Next year's game of the year. Possibly.
Titanfall made huge headlines last month at E3 in Los Angeles. The multiplayer first person shooter walked away with a half dozen Best of E3 Awards handed out by the Game Critcs Awards, from Best of Show, Best Originial Game and Best Console Game. In case you're not familiar with Titanfall, players fight on a futuristic battlefield as either a foot soldier, or inside a mecha-like machine known as a "titan" likened to ones found in films like The Matrix or Avatar.
Not only did I see the live demo at the EA press conference, I went back a second time to Respawn Entertainment's booth where they held the private multiplayer demos with developers. While we all had our eyes transfixed on the machines firing away at each other on screen, a curtain was pulled back to my right (I was probably a foot away) showing a dozen people crammed in a room playing each other online. Loved it!
It's hard to believe this is Respawn's FIRST game. Well, maybe not.
Jason West and Vince Zampella, co-founders of Respawn, were fired a few years ago by Activision. They were the ones behind development of the Call of Duty franchise through Infinity Ward. The published reasons for their termination include breach of contract and insubordination.
While I was watching the Titanfall demo, I couldn't help but notice its raw nature and pure edginess. It's tough to define it. It's multiplayer, but not a traditional FPS that some could loosely call a massively multiplayer online (MMO) title. Whatever the case, it's intense, and it is INTENDED to be from start to finish. There's absolutely no time to breathe. It was almost as if the game itself was trying to overpower your imagination, purposefully intending to blow you away with imagery. Like it was saying "Yeah, F an A, you KNOW this is the shit". Sending a message. Sending a message to who? Then it made sense (at least this is my theory).
Developers, IMO, are sending this message to Activision. They're out to make a game that says "See what you're missing?" Maybe these guys ARE on a mission. A group of guys hoping to have their small company make a big splash to stick it to a big corporation. Activision might've had their reasons for firing West and Zampella, but maybe these guys are out to make them pay.
As we could all tell at E3, they already nailed the presentation. Out of all the titles unveiled at the expo, Titanfall personally made the greatest impression on me. I think it's going to look fantastic using with the Source game engine. That means Titanfall in 60 fps on a console. Wow.
So I'll wait until the spring of 2014 for its release. Until then, I'll stare at my Titanfall t-shirt.
The B Gamer is a video game reviewer at 77 WABC in New York City
Twitter: @thebgamerpod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheBGamer
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