There are spoilers ahead, so take care if this is your first time playing the story mode! 

Mission – The Pilot’s Gauntlet

Pilot helmet #1

The first pilot helmet can be found in the timed gauntlet at the end of the tutorial section. You’ll find the collectible in the final chamber of the gauntlet. First, take out the very last holographic soldier stood on the highest plinth, do a double-jump, hit a wall run then jump onto the platform he was stood on. Across the room you’ll see a blue-tinged helmet – jump across to grab it and begin your collection.

Mission – BT 7274

Pilot helmet #2

The second pilot helmet, and the first of the BT 7274 mission, can be found within the first five minutes of the level. Follow the path set up by the walls lit with golden light until you arrive at a destroyed escape pod. Just outside the pod you’ll find your second pilot helmet just waiting to be walked over and collected.

Pilot helmet #3

The next helmet in this mission can be located on your trip to find the second power core for BT. Once you’ve collected the big green battery, you’ll drop through the remains of the ship and slide down a short hill. At the bottom you’ll see a helmet floating on a platform across a canyon. To reach it, double-jump, wall-run off the scrap metal sticking out of the wall and jump to reach the collectible.

Mission – Blood and Rust

Pilot helmet #4

The fourth helmet is very well hidden, and can be found after your first big fight with a bunch of enemy Titans. Once they’re defeated, walk into the storm drains, turn right at the body where you acquire the Tone loadout and stop a few clicks into the tunnel. You’ll see a pipe to your right. Disembark from BT, climb the pipe and follow it around until you can drop down onto some crates. You’ll find helmet number four floating by a pilot corpse.

Pilot helmet #5

Not long after collecting the last helmet, you’ll find yourself in a large chamber where two smaller Titans attack. Once they’re toast, jump out onto the platform to the right of where you entered, head up the stairs to your left and jump up onto the pair of pipes directly in front of you. Swing round and you’ll see a pilot helmet floating above the nearest of the two large cylindrical tanks. Double-jump up and the collectible is yours.

Pilot helmet #6

Shortly after BT tells you there are friendly forces nearby, you’ll see a pair of pipes lit with an amber light above the numbers ‘07’ – follow these pipes into the wall, where a set of friendlies will make contact. Now turn left and you’ll see a platform across the room. Jump onto the pipe beside you then double-jump to reach the next pilot helmet.

Pilot helmet #7

The first genuinely tricky pilot helmet can be found after the initial firefight where the Militia and the IMC are fighting across a large pool of toxic waste – you’ll know it as the raised area where the IMC are shooting you from, which has lots of vehicles on it. Once you’ve cleared out the initial wave of soldiers and bots, head through the doorway that’s now open and immediately turn left.

You’ll see the helmet at the far end of a waste filled chamber. To reach it, hit a double-jump and wall-run along the closest wall to your left. Don’t jump off the wall, let the wall-run naturally take you off the edge, now turn in mid-air to your left, boost across to the far left wall, hit a wall-run then double-jump to reach the pipe with the helmet.

Pilot helmet #8

The next pilot helmet is very easy to miss – once you open a doorway with a green switch (next to a big sign saying ‘Zone B5’), look up and you’ll see the helmet on a high walkway.

To reach it, jump onto the large yellow pipes, turn 180-degrees and wall-run to the pipe across the room. Now double-jump back onto the wall you just wall ran, wall-run again, then quickly jump away towards the platform, then jump again to reach it. The helmet can be found atop a railing.

Pilot helmet #9

In the large cylindrical room with the torrents of waste pouring down in the middle (found just after when you collected the last helmet), climb the two platforms to your left, turn 180-degrees and wall-run to the pipe/grate sticking out of the wall. Your view should now match the screenshot above – to reach that helmet, double-jump, wall-run along the yellow line then double-jump to reach it.

Jump to Section:

The Pilot’s Gauntlet (#1)
BT 7274 (#2-3)
Blood and Rust (#4-9)

Into the Abyss (#10-18)

Cause and Effect (#19-26)

The Beacon (#27-37)

Trial by Fire (#38-40)
The Ark (#41-43)
The Fold Weapon (#44-46)

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Current page:

Pilot Helmets #1 – #9

Next Page Pilot Helmets #10 – #18

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VGC noted that Mohammad Alavi had updated his LinkedIn (opens in new tab) profile to read “after 10 years at Respawn and getting to ship the most amazing games of my career it was time to call it quits. A whole range of emotions washed over me after saying goodbyes to the people that had a huge impact on my career.”

Heading over to the career section of Alavi’s profile, he was listed as the “Creative Director on a brand new singleplayer adventure from Respawn Entertainment,” and had held the role since March 2021. Prior to that, Alavi worked as a Narrative Design Director on Apex Legends since November 2020, and even notes that he trained up leads to replace him upon exiting the game.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard mention of an unannounced single player game in development at Respawn. Last year in July 2021, Alavi himself took to Twitter to reveal that the L.A.-based studio was working on a “brand new single player adventure,” with himself as the creative director of said project.

Elsewhere however, Respawn revealed it was developing a “brand new IP” earlier in the year in April 2021. Job listings at the studio hinted further at the new IP, which will exist outside of the established worlds of Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but we don’t know if this new IP is the same single player project that Alavi was heading up.

Check out our new games 2022 guide for a complete look at everything on the immediate horizon.

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Just below, you can check out the blistering gameplay clip which emerged on the Titanfall subreddit yesterday on November 18. The gameplay segment features the player beginning the Gauntlet run right at the beginning of Respawn’s sequel, propelling themselves forward with actual grenade explosions to reach the finish line in a record-breaking time of 10.3 seconds.

It’s nothing short of an absolutely heroic feat. According to a little bit of research, the previous world record appears to have been held by the individual in the gameplay clip just below, which used a similar grenade propulsion method of shooting themselves forward to the finish line in a blistering time of 10.9 seconds. The new user beat them out by just 0.6 seconds.

There’s actually a hint as to how the new user was able to achieve the staggering new time. In the comments underneath the original subreddit post, the player notes that the “crouch kick” technique is still relatively new on the Titanfall 2 Gauntlet speedrunning scene, and so they reckon it’s entirely possible that a sub-10 second time might not be too far away.

Well, for now we can only dream. If you’re up to date on your Apex Legends lore, you might know that this method of using grenades to get through the Gauntlet was employed by none other than Octavio “Octane” Silva, a true adrenaline junkie seeking to take the crown for himself in the Titanfall universe. Octane’s experiment went a little less swimmingly though, because he ended up blowing off both his legs. Better luck next time Octane, we can’t all be winners.

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Discussing EA’s acquisition of Titanfall and Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment, Jorgensen said: “We were able to bring them into the fold and give them incredible support and it was all driven by the fact that they have incredible talent. It wasn’t about Titanfall – no offense to Titanfall. It’s an amazing game and maybe you’ll see Titanfall sometime down the road. But it was really about the team.”

Obviously, this is far from an announcement. And as GameSpot (opens in new tab) reports, Jorgensen only really discussed Respawn because he was explaining EA’s approach to purchasing studios – in indirect response to rumors that EA, and supposedly Xbox as well (opens in new tab), are interested in buying WB Games. However, it’s both rare and significant for an EA executive to acknowledge the possibility of another Titanfall game, whether it be Titanfall 3, a next-gen remaster, or some sort of spinoff or side story. 

That said, ‘still a possibility’ is par for the course for Titanfall 3 at this point. Ever since Respawn shifted resources to prioritize Apex Legends (opens in new tab), all we’ve heard of Titanfall 3 is that it’s neither dead nor alive – Schrodinger’s sequel, basically. Earlier this year, Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella affirmed that while there’s nothing in the works right now (opens in new tab), he “would personally like to see some kind of resurrection there,” and would “see if I can make that happen.” 

We know Respawn is down for it, and with Jorgensen’s statement, we can reasonably assume that EA is also open to revisiting the Titanfall series in some capacity. Does this confirm anything? Absolutely not. Is anything Titanfall-related currently in development? Almost certainly not – again, with the possible exception of a surprise next-gen re-release, which both Titanfall games absolutely deserve. Even so, with the series’ publisher and developer on board with the idea, more Titanfall looks more plausible than ever. 

The most we’ve seen of Titanfall lately amounts to a few Apex Legends tie-ins and Easter Eggs (opens in new tab). 

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Better yet, on Xbox One (opens in new tab), Microsoft often allows you to permanently keep hold of any Achievements you earn in a game’s trial run. That’s free Gamerscore points for playing a free demo, which are often worth playing for the entertainment value in and of themselves! Instead of having to trawl through the Xbox Marketplace looking for the right freebies for you, I’ve selected some of the very best Xbox One demos available and listed them below for your browsing pleasure.

Metro Redux

Curious about that eerie first-person shooter reveal at Microsoft’s 2017 E3 conference this year? The one with the giant rat? It’s the third game in 4A Games’ grounded, melancholic survival series, Metro, and continues the story left off by Metro 2033 (opens in new tab) and Metro: Last Light. Both of those titles were remastered and resold as one package (Metro Redux (opens in new tab)) a few years ago, and you can try the demos right now on Xbox One. 

That’s right, demos, plural. You can download and play trials for either or both of the titles, playing around a third of the campaign for each, which gives you a good deal of flexibility and freedom for your consideration. Luckily, they’re both excellent games, and your progress will carry on if you decide to jump in full time for the Russia-set rambling. 

Titanfall 2

The good news gods must have been smiling upon earth when it was announced that Respawn would be making a third Titanfall game with EA (opens in new tab), but you might not have yet had the chance to play the recently released sequel.

The least you can do to show your support is give the demo a whirl, which contains approximately an hour of gameplay, using a mid-game chapter from Titanfall 2 (opens in new tab)’s stellar campaign. Be warned, though, you’ll be aching to play more by the end of it, especially once you make friends with BT. 

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Bethesda has a pretty good track record when it comes to demos of late. You can download trials for Dishonored 2 (opens in new tab), Prey (opens in new tab), Doom (opens in new tab), The Evil Within 2 (opens in new tab), and now Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (opens in new tab), which only released in October. 

Machine Games’ FPS sequel is a loud and proud Nazi slaying simulation, but its unforgiving run-and-gun gameplay isn’t for everyone, so this demo is a good excuse to see if your penchant for its bold flavour of gunplay can last to see the story through to its conclusion. The best part, though, is that the demo is the entirety of the game’s first level: the one where you’re killing Nazis from a wheelchair. Excellent. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider 

You’ll have to buy the complete product if you want to witness Lara Croft’s promised ascension in full, but the first two chapters contained within the Rise of the Tomb Raider (opens in new tab)’s demo give you a good sense of how it’s all going to play out. 

There’s shooting, crafting, raiding, upgrading, and exploring to be done, and it can take you anywhere between two to three hours before the demo is up, depending on how you prefer to play. Oh, and it features at least one scene where Lara dies in some horrible, excruciating way. Sorry about that.  

Watch Dogs 2 

If Watch Dogs 2 (opens in new tab) protagonist Marcus Holloway had known that Ubisoft is offering a three hour trial of open-world adventuring in his game for no charge, he’d probably have never hacked the studio’s offices in the first place. 

The demo includes full access to the single player and multiplayer features of the San Francisco-set sandbox, but be warned – you’re on a timer for the entire thing, so spend your minutes wisely before the demo automatically comes to a close. If three hours isn’t enough (and let’s face it; it isn’t), you can continue on seamlessly from your trial’s progress once you decide to cash in on the full game. 

Gears of War 4

As far as value for no money goes, The Coalition has outdone itself with the Gears of War 4 (opens in new tab) free trial. You can enjoy up to ten hours of the game at no cost, which includes the opening Act of the campaign, and as much PvP and Horde multiplayer that you can wring out of the experience. 

You’ll know by the end whether you want to pay up to keep going or not, and even if you don’t, that’s ten hours of high quality gaming for the price of nothing. Go on, pat yourself on the back for being such a frugal gamer.

Forza Motorsport 7 

You might enjoy the odd driving sim every now and again, but never enough to warrant a full blown purchase on the next big racing game. The Forza Motorsport 7 (opens in new tab) demo has you covered, then, offering a small but not insubstantial set of racing experiences that have enough replay value for you to return to whenever you feel the need for speed.

There are three unique tracks, each boasting a different car to test them out in, and the demo even includes a race at at the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit, which is a nice showcase for Motorsport 7’s breathtaking dynamic weather technology. Better yet, you’ll never have to worry about those pesky and overbearing microtransactions plaguing the full game. 

Halo Wars 2 

The original Halo Wars came out so long ago, that it’s difficult to know if the recently released sequel to the cult hit RTS is something that could hold your interest. It’s exactly the kind of game that can benefit from a demo, and Microsoft isn’t oblivious to this, offering a free trial that introduces players to all the important nuts and bolts of its strategically-minded gameplay.

It uses the campaign’s opening mission, so you won’t have free reign of every gizmo and gadget available in the full game, but it does give you a basic understanding of the kind of Halo experience that Halo Wars 2 (opens in new tab) is. At the very least, it’ll save you from making the horrible mistake of buying the full title thinking that it’s another classic Halo FPS outing. Welp. 

Dead Rising 3 

Sometimes you’re not in the mood for enrapturing narratives, elaborate role-playing, or tough-as-nails PvP. Sometimes, you just want to whack a few zombies round the head with a baseball bat. Dead Rising 3 (opens in new tab) offers exactly that kind of therapy for the low, low price of nil, with a demo that chucks you head-first into its open world, with 20 minutes to do as you please with whatever you can find. 

Tear zombies in half with a cement saw if you want, or head towards a nearby side quest for something more purposeful. Whatever you’re doing, it’s mindless gratification from the get go, and tells you all you need to know about the kind of game that Dead Rising 3 is. 

FIFA 18

There’s a reason that every annual FIFA demo consistently breaks its own records as the most popular demo released on consoles, year after year, without fail. Not only is it the FIFA community’s first chance to test out the new software for themselves, but it always boasts a striking amount (pun intended) of replay value, thanks to the fact that players can enjoy match after match to no end, even if the conditions and choices contextualizing each game are necessarily limited.

If you’re not a massive fan of video game footy, but don’t mind having a quick kickabout whenever a friend is round, this demo is the perfect option, allowing you to easily boot up a game of FIFA 18 (opens in new tab) without ever having to spend dime. 

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In the first Titanfall you play as a Pilot who can summon a Titan, a giant robotic exoskeleton (similar to the Jaegers in Pacific Rim), that you climb into and control to fight other players. Titanfall was solely based on multiplayer, so with Titanfall 2 I expected something along the same lines. Formidable, stoic Titans, largely used in multiplayer arenas, with as much personality as a toaster, that act as electrically-powered sets of armour. I certainly didn’t expect BT. When I first met him I thought him a run-of-the-mill Titan, there to be heavily relied upon and casually discarded. I was wrong. He’s a lot more than a mechanised exoskeleton. This Titan has his own ideas about the role you have to play, and goes beyond doing his duty, to turn you from an ordinary grunt wielding a gun into a Pilot, bonded until death with your Titan, BT-7274.  

Typically in shooters you’re one of many soldiers, probably part of a squadron of other bog-standard cannon fodder with their own quirks (just to make sure they’re memorable) who gradually get killed off as the campaign goes on. You’ll end up as the last one standing, filled with vengeance for your fallen comrades, perhaps artfully wearing their dog tags around your neck. One of the risks Titanfall 2 takes with having a robot as a near-constant companion is that players might be less likely to warm up to him. Making him a playable non-human character is an even bigger risk. Think about it: if it’s difficult enough to maintain immersion while jumping between playing as different humans, how much harder will it be to remain invested in a game when you’re playing alongside (and as) a robot who doesn’t even have facial expressions? 

With a human companion in ordinary shooters, I start my relationship with them having at least some common ground: namely, that we’re both homo sapiens. Traipsing along with a human companion guarantees that players will find something in common with them, something to empathise with by default, even if it is just your basic anatomy. But in Titanfall 2, although it initially seems like you’re rendered pointless, with BT being so much bigger and stronger than you – and at first appearing little more than a giant, walking, talking gun – you’re quickly given a reason to have faith in the Titan. 

If you have to play for half of a level as a giant, tanking robot and the other as a quick, elusive human, it’s hard for a game to seamlessly transition between the two vastly different fighting styles whilst also maintaining your understanding of who you are and the role you have to play, as well as providing a decent reason for temporarily abandoning your favoured approach to combat. Titanfall 2 changes that completely. Some circumstances call for the nimble Pilot who coasts past soldiers at top speeds, firing as he goes. But when faced with open spaces you have to step into BT’s cockpit, take advantage of his armour, and sprint into the fray, letting loose a tirade of rockets as you attack other Titans head-on. BT makes adopting a different fighting style feel natural, because in my eyes it’s ambiguous whether I’m playing as BT or as the Pilot who’s controlling BT from the cockpit. 

I prefer to think the former is the case – that I’m now protecting the Pilot and getting him from point A to B, firing as many bullets as possible along the way. I can’t get that ambiguity or seamless transition between combat styles if I could only play as a human. Switching between Pilot Cooper and BT makes me adapt my playstyle to complement each character’s different strengths, so during levels I feel a sense of natural harmony between the playing styles and particular talents of this agile soldier and a tanking robot, with the growing sense of symbiosis between us meaning that when I see BT silhouetted in the distance I become more determined than ever to reach him, more resolute that I will uphold the mission no matter what. This might sound a bit cliché, but Titanfall 2 has taught me some real-life lessons, as BT sets an example for me both in-game and in real life, showing that I should never give up, never be afraid to switch my approach, and above all, never abandon my friends. 

Titanfall 2 paves the way for freeing shooters of the human protagonist trope by showing that artificial constructs are just as trustworthy and sympathetic. BT doesn’t try to convince you he’s human. He’s a giant green Titan with shoulder-mounted rockets, and he doesn’t want you to forget that. For example, when faced with a gap of precisely 95 meters which I couldn’t possibly jump on my own, BT comes to the conclusion that the only way to get across is to throw me over the bottomless void. Titanfall 2 could have gone down a comedy route, making this scene into a “phew, wipes brow” moment, acknowledging that it could be ludicrous to trust a giant robot with your life when in you’re a tiny, squidgy bag of bones. Instead this moment is a turning point for your relationship with BT, as the game forces you to accept that you need BT’s help. In a discrete moment of sympathy BT just says “Trust me”.

This simple phrase opens a door. You can either go through it, or slam it shut in BT’s face and say goodbye to Titanfall 2. Quickly it becomes clear that BT can be relied upon, as his honest request for trust is backed up with empirical evidence that he’s dependable when you don’t end up as a red splat on the wall after the first throw. What would be an insurmountable obstacle in any other shooter is a cue to team up with BT, which makes it clear that this gargantuan Titan needs you to remember he’s a robot so that you understand that there are things you can’t do without him, and that there are also things he can’t do without you. Part of the unshakeable attachment I formed with BT was based on my realisation that I had limitations as a Pilot, and so did he as a Titan. Although when we were apart we were still formidable, together we were unstoppable. 

BT shows that the Titans are no longer the characterless giant weapons they were in the first Titanfall, revolutionising how I feel about the Titans I kill as well, by adding emotional depth to a game which could have easily been dismissed as being solely about giant robot fights. Fighting the mercenaries in their Titans gave me a lot of bother at the time, but in hindsight I’m wondering about the relationship between them and their robots. Did their Titans have as much personality as BT? For all I know, the mercenaries might be distraught, their hearts breaking as I pump enough bullets into their Titans to rip their circuits to shreds. 

From a game design point of view it makes perfect sense to make them more than just walking weapons as the whole point of Titanfall 2 is that these Titans are a key part of gameplay and combat, so giving them some depth makes them feel more like a natural part of the game instead of a gimmick. The Titans are no longer just shells to be used when combat gets a little too tough, and although this might seem outlandish at first, giving BT three Protocols to follow underlines eventually the similarity between BT and the player. Mechanically recited by each Titan, they are: “Protocol one, link to Pilot; Protocol two, uphold the mission; Protocol three, protect the Pilot”. Having these rigidly programmed into the Titan’s software could jeopardise any bond between Pilot and robot, as I know that the only reason he stays by my side is because he’s hardwired to. So am I suspicious of BT, more sceptical about his friendship because he doesn’t have any choice about protecting me? 

No. Titanfall 2 completely rewrites the idea that robots are a neat, somewhat obligatory gambit only put in shooters to make them feel more futuristic. I take them for granted in other games, but having BT explain how his mind (or programming) works edges me towards thinking of the Titans as being almost a metaphor for the player’s drive to reach the end of a game. BT and I are alike, except his motivations are easier to overlook purely because it’s obvious he was engineered by humans. But this doesn’t mean that his emotions are fake. It means that I’m more conscious that I have the same Protocols programmed into my psyche and the same inability as BT to dismiss them.  

Going far beyond creating a lovable companion just for the sake of the story, Titanfall 2 is a shooter based on learning how to cooperate with your Titan. This wouldn’t be any fun without allowing BT to learn from you too, done in part via the the dialogue choices, which also make the gameplay more dynamic as BT responds to what you say instead of just talking at you. As the game progresses he feels less like a necessary walking weapon and more like an ally to whom you can teach new things as your bond strengthens. I’m not ashamed to admit that I let out an audible squeal when BT gave me a thumbs-up after carefully watching me do the same moments before. Being able to teach him small gestures like that is something you could only do with a human if they’d been living under a rock, or an animal who somehow has opposable thumbs. That doesn’t mean BT is as innocently ignorant as a child; rather this small gesture is part of the growing friendship between you and the Titan, with a hint of pride mixed with delight on your part that BT is paying as much attention to your quirks as you are to his. 

The entire span of Titanfall 2 is spent building the idea that you’re invincible with BT by your side; nimble when you need to be, durable when you have to be. But just when you’re starting to get the hang of switching between playing styles, Titanfall 2 rips the rug out from underneath your feet. You’re made to watch as BT gets slashed to pieces, and all the reasons he’s useful become irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that your main source of protection is gone. It doesn’t matter than you can’t fight Titans any more, and so strategically are screwed. It doesn’t matter that the MacGuffin the whole campaign is centred around is in BT’s cockpit. What matters is that your ally, your friend, is gone. You’re back to square one, and what’s staggering is just how horrendous it is seeing your Titan get hurt. 

Titanfall 2’s masterstroke is making me care about a robot and being so shocked by his torture that I don’t care that I’ve been pushed back to being an ordinary grunt for half a level. Shooters tend to involve a lot of levelling up and discarding weapons as soon as a better one appears, so usually I’d just be irritated that I’d lost my hard-won, decimating gun and a mechanised get-out-of-jail-free card which could stomp enemies into pulp. But not this time. 

The Smart Pistol I wrenched out of BT’s eye socket perfectly matched the emotional daze I was in, as instead of aiming all I have to do is look down the sights, let it automatically lock onto targets, and then pull the trigger. With the ship exploding around me I was in no state to aim properly anyway, as I was doing my damnedest to get out and kill anyone who got in my way, whilst being haunted by the sight of BT’s ravaged body. If there was a voice in my ear, patched over from the mothership, telling me what to do and which bits to plug in where, I could have helped BT. I could have stopped his suddenly deeper, slower voice from slurring, and I could have reattached his battered limbs. But I can’t. I’m not an engineer. I can’t drag BT to safety either, and although I can carry his blue eye with me as I leave the ship in a fraught stupor, I’ve left behind his body, strung up and mauled like a broken puppet. After BT was torn limb from robotic limb I was far more distraught (and incandescent with rage) than I thought I’d be, as I knew I had failed him. His protocol might be to ‘protect the pilot’, but I couldn’t protect BT.  

Dear god, that final cutscene which plays during the credits, of Cooper smiling, high-fiving, sauntering down the corridors as people cheered him along – I hated it. BT-7274 has just sacrificed himself for you, Cooper, so how the hell are you celebrating? I was an absolute mess by that point. Without BT, Titanfall 2 would have been a cookie-cutter shooter whose main gimmick – giant fighting robots – is just meant to be cool, and get the adrenaline pumping. But with BT, Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign is an intelligent, thoughtful way to make you reassess how much you rely on weapons to get by, and how helpless you are without them. Because it took losing my Titan to make me realise that BT isn’t just a mechanised suit of armour, his absence during one level not just a bit of a nuisance when it comes to tactics. He’s my friend who just happens to be able to destroy anything in his way. I can’t imagine Titanfall 2 without him. So congratulations, Respawn. This is the only time I’ll thank a team for making me into an emotional wreck, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

The post I didnt care about Titanfall 2 until I met BT-7274 appeared first on Game News.

In Frontline, you’ll assemble a small army of cards on a playing field in front of you, with each card having an associated cost, health, and damage counter. Some cards have additional effects and/or can be upgraded. Frontline has synchronous turn-based combat, meaning players will be connected and playing the game simultaneously, with one player taking their turn followed by the opponent’s turn.

It sounds silly to take the fast-paced FPS action of Titanfall and squeeze it into a card game, but let’s not forget that Blizzard’s foray into this space is a spin-off of a franchise that had previously consisted of real-time strategy games and an MMO about humans, orcs, elves, and other fantasy races fighting epic wars and saving the world. Not so weird in context.

A specific release date has not been announced (are they ever with mobile games?) but Titanfall Frontline is scheduled to drop sometime this fall. Titanfall 2 (opens in new tab), meanwhile, is slated for October 28.

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us (opens in new tab)! 

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No Code Needed! Open MP Tech Test Is Live.Details: https://t.co/QXCgPbJelq https://t.co/pyFAflYD3kAugust 19, 2016

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Players will be able to try out the Bounty Hunt and Pilots vs. Pilots modes as well as Amped Hardpoint, which was originally going to stay locked until next weekend. It sounds like you’ll still have to wait to try the Forward Base Kodai map, though you can still play on Boomtown and Homestead.

The first session of the tech test will go through Sunday, and the second will pick up on Friday, August 26, and conclude on Sunday, August 28. Then you’ll just have to wait until Titanfall 2 comes out on October 28 to play more (unless you have EA Access, then you can play it a little earlier).

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

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David Roberts

If the first Titanfall was all about making you feel like a badass sci-fi action hero, Titanfall 2 is all about making you feel badder-asser (…that’s the proper term, right?). The most obvious addition is the grappling hook, and while it’s as thrilling to use as it looks, it’s a little tricky to figure out at first. You point your reticule at where you want it to go and fire, but doing so will launch you right into a wall, so you need to boost jump to angle yourself up and over while you’re speeding forward. It introduces even more verticality, if you can believe it. But the grappling hook is a specific class skill, so not everyone will have access to it. You can grapple into enemies, like grunts, other pilots, even Titans. It makes rodeoing them much easier – which is good, because it seems like it’s an instant kill on Titans now (once you’re latched on, you rip their battery out or chuck a grenade in and they’re done).

Speaking of Titans, I played in the Ion Titan (the pre-demo video made sure to call the mech out as a ‘she’, compared to the other one which was a ‘he’ (maybe that’s dependent on their AI voice?). It’s a little like the standard Titans from the first game – energy shield, powerful machine gun – but Ion’s damage core ability is a giant energy laser that rips through enemy health and shields like tissue paper if you can properly line up the shot. One thing I noticed during my brief demo is that Titans don’t arrive on a set timer any more. Instead, their arrival is based entirely around your kills – take out grunts and pilots to fill up the meter. Once it’s full, you can summon your mech from the sky. Unlike Killstreaks in Call of Duty, your meter carries over between deaths, so it’s much more newbie friendly while still allowing their presence on the field to be more about skill than inevitability.

Somehow Titanfall 2 is even more over-the-top than the first game, and a lot of the changes Respawn have made seem to be about refinement, as well as giving combat a little more personality and edge. And if its single-player campaign can match this pace, it could be incredible.

Dan Dawkins

I wanted to replay the Titanfall 2 E3 demo immediately, and considered queueing again as EA were nudging us out the door – so, yeah, it’s pretty good. Xbox One owners will recognise the feel: snappy targeting and bristling ballistics – as you’d expect of the developers behind Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – allied to huge agility and verticality. I spent a lot of time juggling weapons (tap triangle), alternating between close range automatic rifle combat, and double-leaping onto raised rooftops to unleash the charged sniper rifle: watch the circular meter spin up to max and unleash for an instant head-shot kill. It seemed easier to earn – and destroy – Titans than I recall, with a shrewd asymmetry between on-foot troops and mech pilots: both sides have pros and cons; subtler than pure mobility versus firepower. PS4 newcomers are in for a treat: with the addition of a true single-player mode, this feels like the real Titanfall, despite the impressive, if restricted, Xbox original.

James Jarvis

Despite getting our first look at Battlefield 1 multiplayer during the EA press conference, Titanfall 2 was the game everyone was talking about after the show, and with good reason. All those, what looked to be ‘staged plays’ from the trailer are actually possible, and damn do you feel good when you pull one off. I was playing as ‘grappling hook guy’ and at one point called in my Titan, attached my grapple to it’s head and fired myself across the map landing on an enemy Titan who’s vent was introduced to a grenade. I don’t care if it wasn’t totally intentional because that’s what so good about Titanfall 2. It makes you feel like you’re a tactical genius even if you’re just making it up on the fly. The original always had that ‘one more round’ appeal and this is no different, as soon as it was over and we were ushered out of the makeshift tent I wanted to go again. The main takeaway though was that it’s a multiplayer shooter that’s a hell of a lot of fun. There’s no hiding in corners and taking pot shots here, you’re on the move all the time and moving fast. So even if you didn’t play the original and you’re just shooting grunts to learn the ropes for a few rounds you’ll be able to pull off some cool moves with a giant grin on your face. Now where’s the end of the queue… 

Susan Arendt

I was really worried when I heard that Titans are no longer an automatic gimme in Titanfall 2, because I figured unless you were the best of the best, you’d never rack up enough kills to earn one. But Titanfall 2 isn’t about kill streaks and headshots, it’s about being smart, moving fast and any kill kill, be it an AI grunt or player-controlled Titan, counts towards preparing you for Titanfall. We played the new mode Bounty, in which a beefed-up Titan is marked for elimination. Once it’s been suitably softened up – which will take some doing, because these things are tough – either a pilot’s rodeo or a Titan’s melee attack will finish it off and earn points for their team. It was an energized spin on the typical multiplayer kill fests, where taking out enemies isn’t the objective, but a means to an end – namely calling down your own mech from above. If Titanfall was the outline of a great game, Titanfall 2 is all the filled-in details. Now, about that single player campaign…

Want more from E3 2016? Take a look at all of GamesRadar+’s E3 features and previews in our E3 2016 roundup.

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So what does Titanfall 2 have to do to keep us interested for more than a handful of pleasant hours? The key is learning not only from the first game, but also from the competition.  

One important step for building a successful sequel will be a long, hard assessment of the first game’s content. Titanfall has no traditional single-player elements, and the narrative – or what there is of it – is delivered haphazardly through in-game dialogue, often drowned out by the concussive sounds of small arms fire and giant robots blowing up. The focus is clearly on multiplayer, and sure, that’s great fun, with the mechs and parkour adding interesting wrinkles to the online shooter formula. But a few hours in, the novelty fades, the core of the game becomes very familiar. It feels doubly-so now, after Black Ops 3 (opens in new tab) has reappropriated some of TitanFall’s coolest tricks for its own online offering.

And unfortunately, even the creators of Call of Duty (who left Infinity Ward to create TitanFall developer Respawn) will struggle to compete with Call of Duty. The online shooter space is hugely crowded at the moment, and to carve out a meaningful part of it for any lengthy period of time requires something hugely significant, maybe even revolutionary. Even fragmenting the playerbase of COD or Destiny (opens in new tab) is a mighty challenge. Just look at what happened to the game that dared to be different: Evolve (opens in new tab).

Evolve attempted to take a solid shooter core and build a gimmicky shell around it. It was a great premise, on paper: one player plays as a giant, rampaging monster while the others assemble a team of human hunters to try to take the beast down. The buzz that early marketing generated for Evolve was understandable: it’s an idea with some flash. Sadly, the finished product is a one trick pony, and the trick isn’t even that great. The shooting is competent and fun, but playing as the monster feels lonely and frustrating, and after a couple of hunts the experience for both sides feels worn out. Evolve lacks the two things that create a sustainable arc for a game: diverse (or addictive) gameplay, and the lure of meaningful progression. 

 Which is where Destiny comes in. Bungie’s story as a developer follows a similar course to West and Zampella’s (the aforementioned minds behind Call of Duty and founders of Respawn). Creators of a massive, runaway success (Halo), Bungie eventually secured its freedom and signed a deal with a new publisher to pursue a new, ambitious project (Destiny). But while Titanfall’s lifespan didn’t extend much out of its release window, Destiny has sustained a sturdy base of very active players for over a year and a half now. So how did Bungie pull it off?

Destiny’s playerbase survived a relative dearth of content at launch because grinding the game feels so damn good. It may have been limited to four planets, but there was always something new to do or discover; endless subtle load-out variations to mess with. Multiplayer has always been a separate thing too, and that’s vital – players can choose to dip into both, or stick with one or the other. Destiny is as social as you want to make it, and as such it suits a wide variety of player tastes. This is something TitanFall 2 simply must embrace to avoid getting stuck in a niche.

The other lesson it can learn from Destiny is one of stuff. Early on, Destiny launched some decent-sized expansions, and kept players involved by offering up condensed bits of its best features, on top of a rotating schedule of Strikes and Missions with increasingly varied and attractive loot. Daily and Weekly activities keep the game in players’ lives – there’s always something worth checking in to see. And loot. Loot is a big carrot – something meaningful for players to keep striving for long after they’ve cleared the campaign and hit the level cap. Big expansions that add this type of content mean players who’ve stuck around have a reason to keep playing, and players that have dropped off have a reason to come back. Can TitanFall 2 realistically offer a compelling loot system? Maybe – it certainly needs to do more than reskin the original game.

Titanfall has a wonderful, gooey center which a far meatier game can be built around. Imagine a robust single player campaign, set in varied environments across different worlds, that builds a narrative around the military role of these huge mechs and their agile, almost superhero pilots. Sounds like a top shelf anime, or the plot of Pacific Rim 2.  

Give us sections of intense, kinetic parkour spliced with the big explosive set pieces we know Respawn can deliver. Give us crazy giant mech sequences that show off how cool the Titans are, how huge and powerful they can be, how they fit into interstellar police actions/invasions/defense. Most importantly, give the Titans personality, meaningful differences that feel more interesting than just choosing a class/loadout, and then give us hot robot loot to extend their capabilities, customize them, give players a sense of ownership of and connection to THEIR Titan. Make the progression feel meaningful and important, and give players choices more meaningful than a new scope or larger magazine.  

There are other possibilities, too. The Division (opens in new tab) showed us that building real tension into multiplayer scenarios, extracting loot on a timer while under fire from AI and other players, can add weight and levels of intensity simple deathmatch never reaches. Setting your multiplayer in an open environment creates gameplay opportunities that a standard map never could, and adding real consequences to the outcome of an online skirmish adds a unique sense of gravitas to the proceedings.  

The original Titanfall is a sturdy frame with some great nested ideas, begging for a bigger, better sequel to refine and perfect them. With enough time, resources, and loving attention, the bones are there for Titanfall 2 to be an unqualified hit, a game that survives the first few weeks after release and keeps players hungry for years afterwards.  

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