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Titanfall 2 is Respawn Entertainment's new game and a sequel to 2014's Titanfall. Published by EA, this game had a lot of expectation and hype built around it. We had a chance to get our hands on the game. Did it really meet the expectations? Should you buy it? Read on.

Respawn's team has made great cinematic shooters, and Titanfall 2 isn't different. The game relies heavily on two parallel concepts: you as the pilot, and your Titan. When you take control of the "Pilot", you are but a human with superhuman abilities. You can wall run, jump higher, punch guys in the face throwing them twenty feet away and rip off battery cores that are sealed shut within Titans. The Pilot's marksmanship abilities depend on the powers as well, as it grants you hyper sensitive reflexes.

The second half of the coin belongs to you while you don the bipedal mecha monsters known as Titans. A significant part of the game would see you fighting your way through hordes of enemies inside the Titan.

Just like Titanfall, the sequel combines fluid gameplay with a lot of fun factor. The level design is intelligent and complicated. The missions themselves have been constructed to provide a brilliant pacing. Sometimes the game would force you to increase your momentum and rush forward to slay your enemies with breathtaking dexterity, and sometimes the game would beckon you to take it slow and admire the surroundings.

The firefights are exciting as well. You can go head to head with other human pilots, or you can hop onto your Titan and go all out destroying everything in your path. It sounds easy, but isn't. While the AI isn't godly, it still pushes you to make mistakes and improve your style of play.

Hopping onto your Titan pushes the style of play to an often cat and mouse affair. While you can mow down any pilots near you, the game becomes interesting when they call their own bipedal battle tanks from orbit. The game becomes all the more exciting when your opponents find a weak spot in your titan and use that knowledge to push you towards destruction.

Single Player Campaign

Your life as a Pilot starts as Jack Cooper who is a militiaman turned Pilot. Jack Cooper although isn't one-dimensional, he does not have a depth. However, this changes as soon as you get the BT 7274, your own titan. And from this point around the relationship between Jack and BT 7274 becomes endearing and valuable through their quest to understand each other. The dialogues are funny and it's surprisingly sympathetic. The jokes, however, wear out quickly as it revolves around the Titan's inability to understand human sentiments and gestures.

The story isn't much, but isn't a run of the mill shooter story as well. Jack Cooper along with his sidekick Titan has to fight an interstellar manufacturing corporation and a mercenary group. The writing is lacking, but it compensates with the art style and narrative. The 4-hour campaign is nothing short of excellent as the missions go back and forth between sky battles to titan skirmishes to old school boss fights.

What gives the single player an edge over the multiplayer is the ability to change your playing style through the selection of Titan loadouts which are found throughout the missions. You can select a loadout and try fighting a horde of enemies. Don't like it? Change it within a few seconds and you are good to go with another playing style.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is another gem in Titanfall 2. It has the right amount of content, customization and free playing style that most first person shooters are lacking in. The first game had some balance issues, this time however, developers have instilled a great sense of balance to the already massive multiplayer battles. You get this sense of balance when you start fighting other Titans in your own Titan. The titans are vulnerable as they don't come with a shield. Which means you have to keep in mind your tactics to come out of a fight unscathed.

The multiplayer has elements of teamwork built in it as well. Like the Rodeo mode, where you can pull out the batteries of other Titans as you jump on them. Returning these batteries to your own group of titans regenerates some of their health. This creates a dynamic feeling of teamwork.

There are 6 classes of titans which come with their unique weaponry and play style. As soon as you encounter one, you would know what your tactics should be. The titans themselves can be customized through loadouts, weapons and skins. They can also be customized through bonuses. Having said that, the multiplayer is customization heavy and feature rich.

The multiplayer has 8 distinct modes and some of those are Pilots vs Pilots, Last Titan Standing and Attrition. It also comes with team deathmatch and deathmatch modes. There's also a Colosseum mode where players can go one vs one.

We had the most fun with a multiplayer mode called Bounty Hunt. This is an AI based mode where two teams have to destroy AI for money. The most fun comes when you have banked the cash at one of your collecting units, as then you become vulnerable to fire and if you get killed while you are banking the cash, your assailant gets half the amount. This mode creates a dynamic cat and mouse chase and it's brilliant.

Verdict

The bottom line is that Respawn has built up and improved every aspect of the 2014 shooter and instilled a breath of fresh air through its single-player and multiplayer modes. You would enjoy every bit of Titanfall 2 thoroughly.