I don't play multiplayer first-person shooters. And yet I stayed up way too late playing Titanfall last night. That's got to mean something.
At no point during the last two decades have I ever been able to get into the idea of getting online and playing deathmatch against people with handles like DankReefs420 (actual name of Xbox user I played Titanfall with last night). Oh, I'll play a BioShock in single player on Easy if it has an interesting story. And to tell the truth I'm about ready to start leaving bags of flaming poop on Nintendo's doorstep if they don't make another Metroid Prime. But multiplayer shooters, for me, are generally all about just getting shot in the head repeatedly. The learning curve is too steep, and it's no fun to lose.
Titanfall makes some significant changes to the formula that, for me, have flipped the equation.
Titanfall, developed by the core team that created Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, is available today for Xbox One and PC, with an Xbox 360 version on the way later this month. But it's not from Call of Duty publisher Activision. The team broke away from the publisher in 2010, setting up a new development studio called Respawn that allied with Electronic Arts. In so doing, it may finally have given EA the Call of Duty competitor that the publisher has failed to cultivate with franchises like Battlefield and Medal of Honor.
Ordinarily, upon actually deciding to try playing a shooter, I'd first play through the single-player mode. Only thing is, there is no single-player game in Titanfall. Or local multiplayer. It's online (requiring a $60 per year subscription to Xbox Live Gold) or the highway. Titanfall does an excellent job of easing you into it, though.
First there's a tutorial mode that gets you acquainted with its unique features. Movement in Titanfall feels more like the first-person parkour game Mirror's Edge than anything else – you can sprint, double-jump, wall-run, climb up ledges. It also gently introduces the game's major twist on the shooter formula – giant mechanical Titans that players can call down from the sky at certain points during the match.
The important thing about the Titans is that you get to have your own. It's not as if the game just drops them into the match at predetermined intervals and whichever player gets inside it the fastest gets to ride it and unleash Armageddon on the rest of everybody. When you call your Titan, it drops to your location and you can jump inside safely. Then you get to stomp around in a 20-foot-high metal exoskeleton firing rockets. If DankReefs420 runs by you can step on him.
No matter what, it takes a long time to kill a Titan. So if you've spent the first few minutes of the match just getting sniped in the head, being able to get into your giant robot means that you can stomp around and deal death while absorbing bullets for a while. Play your cards right – escape at the right moment and refill your shields – and you get to stay alive for a while. Maybe even take down someone else's Titan. And that can be a real morale booster if you've spent the previous three minutes as a target in someone else's shooting gallery.
There's also a gun for people like me, people who have never gotten good at key important shooter concepts like, just to name one example, being able to aim a gun. The Smart Pistol lets you kill enemies in a single hit, but you have to spend a few agonizing seconds locking on to them first. This happens automatically if an enemy is in range and visible. Typically what happens in a shooter if I am sneaky enough to get the jump on someone plays out exactly like the "divine intervention" scene in Pulp Fiction. In Titanfall, even I can kill you if you're being dumb enough.
Like the Call of Duty series and many other shooters, Titanfall uses role-playing game style mechanics. As you kill things, complete objectives, and generally accomplish good stuff, you gain experience points, which cause you to level up, which allows you access to new weapons, abilities and equipment. Experience points are given out so generously that even if you're not winning battles, you feel like you're accomplishing something by continuing to play.
By making sure that players of all skill levels will have the chance to do at least something during any given match, Titanfall goes a long way towards keeping you excited about playing. But the real masterstroke is this: Titanfall makes it fun to lose.
Since it has no single-player mode, Titanfall inserts its world lore and storyline into the multiplayer matches. The "Campaign" mode is a series of nine matches that tell a short (if difficult to follow) story, and you can team up with a group of random players online and play through them all. This is important for new players because going through the Campaign is how you unlock the two alternate models of Titan.
But even in "Classic" mode, Titanfall is a more realistic narrative experience than other shooters. While most games would simply drop you into a random map for a predetermined amount of time, then end just as abruptly, deathmatches in Titanfall actually have a narrative background. The fight begins with both teams jumping into the area from their dropships. Once it ends, the victor stays behind in the contested zone and the remaining forces from the losing side have to get back to their ships to evacuate, cutting their losses.
This means that once the match is over, it still isn't over. If you're defeated, you're given the coordinates to where your dropship will be in a few seconds' time. Your aim at this point changes from killing everyone (or capturing the flag, or holding checkpoints, or whatever else it is you've been doing) to stealthily running to the dropship so you can evacuate.
If you were on the winning side, you can now attempt to kill off the remaining players – no one can respawn at this point, so death is permanent – and you can also attempt to actually blow up the dropship and ruin their chances of escape. This isn't easy; you pretty much need three or four Titans firing continuously at the ship for the entire duration of its landing. But it's doable.
The great thing about this feature (besides the narrative cohesion of it all, which is in itself a significant plus) is that both winning and losing now provide you an opportunity to earn more experience points. Blowing up the dropship is difficult enough that it feels great to see it explode, like a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion.
On the losing side, if you are able to sneak around everyone, make it up to the dropship (which usually involves doing some fancy parkour), get inside and escape, it's exhilarating. It feels like you won. It feels like you won. Even though you lost.
If you go to Cars Land in Disneyland and ride the big flagship ride, it ends with you and the car full of people behind you getting into a "race." Nobody controls the cars and the outcome is predetermined. The only difference is that if you're in the car that crosses the finish line, the speakers behind your head blast the voice of Lightning McQueen saying, "You won!" And if you were in the car that was a bit behind, the speakers say, "Wow, great racing!"
Titanfall is the Cars Land of shooters. When you lose, you win. Why would you ever stop playing?
