Titanfall: Xbox One Beta Sneak Peek.
There’s something to be said about running along the side of a building, and then jumping into a three story tall robot.
Respawn Entertainment gave gamers that experience, and more, in their beta test of Titanfall. While it seemed more of a demo than a true beta test, Titanfall delivered some amazing game play. The stress test ran from February 14th to the 18th. It was limited in what the game could show, but the taster sample was delicious.
Respawn let loose with two maps and three game modes. The main titan chassis was the Atlas, a jack of all trades kind of mech. They did have the giant Ogre chassis in the game, but it was difficult to acquire, unless you had some LevelCap type of fps skills. There were few qualms about the beta. It was smoother than most others, with no random drops or server crashes. In comparison to Battlefield 4, which had multiple crashes for a myriad of reasons.
There wasn’t many upgrades or weapons to play around with, so you didn’t get a sense of the larger scale. There were some imbalanced guns, like the auto locking smart pistol, but overall the upgrades were there to cater to your play style.
That is what Titanfall does in spades, it gives you a sense of style. The free run system they have developed is amazing. It gives players a great choice of staying inside a titan and unleashing mech hell on everyone around you, or to go free running off buildings, walls, billboards and other titans. The first time you rodeo a titan (jumping on the back of an enemy titan, ripping open the cpu unit and holding down the trigger) is satisfying.
That’s the feeling this beta left us with, satisfaction. Titanfall has managed to strike a balance between tactics and fun. Whereas something like BF4 requires a lot of team work and coordination to win, Titanfall needs you to think outside the box. Instead of planning your movements out on a 2D plane, you have to start thinking about players running across the wall of a building or leaping from posts and pillars down on top of you.
The beta was brief and it was limited, and Respawn did not tip their full hand. Should you buy Titanfall? The answer would be leaning towards yes. We did not get the full picture, what abilities the other chassis’ or weapons can do, but from the brief time we got to play, it was a lot of fun. If the game follows through on the beta, it will be an fps that will be up there with the other greats.
Titanfall is set to be released on March 11th, 2014, for the PC and Xbox one, and on March 25th, 2014 for the Xbox 360.
UPDATE: Microsoft has announced their Xbox One Titanfall Edition. It contains an Xbox One, with custom Titanfall packaging, a digital download of Titanfall and a free month of Xbox Live Gold. The Bundle will cost $499.99 CDN
