kelbear

I used to think that a single player campaign would be nice, but after playing the multiplayer campaign, I don't think a singleplayer campaign would have been very good.

Within even the very limited boundaries of what they could do in a multiplayer campaign, it turned out to be very clunky and forgettable. They had very little room to work in plot elements, so they should have cut things down to the bare minimum instead of involving so many characters, and kept the plot simple. Instead they put in too many characters leaving little/no time to get to know them, and spent nearly all of the voice time on explaining why we're going from one map to the other for "reasons".

When you've got so little room to work with, a "less is more" approach needs to be used, like in L4D1 and L4D2. Plant the seeds of an interesting story and let the player fill in the gaps with their imagination.

I don't justify game purchases based on what's "in" a game.

1) A = How much am I going to enjoy the experience?

2) B = How long am I going to enjoy the experience?

A x B = My willingness to buy the game.

A simple list of features doesn't inform my purchases very well. That's why I love quicklooks. Does the game look awesome to play? Will I get a couple hours out of it? Then sure, I'll buy it.

In fact, this looks like it'll be my go-to multiplayer game for quite a while. I tend to enjoy singleplayer and indie games most of the time, so I can't attach myself to numerous multiplayer games, and since I could only pick one, Titanfall was it.

Seconding what nixisia is saying here, buy them separately. Headsets/mic combos are typically overcharging for the quality they give you, buying them separately gets you better products. This is compounded further by the fact that any product with the word "gaming" on it is overpriced even further! (It's the same principle as pricing for wedding products/services, if you tell them it's for a wedding they'll jack up the price because they know you're not price-sensitive)

I'll add that you can go to www.modmic.com to get a very nice boom mic that can attach to whatever headphones you decide to buy.

If you're serious about recording quality, you'll need to spend about $100 for a real mic used for recording (again, don't bother with any microphone that talks about "gaming" is ).

Loving it, played about 12 hours in beta too. Felt pretty crippled for the first hour not having access to the loadout I had in beta, but after about 2-3 hours I was back to level 17.

New Impressions:

1) Quad Stryder is pretty incredible in open spaces and 1-1 titan combat. That Dash Core feels amazing, like you're god of the battlefield. Just 1 pip of armor left against 2 titans, activated dash core and hung in there long enough to kill one titan, and bring the other halfway down. Get trapped in a tight area, or boxed in on two sides and it dies in just seconds though. It's a high risk high reward that's really fun to play.

2) Smart pistol doesn't suck as much as I thought. Thought it was the most useless gun of the 5 in the beta, but if you parkour harder in combat you'll live long enough to fire off a few locked-in rounds, then you can just finish with direct fire (or go straight to direct fire from the start if the enemy isn't moving around). It's long time to kill, but it's very consistent, so if you move around a lot to extend the time it takes them to kill you, it's not a terrible choice. Definitely can't bring it out directly against decent players though, so I don't know how long it'll take until people figure out how easy it is to break lock-on.

3) Ogre is really great at holding down chokepoints. But that's not really the kind of gameplay I enjoy. I don't think I'll include it in any of my custom loadouts.

4) I still can't figure out which is better, rocket salvo or slaved warheads.

5) Having so many new maps makes me feel really lost in navigating the terrain. Had things figured out pretty well in beta, now I find myself spending too much time on the ground, not knowing the shortcuts. Just need to give it some time.

6) Didn't really have time to listen carefully to the "plot" in the campaign mode. I'll have to play through it a few times to hear wtf is the link between one map and the other, but I don't know if I care enough to try. I'd hoped for at least more of those mini-videos in the top right to put faces to names.

I like to play games with controllers, it's just more comfortable, especially now that I play all my PC games from the couch.

But I am NOT going to be playing this game with a controller. I'm normally MVP or at least near the top. Tried switching to controller for a while since I heard they enabled console-style autoaim for controllers and got wrecked. The controller just can't keep up with mouse/kbm players even with the auto-lock when aiming down the sights. It's not as bad if you stick to a shotgun where you only need to lock and hit once to get the kill, and it's not as bad in a Titan, where you don't need as much precision aiming.

However, the controller just can't compare to a mouse when you need to stack multiple hits(or precision targeting a headshot) on a bouncing pilot with a rifle or SMG. Using a controller wouldn't be a problem if you were up against others using a controller, but that's just not going to happen on PC.

(I was a big fan of Shadowrun, don't bother bringing it up, I played both ways on that system and the reason I used a controller there was only because PC players were given such extreme handicaps).

Well, now the beta is out. To answer the question of whether or not they can balance pilots vs. mechs.

Looks like they have. Titans have an edge against a single pilot, but pilots can still take do meaningful damage in the right terrain and with some distraction. Honestly, I feel more vulnerable in a Titan than on foot, the extra firepower and durability comes with a big fat target on your back.

I was very happy to hear that they weren't going to have microtransactions from GB's "Unfinished" coverage. You have a good point there, if EA sees their microtransaction-free game succeed, perhaps they'll might think twice about their strategy. I just hope they don't simply conclude that "hey, we made a lot of money on Titanfall without microtransactions...I bet we'd make a lot more if we added them."

The site feels different since Ryan's passed. That much is true, and yes, Ryan played a big role in keeping the podcast on track, and perhaps Giantbomb as a whole. I think it's true that Giantbomb content tends to ramble more without Ryan keeping things on point. It doesn't bother me too badly, but I understand how others might not be able to enjoy those ramblings as much (they came here for a gaming website after all). We had about 40 minutes of woodworking discussion last podcast...but I'm ok with it only because it feels like my friends talking about what went on in their day. I "care" about the woodworking only because of who it's coming from.

People who are just coming to see this content now would turn on that podcast and have no idea why the hell anybody listens to that stuff. I have a lot of difficulty getting into other people's podcasts for the same reason (Tried Superbestfriends gaming podcast this week, spent 20 minutes listening to them talk about dickpunching rather than gaming. Turned it off. But I realize it's also very likely that this is just them being relaxed like GB, and that they probably do have some great moments).

Maybe someone on the GB crew can take a more active moderation role?

That microtransaction issue is my biggest fear. The game looks great, I don't doubt that I'll have a blast with the base product, but I'm concerned that Titanfall 2 will be a steaming pile of pay-to-win garbage after being funded by EA. It's the direction they're looking to take all games in, and after my gaming group already took a deep dive on an unabashedly unrepentant pay-to win game (Ghost Recon Online) I've seen the future and it's awful. It'd suck to get invested in a new franchise that'll just be following up it's debut with the shooter-equivalent of Plants vs. Zombies 2.

That's an interesting consideration, might lessen my guilt enough to break out the credit card for this one.