Titanfall 2 review Y8 game

Titanfall was most often criticized for the lack of a single player campaign - because behind the clever multiplayer, an interesting world and backstory could be seen. And look where it led. The second part has a storyline campaign. She's normal. You can go through it if you want. If you don't want to, you can skip. Globally, nothing has changed - it looks like they will still buy Titanfall 2 because of the multiplayer.

Private Jack Cooper is trained by a real pilot. Maybe there was even some interesting story between them, but they don't have time to tell us: that pilot dies at the very beginning. The story immediately shifts towards the relationship between Cooper and BT-7274 - a titanium, by a lucky chance left from the killed pilot. The robot establishes a connection with the militia, and now they happily go together to carry out a mission that previously hung on the pilot-who-was-killed.

Titanfall 2 doesn't bother with details. Someone expected that she would tell a little more about the world of the Y8 game, its structure, about what the IMC corporation and the rebels are actually fighting for. But in the end, we are told practically nothing. You walk. In the background there is a war of villains with paladins. All.

The focus is on the emotional connection between BT and Cooper, but nothing really happens there either. There is no development in their relationship, except for those moments when you win and the titan throws something in the spirit of "Acting pilot Cooper, you are surprisingly well done today."

BT is, in fact, a cute naive darling from the series "Vital's robot, who understands everything too literally", but from time to time his chatter is really entertaining. And Cooper ... from time to time to BT's remarks they offer to respond with his voice (like in Firewatch - you don't decide anything, but you seem to participate in the dialogue and set the tone), but with the same success he could have just kept silent.

You soon forget that Cooper is not even a pilot properly - it painfully quickly he gets used to a new role. Five minutes ago, shell-shocked, he swallowed mud in a ditch, and now he washed and runs along the walls. His reaction? Take it for granted. He is not particularly surprised by "God my mother, it's okay as I can."

Everyone is afraid of the ascended Cooper. It flies like thunder over the field, the bloody IMC soldiers scream in panic. "My God, I was left alone, help me, now he will kill me too!" - you sometimes hear something like that from them. If Respawn was putting on a war drama about the horrors of war and a split personality (that is, Spec Ops: The Line ), I would readily believe in it.

But instead, they did a romantic Disney adventure. And definitely not Call of Duty (although at the end of the campaign it starts to make it epic and about the war) - contrary to popular belief, the series, on which people from Respawn once worked, at times tries to ask difficult questions. Titanfall does not bother yet, this is a simple space tale about the war of the good and the bad.

And you know what? Regardless of what I said above, this is fine. Respawn seems to have found its own - they did not copy the series, from which they themselves fled. Instead of "war against war, war drives" the first half of the game turned out to be an adventure of a superbinson riding a robot. Hostile nature, wreckage of civilization from orbit, pterodactyls, unknown yes-what-it-was-in general. Clever girls!

And before, I thought that Titanfall 2 would have to look like Bulletstorm - so that sheer fun, colors and tricks would award style points. When I started the game, I caught a completely different, even more pleasant association - Metroid Prime.

In the first hours, it is often possible to stop shooting and start looking, looking around. Respawn did not push the topic of research entirely, but the moments when rush gives way to curiosity are very enlivening. And in the middle there are two acts when Titanfall 2 generally resembles Portal 2 - and this is the best time in the game. Mechanics appear there, which, it seems, are not quite for shooters, but they fit perfectly into the local motive “close your eyes and run forward”.

Only this is how they fit in and are written out. Outside of their levels, those finds do not manifest themselves at all. Their achievements are forgotten, and nothing of the kind is given to replace them.

Even in its worst moments, it saves the campaign that it's still Titanfall. Feels like Titanfall, moves like Titanfall, allows everything Titanfall allows. This is a Y8 game after which you want to replay Vanquish (2010) , and then you remember that, in fact, you can't be so cool there. Wherever I want - I run there, slide on my butt and hit without a miss. The Y8 game reacts to every desire in some amazingly pleasant way: it reacts sensitively to minimal movements, and constantly makes it clear that you have everything under precise control.

For example, you will never see other dexterous pilots - against you only titans, titans and stupid "grunts". Level design often does not support mobility, but interferes with it, forcing you to play like a shooter with cover. But the most offensive: the dynamics of the robot pilot, which showed itself very cool in multiplayer, does not work in the single. Generally.

In multiplayer, you change perspective on the fly: just being an acrobat pilot - a moment - moved into a huge robot. They break the robot - bullshit, you run a little more on foot, and a new one will be dropped from the sky. The gameplay organically flows from one style to another.

Not so in the single. The robot is not always available, and if it is available, then there is no point in getting out of it. It is warmer, quieter and faster. And if you get out - the robot, stupid, will be taken and hurtfully killed. And it surrenders, if BT's death did not mean the end of the Y8 game, it would be much easier to open up in the campaign.

Moreover, the battles on robots themselves here have nothing at all to do with shootouts from multiplayer. Even when you meet face to face with a titan boss, the outcome is most often decided in a few seconds: either he manages to discharge everything into you a couple of times, or you into him. An interesting confrontation just doesn't have time to happen.

In short, if you are not waiting for another story about a boy and a robot, then the single is still an appendage to the multiplayer. And very, damn it, sorry. He could have become something much, much more, and in some of the brightest moments of the campaign, this is clearly visible.

And just do not say that you have not guessed how this story will end after the very first trailer. Oh please. You immediately understood everything. And they even thought: "Well, everything cannot be so obvious."

After the story mode, a lot of things seem very familiar. Dumb infantry, titans, weapons - everything, apart from a couple of gadgets, is encountered in online battles in almost the same form as in the campaign. But in multiplayer, and only in multiplayer, it all ties into a real and very foldable system.

Titans and pilots act as if on separate layers of the map and are busy with their own affairs, but at the same time they constantly intersect with each other.

In a fair fight, a robot will always defeat a person - but a person does not need to be honest. He hides in rooms inaccessible to the titans, maneuvers, takes with cunning and dexterity. Along the way, it hunts for AI infantry (if it is provided for by the mode; its types have become a little more, and it creates the appearance of a big battle a little more convincingly) and helps the team earn victory points.

And at some point, the pilot orders his titanium from orbit. Watching him screech his way through the atmosphere. It makes a desperate dash, lets the robot grab itself with its palm and put it in the cockpit. Action drama with a cliché like "Now we are fighting for real!" is drawn in the mind by itself.

Playing as a pilot and playing as a titan are two completely different things, but the point is always in their interaction. If there were no independent pilots in this system, the battles of the titans would feel much more boring (and vice versa): well, they run and run, massive, cool, they shoot from cannons ... throwing a grenade into the reactor adds a dimension that would otherwise be sorely lacking.

And this feeling - when you are a huge Gurren, his mother, Lagann is so busy with his big war that you don't notice the cockroaches running around you - both Titanfalls convey the best in the world.

Everyone who is sure that Titanfall 2 is "Call of Duty with robots" did not understand anything. Activision also has a jetpack and even wall running, but the difference remains enormous - if only because in Call of Duty people run much more often than they jump. In Titanfall, those who do not chop in parkour are immediately kicked, no matter how well they shoot.

If you walk, you are an easy target at once. You can, out of habit, run, wait, listen attentively, aim enemies through the front sight - but as soon as you get out into the street, some semi-professional will mow down you from a machine gun, fashionably jumping from wall to wall.

In Titanfall, you need to constantly move - there is nothing more fatal than losing the momentum gained in flight. Moreover, everything is controlled easily: once you are in the air near the wall, the pilot gently "sticks" to it and starts to run. Knobs off on the tap of a jump and swings down easily whenever you want.

But it happens quickly. And you just have to get lost a little, miss the wall, jump ahead of time and lose control of the flight ... in short, hope that no one was killing you at that moment.

Even with a basic understanding of movement, it is pleasant to play, but the difference between a beginner and an experienced player can seem catastrophic.

Even the first Titanfall had a small semi-professional CTF party that plays Call of Duty with robots (stop comparing Titanfall with Call of Duty, seriously) the way they once played either Quake or Tribes. There are enough non-obvious tricks in it that help to move in a way that, in theory, pilots cannot move at all.

At the same time, in Titanfall 2, parkour has become even more flexible. First, a tackle appeared - here, unlike CoD, it does not extinguish, but maintains speed, and very steeply weaves into protracted maneuvers. Secondly, there is more choice among active skills. The cat hook, for example, helps to use the accumulated impulse in an interesting way - to quickly pull up to a height or go around corners widely.

There is also a phase shift: you go into a parallel dimension, become invulnerable and invisible (although you yourself do not see anyone either). This ability has one weakness: a strictly fixed duration, which often helps the opponent predict where you will materialize. But for now, there are suspicions that this thing will become mandatory in high-level Y8 games, because the seconds that you win with a shift decide a lot.

And with the help of the shift, you can run "inside" another pilot, materialize and tear him apart from the inside. As with the translocator in Unreal Tournament.

As for robots, the approach to them has changed slightly. Weapon-chassis-skills are no longer selected separately, instead they give six ready-made classes. Rather, it was beneficial: all titans feel very differently, each has its own niche and style of play.

In the single, some titans looked strange, but in multiplayer, an inspiration catches up - that's, they say, why it is.

Sniper "Nordstar" in the campaign is simply cramped: BT in its configuration takes off high, but it is still sawing almost point-blank. But on large multiplayer maps, in the labyrinths of hill houses, the ability to rise sharply above everything becomes a great help. Once you get used to it and learn to take the right position, playing for Nordstar, you start to feel very cool.

How completely dissimilar pilots and titans work together reveals the theme of their "connection" better than any situation in the story campaign. Titanfall had the same feelings, but in the sequel there are even more situations in which you and your partner seem to understand each other without words and simultaneously do some wild thing. Well, there, in the heat of the battle, you jump on the enemy robot as a monkey, unscrew the battery from it, jump to your partner, give the battery to him, and thereby save him a split second before his death.

How controversial is Titanfall 2's single, how correct is the multiplayer at all levels. Someone will be confused that the Y8 game is still designed for small teams (no more than 16 people per map), others - fairly simple modes (there are deviations, but everything is within the framework of habit), but this is already a matter of preferences.

The main thing: having expanded significantly, the multiplayer Titanfall 2 has not lost focus. And sometimes it is amazing how accurately and cleverly everything is put together in it.