FLASHSALE! Titanfall 2 – PS4 Review

For anyone who has a PS4, you may have noticed that ‘Titanfall 2’ is free this month with PS Plus. A first-person sci-fi shooter in which you play as a Pilot, who can wall-run and double jump everywhere with their jump packs, or a Titan, a massive robot capable of wreaking havoc and ruining your enemy’s day. If you are wondering whether you should play the first Titanfall beforehand, the answer is a very firm ‘no’ as it was both an Xbox One exclusive and also only multiplayer, ergo the servers are probably going to be quite bare. Titanfall 2 blesses us this time with a campaign which, surprisingly, manages to be one of the very best that any FPS has offered ever.

Of course, it is no Shakespeare. It is a wonderful, if not somewhat brief, sci-fi action romp staring the pilot Jack Cooper and the titan BT-7274. BT’s pilot. Jack’s mentor dies in the middle of an ambush and with his dying breath instructs Cooper to take his titan and continue his mission to rendezvous with a major of the militia that they are both fighting for. What I initially assumed would be a run-of-the-mill campaign turned out to be a real blast. The pilot gameplay has the right amount of kinetic energy to keep you on your toes, juxtaposed with the slower yet more powerful titan gameplay as you go toe-to-toe with other massive robots.

What did surprise me were the platforming section. Platforming/climbing in most action games (think Uncharted!) are usually rather tedious because there is limited challenge and there seems to be no reason why these could not be replaced with a walking section to the next firefight instead. The double jump and wall running mechanics are teamed up with items that are picked up in-game to make these sections quite inventive at times in Titanfall 2, especially in the second act of the game. The story has enough twists in gameplay and interesting developments to keep you invested. The leading two characters being very well characterised is also a big reason to keep pushing on and seeing them through their mission, the tension in the last few missions being quite palpable.

Meanwhile, the multiplayer is something special. I have not had this much fun in a multiplayer shooter since The Crucible in Destiny. All of the things that make the combat in the campaign enjoyable make the multiplayer even more enjoyable. There are eight different Titans to play as which all have different play styles that they cater to, my favourite at the moment being Scorch, who uses flame traps to cause damage-over-time effects on enemy titans. There’s something so enjoyable about wall running while gunning at other players before jumping into a titan and destroying them with my arsenal. 

To balance things out though, pilots have anti-titan weaponry and the ability to ‘rodeo’ titans in order to damage them. Nothing is more satisfying in this game than seeing a cheeky pilot grapple on to you and then punching them in mid air like they’re some annoying fly buzzing around your desk while you are doing an assignment. Unlike most multiplayer shooters these days (and indeed most EA games), the game is not egregiously monetised or full of lootboxes for us all to debate the morality of, this game is just a sci-fi shooter doing all the things a sci-fi shooter does best and it is FREE for this month. You are doing yourself a disservice if you do not try it out!