Titanfall 2 Campaign is AMAZING (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, October 29, 2016, 13:17 (2740 days ago)
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Saturday, October 29, 2016, 13:22

Just played through the Titanfall 2 campaign from start to finish last night. I'm in the crowd who felt going in that Titanfall doesn't need a campaign. The first game was purely a PvP shooter, and I absolutely loved it. It didn't overreach; just stuck to its own thing and nailed it. So I was a bit lukewarm when I heard they were adding a campaign to the sequel. I worried it would be little more than a check mark on the back of the box. But now that I've played it, I'm blown away.

First of all, it's short, and that totally works in the campaign's favor. I played through it on Hard in about 4.5 hours... chop off my deaths/revert to save time and it probably clocked in closer to 4 hours. But it's 4 hours of stellar gameplay with zero filler, and no repetition. Not once did I feel like the section I was playing was beginning to drag, or anything like that.

But that's not to say that it's all action, all the time. Titanfall 2 has the best pacing I've seen from a shooter campaign since... I don't know. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of another campaign so well paced. There's a constant flow from quilter moments to tense, stealthy approaches to fast-paced skirmishes to bombastic large-scale battles and everything in between. There's also an excellent arch across the campaign in terms of ratcheting-up your skills as both Titan and Pilot. They ease you in to the wall-running and traversal mechanics, along with the basics of pilot and Titan combat, over the course of the entire game. They give you new gear and load outs to play with exactly as often as you'd want them, while always leaving you free to fall back on gear you're already familiar with. By the end of the game, my Pilot and Titan were a formidable pair thanks to my honed skills (no "level up" mechanic needed ;p)

Then there's the REALLY good stuff.

Each mission in the campaign has its own unique gameplay concept at its core. This gives each mission its own unique feel that makes them all memorable in their own ways.

*Sidebar: I've said many times here at DBO that the reason people complain about lack of content in Destiny is that too much of it feels exactly the same. It doesn't matter if you have 10 story missions or 15 or 100; if they all feel the same, then players are still going to feel like they want "more" to do. Simply adding more of the same isn't going to fix anything. Titanfall 2 is a perfect example of the opposite; very short, but so much variety and such a range of experiences packed in to those 4 hours that I literally wouldn't want it to be any longer. It feels complete.*

This is where Titanfall 2 transcends the typical shooter experience and does something really special. In some cases, the "hook" of a mission is somewhat straightforward. It could be something like "you and your Titan are separated, find a way to get back to each other". But in other cases, the "hook" of a mission is a unique mechanic that doesn't exist anywhere else in the campaign. I know that sounds gimmicky, but some of the mechanics they introduce are so creative and fun and awesome that it totally works. There's a mission that tasks you with progressing through a massive factory, where large pre-fab houses are being carried through the air as part of an enormous assembly line. You must use your wall-running and double-jumping to navigate through these structures whiles they're hurtling through the air, turning and rotating and going through large presses all along the way. The climax of the mission throws you into a large bio-dome structure, where all these houses and buildings are being slotted together to form a huge training room. The buildings shift around and are slotted together as the floor shifts to create hills and terrain for combat training exercises, and a huge battle breaks out while all of this is going on.

There's another mission where you equip a sort of electrical tool that can be used to activate or deactivate certain environmental hazards. All of a sudden, Titanfall 2 becomes Portal 3 as you use the tool to open or close doors, activate wind-generators, shut down electric hazards all while wall-running and leaping over bottomless pits and using giant fans to hurl yourself through the air in seamless sequences of movement.

By far, the craziest mechanic in the campaign is introduced during a mission that centers around a time-warping device. You gain the ability to instantly shift between 2 different timelines; the past and the present. In the present, the facility you are exploring is in ruins, largely abandoned, and overrun by dangerous wildlife. In the past, the facility is fully operational, filled with defense crews and security systems. At first, you use the time-warping for traversal reasons. You may walk up to a door in the present that is broken and smashed shut, so you blink to the past and find it is operational and can be open. You might then move a little further and come to a hallway guarded by defense turrets, so you blink back to the present and find the turrets are destroyed and you can proceed. But then, combat enters the mix. While in the past, I entered a room and found a patrol of about 6 security guards entering from the other side of the room. As they spotted me and opened fire, I began to run towards them, blinked into the present (where the room was empty), ran around behind their positions, then blinked back into the past where the patrol squad now had their backs to me and I was able to ambush them from behind. I felt like fucking Nightcrawler, and it was incredible. But that was just the beginning! Before long, you'll start to encounter enemies in both timelines simultaneously. I'd run into another squad of troops in the past, then blink into the future only to find the room filled with a pack of dinosaur-sized lizards. So now I'm shooting at these crazy things while also trying to move into position to ambush the enemies in the past. Fights like this get progressively more intense, and reward careful thinking just as much as quick reflexes.

They strike an incredible balance with this mechanic, too. Just when you start to think that this ability might be too powerful, they find ways to punish you for using it carelessly. I very quickly began to treat my time-blink ability as an "oh shit" button, hitting it the moment I came under fire. But just as often as it saved me, I found myself blinking straight in to some other form of peril in the other timeline. As the mission progresses, more complex traversal challenges get thrown into the mix that involve constantly blinking between the 2 timelines mid-wall run to dodge obstacles or threats or barriers. Like everything else in the campaign, this mission builds to an amazing and memorable climax.

Beyond the unique mechanics, the campaign is jammed-full with great moments in terms of both gameplay and story/character development. The plot itself is nothing special, but that's fine. Its does its job. Some of the characters are surprisingly well done for a game that really isn't about "story". I grew quite fond of my Titan right from the start, and they develop the relationship between Pilot and Titan in some nice little ways. The first time you climb into the cockpit, you just stop and stare at it for a minute before taking a deep breath and sitting down into the seat. But the 2nd time you climb in, you throw yourself in as fast as possible, with confidence and urgency. Your Titan has a habit of being hilarious without really meaning to. There's a text entry from his perspective on the loading screens between missions that had me laughing out loud. His personality is strong enough that I found myself reluctant to climb out of the cockpit during battle, out of fear for his safety. But then I sometimes would, and we'd tag-team our enemies in some truly kick-ass ways.

I could go on forever. Long story short, if you like single-player shooter campaigns, I think you should absolutely play this game. Not everyone will feel like spending $60 on a 4-5 hour campaign, and I get that. If you only care about campaign and don't have any interest in the multiplayer, maybe wait until it is on sale or borrow it from a friend or something. But short or not, I'd say this is easily one of the very best FPS campaigns I've ever played. It's raised the bar for me the same way Halo CE did all those years ago.