So I recently had the privilege of entering into the Titanfall beta for Xbox One this past weekend, and I was not disappointed! Titanfall has been a highly anticipated game since the release of the next-gen consoles and with only a month away from release, the beta has been open to the public and will be until February 18^th. As a FPS player, I have been waiting for something new, something to take me away from Call of Duty and Battlefield, and after playing the beta, I believe this game is going to do it for me.

Titanfall is a FPS meets Mech game. Though it might seem pointless to be a foot soldier when facing these titans falling from the sky, the game does a good job of balancing the strengths/weaknesses to avoid any one-sidedness. Every player is basically guaranteed to call down these giant mechs, and the more skilled players are rewarded by getting a chance to call theirs in earlier. Each player starts the game with a time limit (when you join a match already in progress your time limit is lowered to compensate for late starts) and as you get points, whether from kills or captures, it takes time off of the countdown. Once your titan is ready for deployment is when the real fun begins. Pilots are able to call in their titans anywhere and have the option to enter them, or set it to AI mode. I personally preferred setting it to AI mode and covering it from a distance because the titan still did a lot of damage and killed plenty of enemies without me in it rather than standing there. I was afraid that the AI would be crappy like most games but the titan can be left alone to wreak havoc. That being said, they are still fairly easy to take down if you aren’t in a titan. Each player gets to have an anti-titan weapon which can lay down a lot of damage, as well as the ability to climb on the back of titans and destroy their wiring. With a few teammates working together and enough firepower, titans can go down fairly easy which keeps the game in check.

One feature I was excited to see was the added bots for both teams. Everything I read previously wasn’t very clear on what kind of role these bots would play. I found that they are basically there to help out players who aren’t getting enough points or kills. The bots drop down in groups of 3 periodically throughout the game and they are fairly easy to kill but are only worth a few points. I also found that players will be getting more bot kills than they will normal kills because of the ease. So if you can pay attention to the drop ships and knock out bots you will be well on your way to calling in a titan faster. I was a little disappointed at first because I thought they would be on par with the normal players, but once I realized their purpose I had no problem with their presence in the matches.

The beta was very limited with the content which makes me even more eager to play more of it. They set the max level to 14, only allowed 1 type of each weapon, only gave the ogre titan for players to use and only had 2 maps to play on. It was a real good sneak peek into the potential of the game. The maps were beautiful and real big, however, it seemed that most of the area in the maps weren’t utilized like I imagined. Most of the fights take place in one central area on the map even though there is so much more to explore. I feel like this is due to only having 6 players on each team. If they were to add a few more players to the game, the player-to-map ratio would be much better.

I had a blast with the maneuver gear. Nothing is better than parkouring your way around the map! It makes it so fun to outplay your opponents by scaling walls and jumping from building to building. The maneuvering is fairly easy and it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it. They did a good job with the controls, making this game an easy transition for any FPS player, but also easy enough for any type of player to get a hang of.

The beta only consisted of a multiplayer. I am still unsure as to what they plan on doing with the story mode and how they are going to incorporate it to the multiplayer as they have stated. I am still interested to see how that will all play out. The multiplayer seemed very balanced among players. In most FPS games you can easily have one person carrying the whole team with a lot of kills but in Titanfall, that was a rare sight. I was actually glad to see this because I am used to carrying games in Call of Duty and I always wanted the feeling of a more teamwork orientated game, and with this game I definitely felt a teamwork vibe.

Well that’s about all I’ve got for you right now without giving away everything. I had a blast playing the beta and am definitely going to buy the game on launch day. If you have any questions or want to know more, leave a comment, I would be happy to talk more about it! I suggest trying this game out for sure, especially if you are an FPS gamer. Release date is March 11 in America for Xbox One and PC, and March 25 for the Xbox360. Happy gaming!

Kendrick is a writer for MONG, you can follow him on Facebook and Youtube