Titanfall: watch us play Attrition from the Xbox One beta

We've cut together a six minute video that gives you an abridged look at "Attrition," one of the game modes that will be available in the beta come Valentine's Day.

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We've already explained in great length what makes Respawn Entertainment's upcoming shooter Titanfall so special. The unique blend of mech-versus-infantry-versus-AI combat has been delicately balanced to create an experience that's unlike other multiplayer games on the market. Playing a few matches from the upcoming beta has only further cemented the notion that yes, this game is going to be something special.

But perhaps words are hard to read. Instead of simply repeating ourselves, we thought it'd be best to show you. We've cut together a six minute video that gives you an abridged look at "Attrition," one of the game modes that will be available in the beta come Valentine's Day.

Before starting a match, you'll be able to switch between different loadouts. As expected, you'll be able to customize various aspects of your character, including what weapons he or she will carry and what tactical abilities you'll be able to use during battle. There is, of course, an XP system that blocks off certain functions until you reach a certain level. For example, you won't even be able to make a custom pilot or custom Titan loadout until you make some progression online. (This progression system should help players ease into Titanfall's various systems, as there is no single-player component beyond a training mode.)

Attrition pits two teams of six against each other. The goal is to reach 250 points before the other team. You can do so by killing enemy pilots (4 points), defeating opposing AI (1 point), and destroying Titans (5 points). Everything adds to your team's tally.

Because everything counts towards your score in this mode, it's rather beneficial to engage with the various AI opponents that scatter the map. New players may not even realize that some of the hostiles on the map aren't human-controlled, but it's easy to tell that they're not quite as agile, not quite as intelligent as human opponents. Still, they typically bunch together, and while they may not award as many points as pilots, they're easy fodder that will help boost your score.

In the opening moments of a match, no one will be able to use a Titan. However, infantry combat feels great, even without giant robots. It may feel rather familiar to Call of Duty fans, but the addition of sci-fi gameplay elements like the double jump and cloak make it feel a bit more fresh than Activision's storied franchise.

After a few minutes, you'll be able to summon a Titan--either by Titanfall or by spawning as one. Whenever Titans are destroyed, you'll essentially have a two minute "cooldown" period before being able to summon another one. Playing as a Titan feels both different and similar enough to make it accessible and satisfying. The basics of combat are the same, but you also feel significantly more powerful while riding these towering robots.

Playing as--or against--a Titan shows how well the game has been balanced. You have the potential to wreck much more havoc in a Titan, but as a ground soldier, you can remain effective against the robots. In fact, with anti-Titan weaponry and the ability to cloak, it's sometimes better to go against a Titan while on foot instead of in going mano-a-mano in mech armor. Titans actually have very little health and their shields take quite some time to regenerate, meaning the best Titan players will learn how to play it smart and take it slow.

Eventually, one side will be victorious and the "epilogue" kicks in. In this scenario, the winning team must try to hunt down any remaining players from the opposition. The losing team must try to survive and make their way to a dropship that will pick them up. It's a neat "bonus" feature that doesn't change the outcome of the map, but gives players an added objective and yet another way of confronting each other.

Titanfall is truly shaping up to be a special experience. In another video, we're going to show off another mode from the beta: Last Titan Standing.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    February 12, 2014 9:00 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Titanfall: watch us play Attrition from the Xbox One beta.

    We've cut together a six minute video that gives you an abridged look at "Attrition," one of the game modes that will be available in the beta come Valentine's Day.

    • reply
      February 12, 2014 10:26 AM

      Badass video. I'm still undecided if I'll get this, would probably go PC if I did. Don't think I would play enough to be worth getting an Xbox One for.

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      February 12, 2014 10:33 AM

      Do you take fall damage at all? It looks like you can drop a couple floors at least safely. I hate not paying attention and stumbling off a roof and dying in Battlefield.

    • reply
      February 12, 2014 1:33 PM

      PC Gamer has PC footage played with keyboard and mouse if you want to see that version.

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      February 12, 2014 2:52 PM

      so can someone tell me why everyone seems to be shitting over this game? it looks..... unimpressive. the whole gimmick of the mechs seems really poorly implemented, and they appear to be very weak. the gunplay also looks pretty crappy and the graphics are just about as "generic scifi universe" as you can get, IE, uninspired and soulless. the maps also look super, super cramped and funneled.

      also its EA, so you know it probably wont be functional as an actual piece of software for months, and the netcode will almost certainly be as comically bad as BF4. i just dont get it, the game looks mediocre and even downright bad.

      is it because its the first next gen game that has even a reasonable level of next-gennness? is the marketing campaign just proving super effective? am i missing something?

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 2:56 PM

        Respawn is the developer and EA is the publisher. Respawn was founded by Jason West and Vince Zampella who had previously founded Infinity Ward, and they brought a lot of the original CoD:MW team with them.

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        February 12, 2014 3:01 PM

        This whole post makes my head hurt.
        Personally I dont want super powerful mechs otherwise the game is just about getting the mech. I want it to be more like something thats fun to have not a necessity.

        Gunplay looks fine to me. Looks tight like COD rather than the battlefield games.

        Graphics do like genericy.

        Maps don't even remotely look cramped. They are way bigger than games like cod + its only 12 player max. How that can be cramped I don't know.

        EA has nothing to do with how good the developers are. They guys made COD so their netcode should be fine.

        I don't think theres been any marketing campaign for this game. Not once I've seen at least.

        If you don't like MP shooters than hey man I get why this game isn't for you, but this looks like a top of the class MP Shooter.

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          February 12, 2014 3:03 PM

          Also most FPS's have been so samey for so long. Its nice to have something that's trying something new.

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        February 12, 2014 3:16 PM

        You're missing that it's not developed by EA, it's developed by the guys who most recently turned the FPS genre onto something new (CoD:MW). You're missing that it's not just yet another military shooter and instead is trying to do something different with traversal, integrated AI teammates, adding storytelling to multiplayer modes, and vehicles that don't leave everyone on foot helpless. You're missing that nearly everyone who has actually played it rather than watched YouTube cut ups has come away very impressed and excited in a world where MP FPS has been increasingly boring and stale. Killzone has as much or more "next genness" as this and no one was/is particularly excited by that and it also had plenty of marketing muscle.

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          February 12, 2014 5:52 PM

          all i see is assault rifles and rockets with super fast TTK. like every other single game on the market. i hope its a good game, but it seems to have gotten in that groove where if you make a negative comment about it people flip out, which is a pretty sure sign that the game is overhyped and will disappoint. im not part of whatever group of people are allowed to play it, so all i have to go on is videos. i cant really do anything about that, so my comments are based solely on a plebeian view of what ive seen so far.

          i guess im not really a fan of modern shooters, which is basically what this is with some added spice, from what i can tell. if you were/are a big fan of COD, which i have never been, maybe i guess it would be more exciting, but it looks like another overhyped shooter to me.

          i know the shack has a super boner over this, but i have no problem drawing that ire. im calling it like i see it, and i see nothing impressive.

          i hope it lives up to expectations though, i sincerely do. id love to have a new shooter franchise that isnt so meh.

          • reply
            February 12, 2014 6:14 PM

            i know the shack has a super boner over this, but i have no problem drawing that ire. im calling it like i see it, and i see nothing impressive.

            This isn't a shack thing, most places are excited about this because most people who have actually played it came away impressed in a "this isn't just a CoD clone like every other shooter of the past 4-5 years" kind of way. This includes the general public from things like PAX as well as journalists.

            • reply
              February 12, 2014 7:10 PM

              Are there really a lot of Call of Duty clones out there?

              I know many games have borrowed the xp and perk systems and stuff like that but I can't say I've played any game that's like Call of Duty, at least none as close as Titanfall appears to be at the core. The shooters I've played and seen usually do their own thing but borrow some mechanics and systems. Even the people who love this game will tell you there's a lot of CoD in there in addition to the new stuff. Not that that's a bad thing. I personally like the way those games feel and am glad to see a few new ideas in the mix but you could say this is as much of a clone as anything else and you wouldn't be wrong. Except it's somewhat excepted here coming from some of the original developers of those games.

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                February 12, 2014 7:48 PM

                I think of games like Homefront, multiple Medal of Honor games, etc. Everyone bolting on XP systems and bland TDM modes to singleplayer games with little originality but the progression system from CoD. Of course this will feel like CoD a bit, you can imagine it's what they would've originally liked to follow up CoD with if Activision hadn't made them churn out sequels all day.

                • reply
                  February 12, 2014 8:16 PM

                  I never played Homefront or the new Medal of Honor, but I could see that. Maybe something like Brink too. And I think all these games were big failures. Still a drop in the bucket compared to wide variety of shooters out there.

                  I was only thinking in terms of multiplayer but it's funny when you go way back MoH was the precursor to the Call of Duty franchise and that style of single player campaign in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Then you look at the designers and developers of that game and it all makes sense. But EA was definitely trying to capitalize on Call of Duty's success for sure with the modern ones. I doubt those recent versions played as well or felt as good and tight as the MP in CoD / Titanfall though. Probably would have been more popular if they were literal clones and not garbage imitations.

              • reply
                February 12, 2014 7:58 PM

                I guess I'm thinking of all the shooters outside the Call of Duty franchise itself. Gears of War, Battlefield series, Red Orchestra 2 / Rising Storm, TF2, Halo series, Planetside 2, CS:GO, Crysis series, Insurgency, L4D series, Tribes Ascend, ArmA series, etc. None of these are Call of Duty clones, but some may have aped a few popular systems.

                But I suppose the various CoD games and spin-offs themselves are enough to fill the CoD clone slot. There's a new one every damn year and they're barely different from the last. And they're such big hits they overshadow a lot of other shooters that don't actually play anything like the post-MW era Call of Duty games.

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                  February 12, 2014 8:22 PM

                  I mean, of the games you listed there which would you say are actually big and recent? Gears and Halo carved out their own set of clones years ago but I don't think the most recent iteration of either hit big on the multiplayer side. RO and Arma have always been niches that existed before CoD took over. Crysis's MP (Crytek games in general) doesn't even register on my radar. TF2 is just old, CS:GO is sorta old, and both are ultimately rare throwbacks to a style that has been eschewed in general. L4D is the biggest other one there but that's also been a little while since release. Planetside 2 and Tribes were both PC only which limits their impact. The guys making the bigger impact in the past 3-4 years has really been CoD and BF even though a lot of folks here spend their time elsewhere (I just haven't been playing many mp shooters at all lately).

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                    February 12, 2014 8:33 PM

                    You didn't say big, just that people were saying "isn't a CoD clone like every other shooter in the last 4-5 years" And your very few examples of clones weren't very big, either. I was just saying most shooters out there are far from CoD clones and play nothing like Call of Duty compared to Titanfall, which actually plays a helluva lot like Call of Duty. And that's what I like about it.

                    • reply
                      February 12, 2014 8:40 PM

                      All the games I mentioned had releases in the last 4-5 years too. Even TF2 if you count it going free to play in 2011! But I most kept it in there because it's still one of the most popular shooter on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

                      • reply
                        February 12, 2014 9:00 PM

                        Throwing aside all that pointlessness for a new pointless tangent, I have to say I'm somewhat shocked that CS:GO had a peak of 90k players today. People stick with what they like I guess O_o. Even Black Ops 2 never hit that high on PC from what I remember.

                        I wonder how many people are currently playing a bigger, newer release like Battlefield 4 on PC, though? I have to imagine the numbers have dropped far off at this point. DLC will bring some back eventually, but damn. Where do you guys think it's sitting?

          • reply
            February 12, 2014 6:50 PM

            I've heard you have the potential to gain more and more speed using wall running and double jumps...which on its own gets me interested.

            I'm not sure if the game is going to be good or not, but it has potential...I'd agree that the weapons aren't particularly interesting...but that's been a sad trend since CS kinda fucked things up waaaay back when (oh boy, a set of slightly different hit-scan auto weapons with a couple shotguns, pistols, and sniper rifles to round everything out!)...I think DOOM2 probably had one of the best weapon sets for multiplayer gaming (though it had its own issues with the random dice roll damage values...that said CS had the same issues for a long while (not sure if there is still a random element to weapon damage or not...I remember in the early betas at some point it had that)). I think all the Quakes had better weapon sets than most of the games coming out now in terms of pure gameplay: hell, I think UT had better weapons even though I've always found the unreal weapons to be a tad bit gimmicky with a regard for cool-factor over gameplay.

            I think Titanfall has the chance to be a pretty solid modern-style FPS game, its built on the Source engine, so it should be able to have decent mouse code and net code unless they fuck it up. I've come to terms with the fact that the games I like usually don't get enough players for me to play all the time (Warsow and Xonotic really haven't...I'm hoping that ReflexFPS or something like it manages to get some players), so I try to find something I don't hate to enjoy (CoD, BF3 & BF4, and some others fall into this category; they're good enough and I don't hate them like I used to hate CS...I can even enjoy CS these days on rare occasion)...and occasionally I can even find something that I really like and I'll play the hell out of it (Tribes Ascend is currently filling that role: its not perfect (in fact its really fucking flawed but its the closest thing to what I want that people are actually playing).

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 5:41 PM

        I don't think you like video games because you view them as a product that should be tailored to your individual need. They are a art, an experience that can be lived and breathed.

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          February 13, 2014 8:33 AM

          I wouldn't go that far. As a customer, everyone has a fair right to hope for a game that matches their desires.

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 5:57 PM

        Because it looks fun?

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 5:57 PM

        Give me an example of a shooter you do like?

        Also, your observations and assumptions (with a possible exception of graphics) are completely baseless.

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 6:26 PM

        you could try reading the article you're replying to, wherein the author - in the very first paragraph - provides a concise summary of what he found interesting enjoyable about the game, along with linking to other articles providing additional explanation for why the game is interesting.

      • reply
        February 12, 2014 6:31 PM

        It looks like it has interesting movement options...its not Quakeworld or Tribes, but it looks to be a step above most FPS games coming out.

      • reply
        February 13, 2014 6:00 AM

        I guess I'll play the role of the bad guy as well,but I have to somewhat side with vitek r on this one,but I'm not nearly as harsh on it.

        From the looks of it,the maps look very COD-ish in both size and overall design.I do feel like the gunplay looks solid,but I feel like that's about all this game has to offer.I haven't seen any significant skilling/progression system,and just in general,it looks like without the mechs,it just another lobby shooter.

        I'm signed up for the beta for PC so hopefully it's going to be better than the impressions that I'm getting from it,but I honestly feel like this game is going to expode when it's released,in March,then after about a month or two or massive playercount on both PC and XBox One,we are going to see a HUGE decrease in players because people will ultimately get bored with it.This game honestly feels like a stopgap shooter for when the two really big heavy hitters are released;Destiny and The Division.If those games can actually live up to their hype,all other shooters will bow down.

      • reply
        February 13, 2014 8:35 AM

        I'm sort of in the same boat as Vitek r here, too, but not as strongly.

        I'm interested in it but I don't quite see what makes it all that unique. The graphics look the same (to me, anyway) as in previous CODs (lots of grays and gun-metal), and the mechs seem rather bland, overall.

        Add in the small player limits and I'm losing a bit of enthusiasm for this one, rather quickly. :(

    • reply
      February 12, 2014 7:13 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      February 12, 2014 7:43 PM

      twitch streams make it look fun.

    • reply
      February 12, 2014 8:28 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      February 13, 2014 3:10 PM


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      February 13, 2014 3:11 PM


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