Titanfall Beta Review (First Impressions)
It's been awhile since I've played and FPS (first person shooter) that really has kept my interest for hours. The Call of Duty series had left a stale taste after Black Ops 2 and Battlefield 4 seems like its missing something that Bad Company 2 and BF3 had so, from the previews this look liked a win.
I signed up for Titanfall on Wednesday and woke up to a closed beta key Thursday morning. After hoping for time to fly by at work on Friday, I came home to seeing the Microsoft Azure servers which Titanfall was being hosted on was shut down for troubleshooting.
Saturday was pretty much dedicated to testing each of the elements to Titanfall. My PC specs include the following:
-AMD FX 8320 @ 4.4Ghz
-Asus M5A99FX PRO
-Corsair 8GB DDR3 2133 Dominator Platinum
-EVGA GTX 660 Ti SSC
-1TB WD Hard Drive
-550 watt 80+ Gold Silverstone Strider PSU
To start, there are 3 game modes in the beta with 2 maps. The first one, Attrition, is your typical team deathmatch. Each team has to reach the score of 250 to secure the battlefield but either the standard combat way or through the use of mechanical war machines called Titans. The losing team is given about 40 seconds to re-group at a certain pickup point for extraction, although if you are killed trying to reach, you are put into spectate as your other teammates try to make it to the ship. The winning team is allowed to destroy the ship as well so, fighting off titans and enemies while trying to escape makes it challenging.
Hardpoint is your standard Domination match in which each team has to take control over 3 positions and hold it from the enemy team. The squad with the most points in captured time wins.
The final game mode, Last Titan Standing, allows everyone to be in a Team Titan Deathmatch but if you die, you won't be able to respond until the next round. After each round, team's switch sides of the map and the surviving team with the most successful rounds, wins the game.
The overall feel of the games seems really easy so if your new to FPS games, this should be easy to pick up. Each of the weapons feel weighted correctly for damage. The interesting weapon that I found was the smart pistol. When you get close to an enemy, it automatically targets and all you have to do is pull the trigger to get the kill.
Controlling the Titan takes some getting used to with the movements and abilities but, once you get the hang of it, the amount of damage it can do is great between the Assult rifle, 40mm cannon and 4 pack rocket launcher. You can also grab the rounds that are being shot at you and repel them back at your enemy, which is a cool feature. The Titan can follow you around in auto pilot mode as well, taking down enemies behind you and you can hitch on to a friendly Titan for a ride if you don't feel like walking.
I'm excited for the full release on March 11, 2014. This game looks promising, the graphics are great (gave my 660 Ti a strong workout at max settings), the customization and feel are excellent so I would have to give this a 4.8/5 star rating.