Titanfall game

Developer Respawn Entertainment calls its main mode 'campaign multiplayer' – groups of players compete against each other through a linear series of missions, all bookended by story cut-scenes explaining the context of the combat. As a participant, you can save your progress at any point and come back to the campaign whenever you like, so it works just like Single player. And when matches begin, each environment is filled with AI troopers, who join in the combat but also provide little choreographed set-pieces within the action, perhaps hiding out in hidden locations or attacking very specific enemy targets. So again, it feels like a Campaign – just one with human allies and enemies.

It's all about the refreshing new cadences that come out during combat. While playing as a ground soldier, or pilot, the game's double jump and wall-running features allow you to traverse the map as a totally three-dimensional environment, sprinting along the sides of buildings, leaping onto rooftops and along catwalks or straight through windows. There's a real sense of freedom, of kinetic possibility, that contrasts massively with the familiar sprint and cover rhythm of the military shooters.

And then, at fixed time points in each match, you get to call in a titan mech, which drops onto the map with a whooshing crash, then waits for your command. You get in, and the combat completely changes – now it's about attrition and pummeling force. You're swatting pilots like flies, you're pounding in to explosive battles with other 'bots – like the tank fights in Battlefield, but with swarms of exotic missiles and defense measures. The cockpit feel is nice too, with visible instrumentation, and the fact you're looking through an HUD screen not glass, so everything distorts when you get hit by fire. Then, when the damage reaches critical, you can eject and join the action again as a foot soldier, bringing these vast new action beats to the experience.

According to producer Drew McCoy, Respawn started with an interesting question: what would be the FPS version of mixed martial arts? So they started looking at classic titles and sub-genres, pulling in ideas from Doom, Counter Strike, Battlefield and more. "We went through a long prototyping process," says McCoy. "Our guys were trying all sorts of crazy stuff. It was all really rough, but it gave us an inkling of what could be good. And early on, one of the key things was movement, which has evolved into wall-running and double jumping - that sense of verticality. The other thing was survivability in a multiplayer game.

"The current trend is high lethality, one shot and you're down. It's popular, but if you go back 10 years, you had health and armour in Quake and Unreal, you could shoot guys 50 times - we wanted to try play with that, to lengthen the player's life without upsetting that quick kill balance. That's where the titans came in. They act as a kind of second life for you - you can take damage then eject out. Also you have AIs running around which are often easy to beat, so you get that quick kill loop."

There's also an ambition to add longevity to player vs player encounters, to get out of the twitch core rut that some well-known military shooters have ploughed. "The movement and face-off gameplay was influenced by Doom, especially the rocket launcher and plasma gun," says McCoy, "Those were projectiles that you could see coming, that you could dodge - there was this really cool back and forth dynamic. So Titans bring in a lot of that - they shoot a LOT of projectiles. And with the dash move, you can get in and out of cover real quick. This way, you're really fighting someone. It's not 'I shot first so you're dead', it's knowing the environment, knowing how to flank - we looked at a lot of old games for that."

Cleverly each Titanfall mission culminates with an intense Epilogue sequence. At the end of every team match, the losing side is given 45 seconds to get to a drop ship and evac – if they make it they get extra XP, a sort of consolation prize; but if the winning team takes out every member of the defeated squad before they make it to the craft, the XP gift goes their way. It turns out this was a last minute addition. "We were marching toward E3 and all the pieces were coming together, we had the story stuff, the narrative things happening during the game then we had this sign coming up saying 'victory' like every other games does. It just felt wrong. We thought, that's not how a campaign multiplayer ending should feel - you have an invading force thats just lost, now they've got to get out of Dodge!"

In Titanfall, players start each match by selecting a character class for their pilot (currently Assault, Tactical and CQB) and their Titan. These come in three flavours. The main battle titan is equipped with an XO-16 battle rifle and defensive vortex blocker that acts as a shield against enemy fire; the heavy weapons titan gets a 40mm cannon and electrical smoke to hide in; and the high explosive titan boasts a rocket launcher that fires multiple spirally projectiles that'll pummel other mechs into robot heaven. Mixing and matching pilots and titans should provide an intriguing little twist, allowing players to build diverse roles for themselves, taking on stealthy roles as pilots, but transmogrifying into apocalyptic denizens of fiery death when in the titan.