Dylan's Ex-Pile of Shame: Titanfall 2

It’s been many months since my first entry into the Ex-Pile of Shame journal. But I’m back with another entry and it’s a game I’m super-glad to have played finally.

EX-PILE OF SHAME #2: TITANFALL 2

What I Played: The campaign, an hour or two of multiplayer.
Difficulty: Normal
Playtime: Six hours roughly for the campaign, two hours roughly for multiplayer
Synopsis: The player takes on the persona of Jack Cooper. Jack has long had ambitions to be a Titan Pilot and has been getting trained on the sly by his mentor. When his mentor is killed in the early minutes of the game, it is up to Jack to team up with the mentor’s Titan, a giant called BT-7274, with whom he has good rapport.

When it released, Titanfall 2 was infamously sandwiched between the latest Battlefield and Call of Duty games. In a lot of peoples minds, it was left to die. I was playing neither games at the time though, instead, I was lost in a combination of Mafia III and PSVR titles throughout October 2016.

I did want to play Titanfall 2. I had played the first game on PC (nearly blowing my low-quality laptop up at the time) and I very much enjoyed the fast-paced, wall-running and mech combat. The sequel was adding a single-player campaign and that too was obviously enticing as the first game only told its story through multiplayer missions and log files. None of which are the greatest ways to tell stories. But it just never happened. As always, more games released, less time. I had a major life moment happened between the end of 2016 and start of 2017 and Titanfall 2 very much fell to the wayside.

That was until Apex Legends released in early 2019. The game is easily one of my favourites of this generation. Respawn’s battle royale did something with the genre that got its hooks into me. And as my love for the game grew over its first year, Respawn continued building on Apex Legends lore. This included teasing and tying in elements from the Titanfall series of which Apex is a spin-off from.

So it was finally time for me to play Titanflal 2 and I loved every second of it. This is very much not an overrated game. When people call it one of the best FPS campaigns of this generation, they’re right.

The story follows a character called Cooper who’s in training to be a pilot and through the loss of his Commanding Officer gets his own mech.

The war of two factions rages on. The IMC and the Frontier Militia fight for control of a section of space called The Frontier. Cooper is fighting on the side of the IMC. Think of the IMC as The Empire in Star Wars and the Militia as a more rag-tag pirate Rebel group. Yes, you’re playing as the bad guys.

“From my point of view, the Militia are evil.”

Titanfall 2’s narrative is more nuanced than most FPS’s. It presents a world of political unrest. Civilian causality. Major loss of life. It puts you in the role of a young member of an army, tells you who’s bad and says shoot. You may not have any choice in the story — it’s Cooper’s story and not one for you to change — but by the time the credits roll you’re certainly left thinking where things could go next.

Gunplay is superb and as fast as I’d expect having played Titanfall and Apex Legends. In fact, I feel like all my time in Apex Legends made this game a breeze. I died a handful of times on normal difficulty by failing a platforming section, not a battle, and that was it. I felt like a trained pro.

The set pieces are big, but the games best level involves more Portal-like puzzles and takes inspiration from Half-Life storytelling rather than big explosions and excessive action.

For the majority of the game, you are alone with all but your Titan whom you form this really likeable relationship with. Titanfall 2 manages to pull off the rare narrative feat of making me care for a sentient killing machine.

The campaign doesn’t overstay it’s welcome either, which was a blessing. 6ish hours to complete. It felt perfect.

I jumped into the multiplayer for an hour or so and wow, did I miss out. I would have put a hundred hours into this if it’d come out at a time when I could have/would have played it. Super-fast gun-play with the titans is one thing. The ability to wall-run and use a grapple to fling yourself around the map is another. It’s so much fun. And surprisingly, a somewhat active community exists on PS4 still.

The biggest joy for me playing this game though was getting all lore injection. Seeing things that tie-into Apex Legends. And finalising my feelings for the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe as one of my favourites in gaming at the moment. Even little things like picking up a weapon I know from Apex, or version of it, was making me smile every time.

“Oh! I know that gun!”

Titanfall 2 is fantastic and I’m so glad I went back to play it. It’s not only one of the best FPS campaigns of this generation but also one of the best shooters, full-stop. I’m happy to have my Apex/Titanfall universe lore book filled in more. And I now join the many waiting and asking…