Titanfall Review

I knew I was going to get this game as soon as I saw the demo for it at E3 last year. I was so excited to see that the folks from Infinity Ward being able to produce a game that they wanted. That game being one filled with giant robots, jetpacks, amazing graphics, an immersive aesthetic, and gameplay that looked like so much fun. The game is finally out, and I have been playing it nonstop.

Titanfall is more than just giant robots and jetpacks with a bit of shooting thrown in. Titanfall actually has a story to it. Now, it's not the best of stories, nor does it hold any impact over how the match plays out. Win or lose, the story goes on. That story being, there is a big mean corporation, and a group of people that are upset about their meanness. War is declared, and the battles play out in the most epic of fashions.

A few days prior to the release of Titanfall was the official release of a game called Hawken. I too was looking forward to playing Hawken, as it also involved giant robots. Hawken took what is commonly known about giant robots, slow, lumbering hulks of badassery, and made them quick, nimble machines that were quite spry and packed a wallop. However, after playing only a few rounds of Hawken, it didn't quite feel right. Hawken relies on players having played other multiplayer shooters before, in order to create the contrast from being on the ground to being in a giant robot. Titanfall creates this contrast within the game itself.

A layout of a match of Titanfall starts out with players on the ground, jumping and wallrunning with their jetpacks, killing minions and other pilots. Killing minions and pilots contributes not only to the score that will go towards reducing the build time of a Titan that the player can call in. Players are guaranteed to call a Titan at any point in the match. Everyone gets a Titan, and it is wonderful. While Titans are given, rather than earned, it does give those who might not be so good at being on the ground a chance to do well with a Titan. Titans belong to the pilots that call them in. No hi-jacking here. When a Titan enters the battlefield, there is a distinct paradigm shift in the momentum of the game.

Titans are a force to be reckoned with. So long as you are on the ground, and without a Titan, they are a serious threat to your well-being. When you're in a Titan however, you feel the power that they carry with them. Titans may be slow and lumbering compared to the nimble pilots that run throughout the map, but they are mere ants to the mighty Titans. Needless to say, Titans pack a wallop, and can even crush a pilot when it steps over one. However, Titans can't access every area of the map like the pilots, so those who have a Titan have to keep a lookout if preservation is on their mind. Firefights with Titans can get pretty intense. To make the experience even more immersive, kplayers have a computer lady voice that constantly feeds them informational updates about threat levels and how many other enemy Titans are engaging on them. Aside from being a great help when in combat, it's also a nice touch to the sci-fi aesthetic that Titanfall nails. If you're not too fond of piloting the big Titans, you can always have them follow you while you run around with your awesome jetpack.

Not having a Titan isn't all that bad when you've always got your jetpack.  Pilot combat changes the game of first-person competitive multiplayer games entirely. There are certain habits that players fall into because of the restriction of movement as a result of not having a jetpack. In Titanfall, pretty much all areas are accessable. Adding in the jetpack with free running capabilities makes traversal to all areas possible, but a lot of fun. I find myself running around the map more than I am actually fighting with the other team. Jetpacks give players the all important double-jump, which can be chained from wall run to wall run. It's so much fun to create lines to try and chain together runs, which build up momentum, and allow access to those higher areas. It feels a lot like the game Skate, with the flow that the jetpack allows. However, there are people and giant robots shooting at you while your running along walls like a freerunning Spiderman.

The guns in Titanfall are your standard fare of weapons with assault rifles, shotguns, snipers, and sub-machine guns. One weapon that sticks out, is the Smart Pistol. Because Pilots are so squirmy and can be anywhere at anytime, the Smart Pistol makes it easier to score a few hits on them. The Smart Pistol has bullets that lock on and curve towards the enemy. This isn't as cheap of a weapon as it may sound. The targeting line for the weapon is so simplistic that it's rather easy for the target to escape. Another balancing feature is that the Smart Pistol's lock on range is lousy, so players have to get in relatively close, but paint the target long enough to get a red indicator. Naturally there is an upgrade to the targeting of the pistol, but it still isn't going to be the one weapon that everyone chooses to go with.

At the end of the match, the losing team has to try and survive as they wait for their dropship to come in and give them a life out of the hot zone. Once the ship arrives, the losing team has to make their way to it, all the while surviving an assault from every member of the opposing team, as they too are notified to where the dropship will be arriving at. The experience of making it out of the game to the dropship is a victory in itself. It may be a situation where everyone wins, but in their own right that is justified respectively.

 As this is a game by the people from Infinity Ward, the people who pretty much wrote the book on modern Multiplayer FPS games, there's tons of challenges and unlockables. Every single action that a player does is rewarded with something. Be it Titan build time, points for the game, walking, holding a gun for a certain amount of time, killing minions, and the list goes on. The issue with all of these "challenges" and reward based gameplay is that it thrusts players to the higher levels. I hit about level 30 rather quickly, and did not feel as though I earned the title. Challenges reward players with a good chunk of experience points to help them level up. This rapid influx of experience points doesn't feel all that deserved, and not really earned in any sort of way. However, the unlocks are spaced out far enough between levels that players don't get everything all at once.

All in all, Titanfall is a game that is just plain fun. Giant robots, jetpacks, fun game mechanics, a cheesy storyline, and a lot of reasons to keep you coming back. Titanfall is a game that should be owned, or at the very least played, it's worth the experience. Besides, the concept alone should make you want to play. It may be super fantastical, or Call of Duty with giant robots, but is that such a bad thing?

A+

Why Do I do This?

I just want to talk about video games for a second here. I love video games, it's what I do. It's what I'm best at, and they're just dang awesome.

I want to talk about how they give me a sense of agency. HOw they make me feel like i can truly accomplish something. How they can make me face my fears, and let me overcome my fears. How Zelda has taught me courage, and bravery by going down into the depths of dungeons for the sake of a kingdom. For the sake of love. I want to talk about how I became a jedi while playing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I want to talk about how I climbed the seven thousand steps to High Hrothgar, and slayed a dragons in Skyrim. I want to talk about how I have met great evils, and destroyed them. How I united an entire galaxy to fight alongside me as I faced down the Reapers in a battle that we were ultimately going to lose, but we fought all the same. With tenacity and strength, as brothers and sisters fighting for survival. These are all the great things that video games have allowed me to do. They are an absolutely wonderful medium that I want to share with people, and that should be shared. I want them to be talked about in a way inspires greatness, that inspires people to pick up a controller to play a game, and experience it for themselves. I want video games to be respected, and not to be looked at with scorn and disdain at the very mention of the genre. I want to change the conversation about video games.

I don't want to talk about the mechanics of the game, the layout of the levels, or the clunkiness of the controls, because that in itself is clunky. It's stilted, and a chore to listen to someone talk about that. No, I want to talk about the emotions that I felt. The sense of speed that I got from playing Burnout and the thrill of coming in first place. I want to talk about the atmosphere and charm of Bioshock as I stroll through the halls of the sunken city, and discover the perverse leadership that ultimately ruined it. Video games, ultimately, are forms are art, and art evokes emotion. Art tells stories, art records history, art makes history, art brings us perspective of the artist, art brings up debates about what was the intention of the art. Now, not all video games are good, every kind of art form has its share of schlock, I mean, look at Michael Bay's work.

I'm really looking forward to what's becoming of the video game industry. Nowadays, we find Call of Duty's and Battlefields that all look and feel the same. Sadly, the video game industry has become somewhat of a factory, that's just churning out product, rather than creating something unique or wonderful. With people like Bobby Kotick, the head of Activision, who view the industry as a way to make money rather than art, it's difficult to see any kind of progression. However, popping up, all over the world are independent game developers who create games like nothing else anyone has ever seen before. Notch ( aka Markus Persson), of Mojang studios, created Minecraft. The game exploded, with no marketing, making millions solely on the basis of word of mouth, and supporters to pave the way for it to become the most successful indie game in existence. Just this year at PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, there was a booth dedicated entirely to independent video games and indie game developers. That booth was larger than either of Microsoft's and Sony's booths. There are good, creative, and fun games out there, they just need their fifteen minutes of fame, and they can go on to make it big. That's what we all want. We want the little guy to succeed, and we want to see something new, and we're only going to get that from these independent game developers. Those game developers grew up in the same era that I did, and want to create games that are the kind that they want to make. And the kinds of games that they want to make, are they kind that they grew up with.

I remember playing games that were fun and inventive, and did something interesting. They weren't the best games, they had their flaws, but at least they tried to do something different. I find that commendable in this day and age, where invention is scarce. I grew up in what I think was a golden age of gaming, when developers weren't afraid of trying out something new, or when they were still finding out just what a game could do. I stand by it that the mid 1990s to early 2000s were days of true innovation in the games industry. The Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, and the Sony Playstation brought forth some of the most monumental games in the industry. Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Soulcalibur, Jet Grind Radio, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Jet Force Gemini, Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Deus Ex, Thief, Resident Evil, Mega Man X, and many, many more. It isn't out of nostalgia that I say that these are great games, it's because they are. I still pull out the old games, because it's important to know where we've come from as an industry, and to take the occasional trip down memory lane. Ok, so maybe nostalgia is a bit of a factor, but they really are good games. If playing Civilization V has taught me anything: is that golden ages come and go, and I believe that we are on the cusp of another golden age. Not just with video games, but with other forms of art as well. I think it's going to be an interesting time to be alive, and experience something new.

Mirror's Edge Review

Recently, my mom, who I am eternally thankful, bought me a new laptop computer. It is really awesome, and really kicks ass at playing video games. It is also more conducive to my lifestyle. It is absolutely fantastic to have a gaming computer. It is by no means the best gaming computer around, but boy does it get the job done. It can run Star Craft II on Ultra. That's pretty dang good. So, now that I'm part of the PC gaming community, I can now take part in many of the great things about PC gaming. Like the Steam Summer Sale.

One of the games that was on sale for the low price of $10 was Mirror's Edge. Oh, Mirror's Edge, such fond memories of fun and exciting new gameplay, and such disappointment.

Mirror's Edge actually kind of holds a special place in my heart, as it is the first game that I ever officially reviewed. I say "official" in that it was the first game review that I ever had published. However, my game review career had just begun and I was limited to only 250 words. That, frankly, is no where near enough to describe my experience with Mirror's Edge.

Mirror's Edge comes to us from DICE, the creators of the Battlefield series. Mirror's Edge is quite the departure from the norm over at DICE, as the principle behind Mirror's Edge is to run away rather than fight directly. The game is about a group of people called runners who use parkour to leap across rooftops and deliver information to resistance groups in an overly protective city. The main character is Faith, a girl who gets mixed up in a murder mystery with her sister who is framed for murder. The game follows Faith as she investigates to find out who framed her sister for a crime that she didn't commit.

The gameplay of Mirror's Edge is in the style of a freerunning platformer game, but also a first person shooter. Platforming, or jumping doesn't usually work out in first person shooters, because the player can't often see their legs. In Mirror's Edge, if you look down, you can actually see the character's legs, but you won't be staring downward the entire game. Not unless you want to see where you're going, which is difficult as is given the poorly constructed level design, which often fails at conveying where to go next. This confusion is made even more difficult with the consistent barrage of bullets that are fired at you by large men wearing more than enough body armor. Players can't exactly explore and experiment with the character if they are always being shot at and left defenseless with only their fists. You don't go into a firefight without a gun, but the game always puts the player into this situation. The levels are designed like a first person SHOOTER would be, but being that there is a focus on not shooting things, these two decisions in design clash with each other.

The first half of the game is actually pretty well done when it comes to the running away bit, however it seems had fallen back into their ways of making another Battlefield game. As the story, which is only 4-5 hours long, progresses, the security gets tighter and there are more guards. This game can't decide whether it wants you to be a runner or a fighter. For the first few levels, players have their guy back at HQ telling them that they should run away. Yet, in several spots in the early half of the game force the player to fight the bad guys with a "looks like you're going to have to fight them", like a father pushing his kids into the pool to teach them how to swim. The game doesn't even give you the option to run away. I feel like there should have always been that option to run away from the bad guys in Mirror's Edge, even when your superior is telling you to fight. Players should be able to outsmart the cops when you're a small lightweight girl whose job it is to run away. I think that Mirror's Edge could have been a much better experience if there was a stealthy element to it. Stealth usually consists of slow moving sections that involve the player waiting for guards to pass by, but hear me out.

Mirror's Edge often puts players atop high places to overlook the landscape and find a path, of which there are regrettably few to choose from. I think that if the level design was a bit more multifaceted, then there could be a bit more room to play around and zip past the guards undetected. How cool would that be? The player is already basically a modern day ninja, what with the running and the jumping and the rolling around. But, this is just an idea that I had while playing through the game.

The animation of the character is fast and fluid as it should be with a freerunning character, which is really impressive given that it's a first person game and you can't exactly see the entire character. Yet the movement of the camera, and even that subtle inclusion of the characters lower body being visible really adds to the feel of the character. The way that the camera sways when sprinting down across a rooftop or sliding a stairway, it all feels natural. This combined withe some of the most impressive visuals I have ever seen in a game make for a very pleasing visual experience.

The graphics of Mirror's Edge are some of the best I have seen. It's not only the detail of the graphics, or the fluidity of the character animation, it's actually it's use of color. Mirror's Edge effectively uses a simple basic color scheme. Each level has it's own primary color. Kind of like levels in old school video games. Most environments are primarily white with a select color. The contrast of the color on the white makes that color all the more vivid, as white seems to brighten up whatever color it is put up against. Though, as impressive as the graphics are, they do not make for a great game. Graphics are important, but only to set the tone and personality of the game.

All in all, Mirror's Edge is just another pretty face, and sadly there isn't much going on behind that face but broken level design that clashes with it's game design. It's almost bipolar how this game treats the player, first it wants you to run, then it forces you to fight. It doesn't make much sense, and the player pays for it dearly. The level design doesn't allow for much freerunning and feels blocky and stagnated, and doesn't give a good sense of flow to a game that should be all about flow. I admire Mirror's Edge for its trying something new, but it just fell a bit short.