We’re a couple of days out from the release of perhaps the biggest Xbox One game yet — and, really, the first real reason to own an Xbox One at all. But we’re not ready for an official review just yet.
Servers for early players haven’t been up for long, and even then aren’t too populated so I’ve mostly only gotten my hands on Attrition mode (which is basically like your standard Team Deathmatch modes in most first-person shooters). The game won’t really be put through its paces until its servers are overrun by the public post release, too. So in the meantime I thought I should share some starter tips to keep in mind before everyone starts installing this one.
1. Don’t forget to use the cloak ability.
As you level up you’ll unlock other pilot tactical abilities, but cloaking is one of my favourites so far. I saw a lot of people using it prematurely, though, which is a mistake because it doesn’t last too long. You don’t wanna use it the moment you spawn and are running into the heart of the map. You’ll want to use it at the most opportune moments, like hunting someone down from a distance, while in a dark corridor, to nail a Titan with your anti-titan weaponry, etc. Keep in mind that you’re still easy to spot if you’re running around frantically while cloaked, and it will break the second you start shooting. The best use of the cloak, though, is against a Titan. They can’t see the same opaque figure that pilots can notice if they look hard enough, so you can use the ability to sneak up on a Titan and crawl up its back to execute it.
2. Just because you’re in a Titan doesn’t mean you’re indestructible.
It’s actually very easy to look back at your shields to see they have not only plummeted but so has your health bar. Often Titan-on-Titan battles can be distracting, but you’ll want to keep an eye out for pilots who are targeting you. They’re harder to spot, can shoot at you from cover and deplete your health fairly quickly on their own. While you’re managing the field and fending off other Titans, you should make ample use of your dash ability to avoid getting hit. It’s imperative that you avoid taking as much damage as possible, just as if you were a feeble meat vessel running around on foot. This is a tip for pilots, too, in that you shouldn’t shy away from taking Titans on. The anti-titan weaponry are incredibly useful, and your relatively small size comes at a huge advantage.
3. Keep an eye on the mini-map as often as you can.
Titanfall has one of the most fluctuating battle conditions I’ve seen in a first-person shooter. That means that players are all over the place. One minute someone’s spin-kicked you to death from the ground and the next that same person managed to parkour their way up to the top of a tower and are trying to snipe you from there. It’s fast-paced in a way most shooters aren’t, simply because of the freedom of movement and world scalability. So to prepare yourself somewhat, you’ll want to keep an eye on your map. There are some Burn Cards — which are basically perks you can activate after death for one life — as well as modifications to your pilot that will increase your map and enemy visibility, but it should be enough that you are constantly familiar with what you’re about to run into. Though the map isn’t always an exact, live representation of what’s going on either. So you’ll have to keep that in mind if you do decide to trail those dots. It’s certainly a helpful indicator to which part of the map is the most active, though.
4. Don’t just learn the map, get a feel for how to climb it expertly.
This isn’t just a tip for the moment-to-moment fighting, it’s particularly important at the end of each round. If your team has just lost, you’ll be directed to an evacuation ship that is usually on the top of some building. It can be nerve-wracking to try to figure your way up it if it’s your first time scaling that building. But if you’ve been spending the entire round climbing and jumping up buildings, it will feel a little bit more natural and expedite the whole process. Time is very, very precious during the epilogue of each round. The same goes for the opposing team who is trying to get to that marked location on the map to stop the losing team from escaping. Plus, it’s just fun to do and you can tell the maps have been designed for it. I’ve already seen people pull off some awesome-looking tricks, and doing the same yourself, if you can manage it, is exhilarating. Oh, and when you do find yourself waiting at an extraction point to board your evac ship, be sure to hide around the pickup area, not right in plain sight or even behind cover on that platform. Wait to run up only just before the ship is prepared to leave, and you’ll want to save your cloaking ability for just the right moment, too. Otherwise you will get hunted, viciously and without remorse. The final epilogue stand is always a bloodbath.
5. Don’t forget about your Burn Cards.
They’re a little bit like the perks you might be familiar with in a lot of the Call of Duty franchise, except they don’t feel as overpowered. They’re expendable in that you are given the option to use one only after you die and that lasts only for that one next respawn/life. Most of them aren’t huge bonuses either — a lot add to your sprint speed or give your weapons an extra boost — but some more rare ones will give you double the experience points and other fun things. But I found myself constantly forgetting to equip these at each death. I would be so excited to jump right back in that I’d miss the step to pick whichever one of the Burn Cards I’d equipped while sitting, bored, in the game’s lobby before the round started. So I’d always plan on using them, but forget to take that one second to select it post-death. The trick is just to not die immediately after selecting it for that particular respawn. It’s happened. It sucks (especially if it’s that double XP one).
6. Stick to your team.
This one should really go without saying but when the game’s main goal is to kill, kill, kill, it sometimes makes people forget that the most effective way to kill is to band together. My worst rounds were always at the hands of the most coordinated teams. They’d have Titans fighting side-by-side, pilots fending off other pilots who were either sneakily trying to anti-titan the Titans or climb up their backs to shoot the wiring out of their heads. Sheer numbers of generous and thoughtful teammates are too much for even the cleverest, sneakiest of players trying to fell them. This tactic is particularly useful for Titans, and you’ll find that you survive far longer as a Titan with some support. That’s the way to win, and that’s the way to play on a more complex level.
7. Ignore the grunts. Or don’t.
I’ve spoken a lot about how much I love that Titanfall has fodder AI, but the more avid, experienced first-person shooter players should look for a more satisfying challenge. Grunts are super easy to kill, don’t shoot too often and don’t move around too much either. If they get in the way I’ll always shoot them, and they do help to grind to higher levels as well as speed up your time-until-Titanfall counter, but I like to focus my energy on the tougher kills. For those players who are finding themselves dying too often in rounds and disadvantaged by their lower-grade weapons, the grunts are actually perfect enemies. You can feel like you’re contributing, like you have some measure of success, and you can hurry yourself up towards getting those shinier guns with better modifications. Either way, the grunts are something to think about.
8. You don’t always have to get in your Titan.
I know; it seems absurd in a game where you punch metal skeletons to tell you not to get in a metal skeleton and start punching other metal skeletons. Especially when it’s so fun. But there are a few reasons why I’m suggesting this. For one thing, it can also be a lot of fun (and very effective) to hunt down Titans as a tiny pilot. You often risk getting stomped on if you attempt close encounters, but even that is always a laugh. Mostly you’ll be trying to hide from a Titan as you unload your anti-titan weapon on them and snigger at yourself as the Titan whips around and shoots rockets at nothing while trying to find your location. But remember that your Titan gets rebuilt fairly quickly. So — and this is where the second piece to this tip comes in — you can always decide to drop your Titan and tell it to either follow you or guard a location. I found this method especially useful during Titanfall‘s version of Capture the Flag, which I managed to play briefly in my time with the game so far. You can drop a Titan to guard an area around your flag while you make a run for the other team’s flag. Now you’re racking up kills from both sides of the map. Bam. Efficiency.
9. Watch the rooftops.
Snipers have always been a concern in shooters, but keeping an eye up is especially important in Titanfall for that and other reasons. There are many vantage points for a distance shooter to choose from, and because the parkour element is so fun, you’ll see lots of people jumping around on rooftops killing each other or on a Titan hunt. Watching the rooftops means spotting a potential kill or avoiding death; either way, it’s useful to be mindful of. And if you’re looking for more pilot kills and less AI running around, your chances of finding the human players are better at that height.
That’s it for now, but I’ll be sure to come back and update as needed as I play through the other modes and with players that don’t just work for other media outlets or EA/Respawn. And, of course, I’ll have an official review sometime after that. If you’ve played the beta and have ideas of your own, feel free to add your own tips.
Comments
39 responses to “Tips For Playing Titanfall”
10. Play Dark Souls 2 instead.
11. Don’t not play Dark Souls 2.
Should you be playing Dark Souls 2 instead?
a) Yes
b) All of the above
c) YOU DIED
If you die in Titanfall and not in Dark Souls 2, why aren’t you playing Dark Souls 2?
I don’t understand the relevance of this comment? I don’t play Dark Souls, I’d find it just as stupid if I went to a Dark Souls 2 article and told the guys there to play Titanfall instead because that’s what I’ll be doing, because my tastes and preferences set the standard of the community.
Ah come on dude, let people goof off with their obsession over Dark Souls 😛
Maybe if the author bought up the game even once, but this is just circlejerk territory. I’m really excited for Titanfall, but I’ll keep it to the Titanfall/platform articles, because I’m sure others would hate to see this site filled with spam comments on every article about what game some guy is looking forward to regardless of relevance.
This guy doesn’t know what he’s missing out on 🙂
However, I do not take away from the fact that this may not be the place to discuss it.
We are all just looking out for articles/posts about Dark Souls 2 (Give it to us @markserrels!). The excitement cannot be contained 😀
Yeah you’re right, this isn’t the place… I just can’t contain my enthusiasm!
Much apologies! Enjoy your TitanBalls (which I’m leaning towards also picking up and enjoying).
As a insincere token of my atonement:
http://i.imgur.com/bEAR1Xz.gif
That gif was pretty awesome, you are forgiven.
50GB download on PC. Crikey!
Supposedly 38GB of sound files :S
Its actually only about a 20gb download. Close to 50gb of hdd space is used after decompression and installation. I think this was confirmed by Respawn on Twitter, but can’t find proof at the moment.
Pretty sure I read it was around 23Gb download, but the on disk install size is about 50gb.
Relevance is they are coming out at the same time and are completely opposite in terms of audience and gameplay. The above folk have shown their allegiance and are keen to spread their enthusiasm for a game they have been looking forward to for a long time.
If I had an Xbone I’d still be interested in Titanfall. But I probably wouldn’t give it as much time as I would have liked with most of it going towards Dark Souls 2.
Also I’m in the Caen League for Warmachine and have been painting like crazy to get extra points.
Only 5 game modes and having to endure a mulitplayer only campaign mode to unlock titans, of which there’s only 3? What happens in 6 months time when new players pick it up and there’s no one playing the campaign? Will you have to buy the titans for $1.99 each?
Free DLC are scheduled and most likely more titans/maps/burn cards etc.
Respawn confirmed that there will be no microtransactions and only Free DLC + Season Pass.
That doesn’t sound like the EA business model at all 🙂
Actually it doesn’t. EA model is 50 DLC paid DLC + Premium Package. No paid DLC this time and a season pass. Every bloody game does season pass now and I hate it.
Wait… Free DLC… and a Season Pass…
…how does that work?
Like Borderlands 2?
Borderlands 2 DLC isn’t free,
Just as an example :/ They actually do give our DLCs for free but just limited time and free costumes etc etc. I don’t expect much free content from Titanfall but it will most likely like new game mode / basic stuff and titans
That’s not really DLC, that’s more of updates.
Don’t you think your being a little pedantic? there really is very little difference his point still remains the same lol.
A good example may of been some of those dual language packs they offer free as DLC you find in some JRPG’s, basically free content does exist.
Yeah, hoping new game modes will be released in the near future for free. I think this will be the case. 14 maps is sufficient enough for me to not be too worried about having to purchase DLC Maps, although I’m not adverse to that any way. Hopefully they don’t go down the route of charging for new Titants, that would be a disappointment.
To be honest I can’t ever envision this being a problem, I reckon their will still be players doing it 1-2 years from now.
At least until Titanfall 2 comes out.
Watch/listen to Kevin Pereira’s Pointless Podcast with Abbie Heppe (community manager for Respawn) talk about some cool ‘tactics’:
like double jump when you exit the Titan and kick the guy Rodeo-ing on your Titan. Or Rodeo an enemy Titan and call your own Titan on top of it to kill the enemy Titan and the pilot inside. Or using your Titan in follow mode as bait. Lots of other stuff in the podcast as well.
None of these were mentioned in the above article.
Thank you @greenlego – perfect to listen to at work whilst I wait for launch day! 🙂
I thought I was super smart for doing the whole rodeo-until-enemy-exits-titan-then-launch-your-own-titan-onto-their-imobile-titan-for-a-very-satisfying-kill during the beta.
But the double jump kick is something I will definitely try…
Yeah, I always thought it was Abbie’s voice when “Stand by for Titanfall” came on, and it was great to get her confirmation. I didn’t make the connection between her face and the character’s face though.
A few problems with this article:
-“The biggest Xbox One game yet” Are you kidding me? It’s coming to the Xbox 360 and the PC.
-The game isn’t even out yet! Why are you giving people tips on how to play?
-These tips are incredibly obvious. When I played the beta, I figured this out almost immediately.
Would you not agree that Titanfall is currently the biggest hyped game on the Xbox One? Despite being on the PC and 360.
Just like when Planetside 2 gets released on the PS4 (great game by the way), it’ll be a big game for the PS4, despite being on another platform.
They generally make these type of articles for every big release, you shouldn’t be to critical the journalist will try to find something tip-worthy if they can’t they will write down anything and move onto other matters.
I dunno. They released this article (or similar article) during the Beta. I was certainly guilty of not using the cloak effectively until I read this. Massively improved my game. And a good 80% of players weren’t watching the rooftops effectively either.
“Don’t attack grunts…unless low level”
Please, please tell me you’re joking. Attacking grunts is a really great way of winning a round. If you smash through their grunt army and avoid the player-controlled enemies you can actually nab an easy win. There’s a reason it’s called Attrition.
In fairness, not every game mode is attrition. No point hunting grunts when you’re supposed to be holding hardpoints, for instance.
Definitely true, but the tip was a blanket statement for all modes which is really bad advice.