Don't skip to the score just yet, folks, because you won't find one. We're not finalising our review of Titanfall until we've had a chance to test it properly on live servers. The following represents my thoughts on the game after ten hours of play at an EA-run event last week. The version I played was final, and I've seen the entirety of the campaign as both factions as well as every mode, map, and weapon - but until we know for sure that EA's servers are capable of handling the stress of launch, the game doesn't get PC Gamer's endorsement. As ever, it's worth waiting to hear launch-day impressions before you commit your cash.
Titanfall is the last place you'd expect to find restraint. This is a bombastic, big money multiplayer shooter where robots fall from space; where jetpack-equipped 'pilots' dash over, alongside and through sci-fi cityscapes; where AI-controlled minions are shot, trampled, kicked and blown up by the squadload. It's a game where you'll run up a wall, jet into the air, lock onto a platoon of grunts with your smart pistol and eliminate them all as you land. It's a game where you'll drop a forty-foot robot titan onto another forty-foot robot titan just to see if you can.
It's a game where you will do all of these things - and more - constantly, thanks to lean, intelligent multiplayer design. Titanfall is silly on the surface and clever underneath, and this cleverness is characterised, somewhat counter-intuitively, by restraint.
