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As much as I once enjoyed marching to the modern warfare beat, all ghillied up, it's fair to say the fun has long fizzled out. The Total Hours Played tally that could run into the hundreds for Call of Duty 4 has gradually petered out with each series release, and in the case of Ghosts' online mode I barely got to double digits. But for many like myself, Titanfall's interplay between mech and pilot promises a reinvigoration in theme that the console FPS scene desperately needs, direct from the talents who propelled it to centre-stage in the first place. Titanfall's hype is so far unwarranted, but only when considering how the buzz is mismatched with what we actually know of the final product. The credentials are sound of course, and plenty has been made of Respawn Entertainment's reverence of 60fps gameplay. Early videos also brilliantly show the team's flair for economy in map design hasn't dulled, where cherry blossom stages like Angel City accommodate two wildly differing scales of play. In favour of the pilots there are tilted walls dotted around, making evasion and Titan hijacks more feasible, while the lower levels form a tightly-knit battleground for the steely brutes themselves.
This dynamic is something we've seen quite recently with Killzone 3's own mechs and jetpacks, both of which added a similar sense of scale and verticality, given the right level. But Titanfall builds its design brief wholly around these ideas, marrying them with wall-running, double-jumping and a four-minute wait until a player's first Titan drop. In the place of kill-streaks seen in Call of Duty we now have the allure of being first to take charge of these armoured exoskeletons - where taking down enemy pilots and AI grunts cuts down the wait.
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