Titanfall a new way to run and gun
LOS ANGELES — The Titans are coming — and they’re dropping something new on gamers.
Titanfall, the much anticipated sci- fi shoot’em-up from Respawn Entertainment set for release March 11 on Xbox One and PC and March 25 on Xbox 360, is aiming to shake up a genre that’s long been dominated by military franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield with a mix of new gameplay elements.
The addition of hulking Transformers-like robots on the battlefield opens up an array of strategic possibilities: When is the best moment to drop a Titan? Is it worth risking death to climb aboard an enemy mech?
Vince Zampella, the cofounder of Respawn who previously worked on the landmark Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, said the developers intended from the outset to revolutionize the genre by unleashing giant player-controlled robots and frenetic, leaping soldiers into the fray, as well as doing away with a traditional single-player campaign altogether.
“Gamers are naturally trained to play a certain way after playing shooters for so many years,” Zampella said. “The more open you are to this new experience — it’s that much more exhilarating.
“It takes different people different amounts of time for this to snap with them and say, ‘Oh, yeah. I don’t have to walk up the stairs. I can double jump.’”