The disappointment of Titanfall.

On first glance Titanfall looks like an incredible game.  It has the fast run-and-gun aspects that people love about Call of Duty.  It has the insane acrobatics that we all adored from Unreal Tournament games.  It has densely packed urban maps that remind of CounterStrike.  It has huge player-controlled mechs that we can use to wage war in paying homage to Mech Warrior.  The game looks like a lot of fun... until it isn't.

I really hate to be a buzzkill, but this game is not a savior for PC gaming.  I have no doubt that it may be a fun alternative, but any of the other games would be more rewarding and, probably, more fun.  This game is aimed squarely at the XBox One to show off Microsoft's next generation.  This is how they hope to bolster their early sales and build a fanbase for their console.  I sure hope it works for them, but this won't fly in the world of PC gaming.

I only got to spend a limited time playing the game, but it was long enough to become bored of it and decide that it was not worth the initial investment of $60+, nor was it worth the addition $25+ for the "get all of the DLC before you even know what it is" bundle.  I'd much rather play a free-to-play game that has an entrenched playerbase or invest in a new-ish, or upcoming, game with some promise.  After spending just a little while with it I just completely shut off my interest in the
game.

The controls will be hard to master, but easy to pick up if you've played an acrobatic FPS game before.  I played quite a bit of Unreal Tournament, so I was able to jump in and display my acrobatic skills during the tutorial.  The tutorial, by the way, is a series of "aha!" moments where you realize you are just replicating what you have done in other games.  Well, that and aimbotting at someone's face.  The overall feel of the game seems heavy and sluggish.  I know that there are speed boosts and double-jumps, but I didn't feel "agile".  At least not compared to some of the action FPS games that I've played in the past.  Once you get into the mech the feeling actually smoothed out a bit, but you still felt a little sluggish.

Once you figure out the jumping puzzles and how to use the abilities of your huge mech, you are ready to take on the battlefield!  This game would be better if it actually allowed you to kill players.  As it stands the servers and filled with bots.  There may be other human players, but you will see bots a majority of the time.  They exist to make the server feel full and to provided fodder to help you generate your Titan more quickly.  This is miserable for me because I'm missing out on THE PEOPLE.  We are losing people and replacing them with AI, AI that sucks!  These technical limitations wouldn't be so bad if you could find servers that didn't run bots, but you can't.  You see, you don't get to host servers.  There will be dedicated servers for matchmaking, but none that you can rent or purchase and then run the game off of.  You don't get to set a customer config or map rotation and have a great time representing your team, clan or website.  You get whatever group of people they decide is best for you and they toss you into a cloud server and let you battle it out... with the bots.

After spending a few days blasting away I just could not be bothered to remain interested.  I would rather play another game.  PlanetSide did something on a much larger scale with even bigger mechs almost a decade ago.  That game is still running and allows you a free trial period before you have to invest anything into it.  I would rather play just about any of those original games that have small bits that contribute to the overall concept of Titanfall.  Considering that CoD is offering GHOSTS, CounterStrike is represented by CSGO and there is a new Unreal game on the way... You will be hard-pressed to find a lot of fan support for Titanfall on the PC.  If you REALLY want to be successful on the PC, you will need to look to PC games and see what it is that they truly want.  I can tell you right now, it currently isn't this game... at least not in the shape it is in right now.