Community Game Club - Titanfall 2! We are playing

Hey gang, new game incoming! Let's get back into this!

But first - these are the guidelines for these playthroughs -

1. Games should be at least 1 calendar year old. That makes it easy to find games that are either a) on most people's piles or b) cheap to pick up(I am thinking 10-15 bucks max).
2. Games should be either episodic or broken up into easily agreed upon stopping points (i.e. achievement for ch.1 or reaching certain checkpoint). I would like it to be about an hour to an hour and a half for each "assigned" session, no more than 5-6 hours a week needed to participate.
3. Games shouldn't be more than 20 hours.
4. No console exclusives. Has to be on Microsoft/Playstation/PC platforms.

The original Titanfall was an amazing game but was much critiqued for not having a single player campaign. Titanfall 2 remedied this and created one of the most narratively rewarding single players of the current generation.

This game was much overlooked at launch and I sure do hope you will join us this month as we play through!

mmm... suggested pre-switch aaand scuppers my Jan Pile Plan... but would feel bad not to now, will sleep on it

I'm in! I'll try to get started tonight.

I'm on it!

I might be done by Wednesday though.

This gives me a perfect opportunity to record some footage, and perhaps time to try the harder difficulty. I've been wanting to do that with more games to see how the mechanics change, if they do at all.

Count me in! I've been meaning to play this and now that I'm done with Wolfenstein, it's the perfect time for it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm in! I'll try to get started tonight.

I ended up playing for maybe an hour or two, and so far I like it, despite the lead characters being Suboptimus Prime and Blanderton Squarejaw. I pretty quickly decided to set sprint to auto, so the gameplay is a lot more fluid and mobile than a typical shooter. I'm still getting the hang of wall-running; it seems like there's maybe a little auto-jump right when you get to the end of a wall, because I'll hit the jump button just after and somehow consume my double-jump. It almost makes me wish the whole thing were third-person.

Still, it's fun, and the scale changes between pilot and titan are neat. Although with the titans being so autonomous, why do they have pilots?

I was hoping this was going to be a multiplayer revival.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm in! I'll try to get started tonight.

I ended up playing for maybe an hour or two, and so far I like it, despite the lead characters being Suboptimus Prime and Blanderton Squarejaw. I pretty quickly decided to set sprint to auto, so the gameplay is a lot more fluid and mobile than a typical shooter. I'm still getting the hang of wall-running; it seems like there's maybe a little auto-jump right when you get to the end of a wall, because I'll hit the jump button just after and somehow consume my double-jump. It almost makes me wish the whole thing were third-person.

Still, it's fun, and the scale changes between pilot and titan are neat. Although with the titans being so autonomous, why do they have pilots?

I dropped in for about the same amount of time last night and ran through the first couple of missions. Thank Optimus for auto-sprint. For some reason I picked up my controller for this without thinking - it feels right for all the jumping/wall-running stuff, but aim is suffering a bit.

I'm also waiting for the revelation on why titans need pilots, outside of accessing smaller spaces - makes little sense to me why the pilot would be doing anything in there other than riding along safely tucked inside that giant hunk of sentient armor. Having a good time with it though.

Where is the cheapest place to pick this up atm?

karmajay wrote:

Where is the cheapest place to pick this up atm?

Get a month of EA Pass or Origin Pass for $5.

It is 10.50 physical for both consoles on Amazon right now.

Played the first section last night. Whee! About to get to the good stuff. I guess I won't be finishing it super fast after all, as a bunch of new stuff is dropping for Origins this month, so I'm still spending time in Egypt.

I really wish I wasn't so awful at the Titanfall Gauntlet, because it's the only thing keeping me from platinum on this game.

What difficulty are you all playing on?

I managed to put a little bit of time into this today. Really enjoying it so far. I like the fast pace and the mixture of parkour and shooting, plus it really does make you feel pretty badass. It's something special to be able to wall run, jump to the opposing wall, continue to wall run, jump off to the ground, deliver an instant death punch to an unsuspecting enemy then shotgun his buddies all in a matter of moments.

As for negatives, like others here, I'm confused as to why the Titans need pilots, aside from the rule of cool I guess? And I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but I have no idea why I'm killing the people or why they're trying to kill me. And the main character couldn't be more bland. So not the greatest in terms of narrative, as yet.

SallyNasty wrote:

What difficulty are you all playing on?

I'm playing on regular. I'm not particularly good at FPS games, but I'm doing pretty well so far, only having died a few times. Seems about the right difficulty for my skill level.

I played through on Master and it was largely doable, with only a couple tough boss fights. Such great level design.

SallyNasty wrote:

What difficulty are you all playing on?

I'm playing on Easy. I've already played through on Normal, and then on the highest difficulty for the trophy.

I'm both tickled and annoyed by how frequently the game pats you on the back via BT. "Good job, pilot. Your skills are improving." "That was a difficult fight, pilot. You did well."

Just finished Effect And Cause. What a fantastic level! It's almost a shame that it's over so soon. Having said that, this game is great at not letting any level ideas/themes/etc outstay their welcome.

As an aside, this game keeps making me wish that there was a sequel to Mirror's Edge. Every time I have that thought, I have to remind myself that there was a sequel, only I haven't played it and keep forgetting it exists. It looks like reviews for it were mixed - was it really that much of a disappointment?

halfwaywrong wrote:

As an aside, this game keeps making me wish that there was a sequel to Mirror's Edge. Every time I have that thought, I have to remind myself that there was a sequel, only I haven't played it and keep forgetting it exists. It looks like reviews for it were mixed - was it really that much of a disappointment?

I found Game Maker's Toolkit covered a lot of that topic well.

Generally I found the open-world aspect and what made Mirror's Edge great were often in conflict with one another. Within the different chunks of world the player has a lot of navigational freedom, but in order to cross from one chunk to another – which many of the different side-missions require – you have to find one of few bridges to bottleneck yourself into. Which means you're really not finding your own path through the open-world, but instead are finding the optimal (and often recommended) path through the game.

It's not bad, but it made me yearn for the original game... a weird thing for a big budget sequel to do.

This game reminds me of a cross between Doom (2016) and Splatoon, oddly enough. It has the same kind of aggressive, mobility-focused shooting mixed unexpectedly with some novel platforming.

I respect the hell out of it and can really admire the craft on display. The gunplay is perfectly tuned, and the pacing is impeccable. I love how the Titan segments transition you out of fast-paced pilot combat into a slower-paced power fantasy where you mow guys down into more fairly matched scrums against fellow Titans. You very smoothly move between two types and speeds of combat with a nice stress relief in between.

This is easily one of the most well-crafted FPS campaigns I've ever played. I'm up to the building factory, and I can recognize that much.

But I'm not sure I actually like it very much. It might be the best modern shooter I've ever played, but it's still a modern shooter and the conventions of that genre still don't resonate with me. Everything is dripping with this hoo-rah machismo; the villains are cartoonish and vulgar; the level design has that blandly frictionless structure where you just follow the lit surfaces, like a moth; the guns feel only barely differentiated: you have sniper rifles, RPGs, and then a muddy blend of minor variations in range and rate of fire.

I'll keep playing it. I'm curious to see some of the levels later in the game that I've heard so much about. But I think it perfectly highlights for me that frequently confused divide between dislike and disinterest. I don't dislike this game at all and admire the craft of it. But I'm not interested much in it, either.

I need to hunt down some interviews, but one thing to consider in regards to the story and its hoo-rah machismo may be that it was written much like a Nintendo game: build level and gameplay concepts first, attach a narrative to it later. I don't have evidence to suggest that was the methodology, but it certainly has that feel to it. The heart of the story really is between the Pilot and BT, and I still wish the game offered a chance to at least choose your character's gender, if not appearance. I can't imagine it would have cost much in terms of gameplay balancing or new voice lines if you had an alternate "Jane" name, or had skins for different colors of skin.

Perhaps that'll be included in Titanfall 3, if we're blessed enough to get one.

Your response is similar to my own, though. My first thought was "This is an FPS if it was made by Nintendo!" before I remembered that Splatoon exists and had a single player campaign. More accurate to say a Western developer finally took some serious notes from Nintendo's methods.

ccesarano wrote:

I need to hunt down some interviews, but one thing to consider in regards to the story and its hoo-rah machismo may be that it was written much like a Nintendo game: build level and gameplay concepts first, attach a narrative to it later.

Sure, and that's fine. I'm not complaining that the characters don't have emotional depth or intricate back stories or anything like that. But even if they backfilled the narrative to suit the gameplay, they still decided to backfill it with crazed drug addicts and sadists, battlefield execution and mutilation, and a lot of chest-thumping brotherhood of combat business.

Are you seriously supposed to do that beacon climb without a weapon other than the arc gun? Any time I equipped the arc gun, I couldn't switch back to my gun, but I couldn't tell if that was a bug or by design.

Very timely. I picked this up before Xmas, and I haven't broken the cellophane yet.

I'll start this at the weekend.

ccesarano - thanks for linking that video. It's a shame they took the game in that direction.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Are you seriously supposed to do that beacon climb without a weapon other than the arc gun? Any time I equipped the arc gun, I couldn't switch back to my gun, but I couldn't tell if that was a bug or by design.

Don't know if you're playing PC or not, but scrolling the mouse wheel brings back the regular guns, then it's C to switch back to the arc.

I'm on PC but using a controller. (Gasp.)

You push left on the d-pad to equip the arc gun, then that's it. No way to switch back.

But I also noticed you said guns, plural. Have I seriously played through most of this game not knowing you could have more than one gun?

Sorry, but it looks like you have. You can carry two guns at a time that you can switch between.

That delights me.

OMG yay more people playing Titanfall 2! I hope you all are loving it even a fraction of the amount that I do.

I finished this up last night. Thank you to whoever suggested it!

I stand by most of what I said earlier: it's a marvelously well-designed and perfectly paced game that just isn't to my taste. I'm glad I played it, but I don't know that I'll jump on a hypothetical Titanfall 3 unless I can also get it for a fiver.

I found the last couple missions frustrating, because: a.) I'm really bad at fighting against titans, and b.) I couldn't quite figure out what the game was wanting me to do.

Spoiler:

At the end, there are a few times when you're storming a facility against a bunch of enemy titans, and the commander is shouting at you to keep moving, but there are so many enemies that pressing forward just gets you killed. I ended up sprinting past enemy lines more often than not, hoovering up health packs behind them, then killing them at a choke point when they pursued. I don't think this was what the designers had in mind, but it worked out.