Titanfall 2

To Sharpen His Battle Royale Survival Skills To Their Apex, A Legend (His Words) Heads Back To Titanfall 2

- Alex Spencer

With 25 million players and counting, Apex Legends is finally giving developer Respawn some long-deserved success, after its Titanfall games – despite being some of the best shooters of this generation – failed to find a mass audience. The only problem: I’m absolutely rubbish at it. Thanks to the quirks of the battle royale genre, fights are so few and far between that it’s hard to improve at combat. Luckily, I have a plan: revisit Titanfall 2, git gud there, and then bring my skills back to Apex Legends.

Titanfall is a very different game – a traditional multiplayer FPS with an excellent solo campaign bolted onto its side – but the two share the same universe, and a lot of mechanical DNA.

As you might expect, then, a lot of Apex’s weapons are drawn from the arsenal of its predecessor. As I progress through Titanfall’s campaign, I’m reunited with the VK-47 Flatline assault rifle, Wingman revolver and, of course, our old friend, the useless pistol-shotgun known as the Mozambique. I study each weapon, hoping for tips on the best way to mow down my rivals in Kings Canyon.

Robot rock

There’s a fairly large elephant in the room here, and it’s one covered in steel plating and wielding a rifle the size of a small car: Apex is lacking the mecha companions who give Titanfall its name. Frankly, I wouldn’t have expected the game that doesn’t have giant robots to be the bigger success, but that shows what I know.

The campaign buddies me up with BT-7274, a Vanguard-class Titan with no sense of humour – he’s programmed to take every joke literally. Nonetheless, BT works his way into my heart as unstoppably as he ploughs through a line of IMC infantry.