were trying to get on a titan while at the same time still being able to keep the cable loose and swing.
Maybe there should be a way to click in the thumb stick to retract and just hold the RB button to keep the cable out to swing. It would be a nice easy add to the mechanic and give you a chance to get some nice momentum. Like Spider-Man on some of the more open areas..
Titans
The new Titan designs looked awesome and their new weapons were very fun to look at and use. I very much enjoyed using the trip wire. I also liked the way some people tried to bull rush you while in critical and you drop this thing to see them fail. The electro gas was cool as well and the new core abilities were so awesome, it felt like you were BIG-O. If you don’t know what BIG-O is it’s a bad ass anime and you should def look it up.
The titans were so bad ass but… (You know there’s a catch.) The titans were great but they felt like large stuffed animals. Just getting ripped to shreds by everything and so quickly. I mean there were times where I got in a titan, have this one on one fight take 4 shots and I’m already under half health. This is TITANFALL you are in, a mech it should take more damage before it becomes a broken tin can. I also liked the new rodeo feature. Ripping out a battery and boosting your titan. Or scrambling to get your battery back. This brings a new type of strategy on the table when piloting. They also need to tweak the melee. The hit boxes didn’t seem on point when trying to bash pilots even if you are basically standing on top of them.
I did like the titan meter on the side. OMG some of you people just lost your minds when I said that. Seriously the meter is great. This prevents campers, because you have to actually be contributing to the game to get a titan. Yes some of you are yelling at me now “But the timer was better you are crazy!!!!!!” I would say both yes and no. The timer was great and all and you were guaranteed a titan or 3 per game but you never had to contribute to your team. You could sit there for 2 and a half min and just wait to go beast mode. While the other people were killing bots or other players to get time reductions to get titans faster. Listen up people, the key word here is “bots”.
People complained about there being bots in the game, so now that they are gone there’s nothing to give you points boosts to get a titan faster besides capping flags, bounties, or killing enemy players. This new Titan bar and the old school time method are the same. But now rather than sit and wait you have to contribute and do something to get a Titan. Don’t camp that’s the easy answer. Also if bots were put back in this would give you more of a chance to max the bar out and get a titan. There’s plenty of evidence in this when you play the Bounty game type. So maybe the bots being in the game wasn’t that bad of a thing huh?
Servers
Ohhhhh boy. I could write a novel right now about these things. I’m just going to say what everyone is thinking….they suck! Why does every one look like they are pausing and un-pausing the game? The lag or whatever the hell was going on was horrible. I did three speed tests while playing and streaming and I was still over 90MBPS with a 23 ping. So it wasn’t on my end. The game play at times so frustrating because people were skipping frames all over the place and this needs to be fixed ASAP.
I even had the same issues when not streaming and I wasn’t the only one either. Just about everyone I spoke to during intermissions were having the same issue. Also you weren’t able to group up with friends. This would have been a much better experience with your buddies. That’s it I will say no more.
Overall, TITANFALL 2 looks like its trying to learn from its past experiences. But at the same time they are falling short on what made the first game so good. Respawn listen up: The first game was fantastic it just didn’t have variety or expanded customization, so it fell off. So use this formula: Titanfall one with more weapons, maps, unlocks and customizables, then this game will live to the hype that these new PS4 players have been hearing about.
What do you think about these impressions? Have you played the TITANFALL 2 Tech Test? Let us know in the comments or the RGM Forums.
