This review contains spoilers
I find it almost impossible to stay still in meatspace. I have this nervous energy in me that requires me to always be moving around. I'm always pacing or shuffling my feet. My fingers are either cracking all the joints in my hands or chipping away at my nails if they're not drumming on a surface or scratching at a self-made itch. I'm adjusting my posture constantly, whether I'm standing up or sitting down. Titanfall 2 taps into this manic part of me so fully that it has led to many a hilariously embarrassing death in the campaign and in the multiplayer.
You just can't not be moving forward in this game. In every level and every encounter, you advance or you die. What makes Titanfall 2's focus on this design principle refreshing instead of tiresome is the various articulations on "moving forward" that each distinct chapter in the campaign explores. First, you're learning the basics of traversal by wall-running, double jumping, and mantling in static environments. Then you're understanding the difference in movement as a pilot and as a Titan. Next, you're having to apply that combined knowledge through an ever-shifting land factory where advancing means going up, down, or sideways. And all of a sudden you're fucking traveling back and forth through time, and so on and so forth.
I've never enjoyed first-person platforming, not in the Half-Life series where it's just part of the experience nor in Mirror's Edge where it's the whole point. Titanfall 2's story mode has legitimately awesome first-person platforming. It sounds like a small thing, but the game instantly respawning you at a convenient checkpoint when you mess up a platforming section also avoids that major problem I have with other games that put such an importance on precision jumps. The game just pulls it off effortlessly with how smooth it is to string wall runs, leaps, and floor slides to superman punching an enemy soldier out.
That way of seamlessly transitioning from traversal to up-close combat and vice versa is such a unique thrill. In the campaign alone, there are so many handcrafted moments of physical triumph achieved through this dynamic, it's kind of crazy how it keeps ramping up and climaxes in one of the best action sequences ever with the SEER kit, and I didn't even play the original Titanfall to make the nostalgic connection!
And you'd think, removed from the authored acrobatics in the single-player, the multiplayer wouldn't compare. But nope! Any instance or combination of bounding over, through, and in between the sides of buildings, headshotting one player, grenading another, zipping to an enemy Titan with your grappling hook, removing its battery and leaving it vulnerable, calling in your own to Titan to crush NPC grunts on impact, and executing the enemy Titan by ramming your truck-sized energy rifle into its cockpit and firing away can just happen and you know you're the rawest motherfucker alive.
You just can't not be moving forward in this game. In every level and every encounter, you advance or you die. What makes Titanfall 2's focus on this design principle refreshing instead of tiresome is the various articulations on "moving forward" that each distinct chapter in the campaign explores. First, you're learning the basics of traversal by wall-running, double jumping, and mantling in static environments. Then you're understanding the difference in movement as a pilot and as a Titan. Next, you're having to apply that combined knowledge through an ever-shifting land factory where advancing means going up, down, or sideways. And all of a sudden you're fucking traveling back and forth through time, and so on and so forth.
I've never enjoyed first-person platforming, not in the Half-Life series where it's just part of the experience nor in Mirror's Edge where it's the whole point. Titanfall 2's story mode has legitimately awesome first-person platforming. It sounds like a small thing, but the game instantly respawning you at a convenient checkpoint when you mess up a platforming section also avoids that major problem I have with other games that put such an importance on precision jumps. The game just pulls it off effortlessly with how smooth it is to string wall runs, leaps, and floor slides to superman punching an enemy soldier out.
That way of seamlessly transitioning from traversal to up-close combat and vice versa is such a unique thrill. In the campaign alone, there are so many handcrafted moments of physical triumph achieved through this dynamic, it's kind of crazy how it keeps ramping up and climaxes in one of the best action sequences ever with the SEER kit, and I didn't even play the original Titanfall to make the nostalgic connection!
And you'd think, removed from the authored acrobatics in the single-player, the multiplayer wouldn't compare. But nope! Any instance or combination of bounding over, through, and in between the sides of buildings, headshotting one player, grenading another, zipping to an enemy Titan with your grappling hook, removing its battery and leaving it vulnerable, calling in your own to Titan to crush NPC grunts on impact, and executing the enemy Titan by ramming your truck-sized energy rifle into its cockpit and firing away can just happen and you know you're the rawest motherfucker alive.