Good for a rental but not much else.
If you're looking for a game to play for a week or two at most it's an enjoyable game. The Titans can be fun the first few times the mechs drop from the sky and can create some exciting moments if you haven't seen the game before. Ultimately the game lacks substance, however.
From a content perspective this game is barely bigger than the pre-release demo. There is no campaign; merely a standard multiplayer playlist that will play 30 second in-game cutscenes barely any different from the standard in-game cutscene that starts standard multiplayer. While most people knew that going in, the game still feels incomplete. Compared to the multiplayer portion of a Call of Duty or Battlefield title, the game is only 1/4 the content while also lacking variety. There were six modes at launch but that number is disingenuous because there were truly only two modes; Last Titan Standing and Attrition. All other modes played identical to Attrition.
The amount of variety in creating your classes and how to play was ultimately extremely shallow. Classes boiled down to one of three options, one of which is only used by shotgunners. Effectively there was no sniping because of the lack of camera movement on both sniper rifles made anything other than quickscoping impossible. The lack of variety across the rest of the guns and their lack of balance meant that 3/4 of the population would use the Carbine, the standard auto-rifle. Everyone else used the "Smart Pistol" which was from a balance perspective is ultimately the game's biggest failure. It is a weapon that aims for you, slowly. While the weapon never overpowers a match on console, it is extremely frustrating for skilled players both fighting with and against the weapon. It's too weak to use effectively against other weapon without it's auto lock-on and it's also extremely frustrating to be beaten by the game rather than your competitor. The game's designs in on-foot combat did add a refreshing movemnt system which used parkour and double jumping, but the rest of the combat was designed around the worst parts of your typical Call of Duty title. Titans variety was also nonexistent as there were three titans that effectively played identically.
Make no mistake; this game is a very rough Call of Duty demo that also has mechs replacing killstreaks.
Speaking of rough, the game's technical performance is very poor. The game's resolution is technically a notch above 720p, but it doesn't look like it. Compared to its shooter contemporaries, this game was on the wrong end of the ugly stick. Visually the characters and environments were well below what Battlefield 4 and even below what Call of Duty: Ghosts accomplished. While visuals may not matter to some, performance still does. This game is a technical disaster. The developers may claim it is a 60 fps title, but in truth, the game rarely hits that mark with anything other than your gun on the screen. On-foot the game suffers from constant framerate drops and screen tearing, creating a juddery mangled mess on screen. The top half of the screen will be shifted by 15% out of alignment of the bottom half often split right through the middle of the screen. And while in a Titan it is substantially worse, cutting performance by a third. Drops below half the claimed framerates are the norm and some bouts in combat with smoke and other alpha effects drop the framerate to perceptually single digits, making the game look more like a slide show than a game you can control.
As the game went on Respawn (the developer) attempted add variety to the game with a handful of different game modes. While some were good or the best game modes in the game as a whole (Pilot Skirmish, Frontier Defense), others were insubstantial and eventually removed. It was a case of too little too late. The player count dried up within a month of release making anything other than the two most popular playlists effectively ghost towns.
Later they added the three map packs for free which gave a substantial bump to the map count. As someone who bought the season pass it is a great move as otherwise the maps become obsolete by the small DLC playerbase which happens to every game including 20+ million sellers like Call of Duty. Playercounts in anything other than the two most popular modes were usually in the single or double digits, typically not having enough players to fill out an entire. While becoming free was appreciated, sadly the DLC could not make up for the deficit in content. The rest of the game still lacks content and variety.
As a full priced retail product this game was ultimately a failure. If you can find a copy at $10 it's worth checking out if you're a shooter fan if you can still find people playing, but beyond that it's not recommended. As a competitive shooter fan money would be better spent on Black Ops 3, Advanced Warfare, or Battlefield 4.
