Format: Xbox One
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Respawn Entertainment
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Sprawling, devestated metropolises, ancient alien deserts, and derelict ship wrecks are all exciting premises, but unfortunately they couldn't really look more lifeless and drab than they do in Titanfall. Animation and character designs are wonderful however, and there are plenty of impressive explosions as well.

Titanfall technically has a soundtrack, but the offerings are so utterly generic that it's surprising the title's developers even bothered including it in the game. The voice cast, along with the lines they are forced to deliver, is the standard Halo and Call of Duty drivel; it's totally pointless. The game somewhat redeems itself is with some great gun and explosion noises, although they still fall short of games released years ago, such as the 360's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.

Titanfall is many games in one; it has Call of Duty's on-foot play, Tribes' crazy movement mechanics, Unreal Tournament's sci-fi weapons, and Mechwarrior's awesome giant robot fights. The maps aren't very good, but that doesn't matter, because the core mechanics and plethora of customization options are extraordinarily well balanced, and make for frequent and excellent ludonarrative developments during matches.

Titanfall's core gameplay consists of what is probably the best deathmatch-oriented shooter play in years. Which is why it's such a shame that everything outside of that core gameplay is such a mess. The game is relentlessly forgettable from an aesthetic standpoint; the menus between matches are constantly interrupting with amateurish, mobile game-like animated "please wait" spinners; the server-side logic couldn't build balanced team matchups if the universe depended upon it; and one visit to the game's tech forums reveals that the title is plagued by every possible game bug known to mankind.