The Most Underrated AAA Game of the Modern Era

Titanfall 2 is one of the most underrated games of all time, and I love it to death. It's the perfect casual shooter, without the time and emotional investment that is involved in a game like Siege, but still with a great amount of fun if you're looking for a game to just casually play on and off. Side note for my Siege players, it's also a great way to revitalize your play style if you feel that you're playing too cautious in Siege. Despite all of these factors, the game somehow hardly gained any traction, and while its had a bit of a rebound in the wake of Apex Legends, it has never been an incredibly popular game by any measure. So why is this? And what makes TItanfall 2 deserving of more? I'll be dealing those two topics in today's article. Before we start, please know that this article is specifically about Titanfall 2. Even if I say Titanfall, I am referencing Titanfall 2.

First off, Titanfall 2 has three main things that make it a great game: fluidity, story and the Titans themselves. Starting off with fluidity, this deals with two main things. The game is very easy to get into, as all you need is some first person shooter experience and a very basic knowledge of what guns/gadgets are good. If you don't have these things, then there's a little bit of a learning curve but it's quite easy to figure out. Once you're into the game, Titanfall's smooth movement system of sliding, wallrunning and sprinting combines with a very rewarding hitmarker system to make Titanfall 2 an excellent mix of rewarding kills and fast-paced gameplay that isn't matched by any other game on the market. Then, if you so choose, there's the story, which is one of the better written singleplayer campaigns of this generation of games. I've referenced it before, but the gaming industry experienced a swing away from singleplayer campaign modes in the 2014-2018 era, marked by a lot of discontent from fans. Some games, like Red Dead Redemption 2, recognized that this really wasn't where the playerbase was heading, and continued making singleplayer campaigns. While RDR2 took this a little far by not focusing nearly enough on their multiplayer, Titanfall took a more balanced approach, doing icnredible work both on the story and on the multiplayer. I won't go into any detail, but rather just leave it at telling you that if you are a fan of first person shooter campaigns, this is a must buy. The final part of what makes this game amazing is the concept of Titans. If you've never played Titanfall, then here's the basics: Titans are huge machines, shaped roughly like humans, that can be piloted and used to fight against enemy soldiers, as well as other Titans. This concept adds a second layer of gameplay that makes both the story mode and the multipleyer just a little bit more rewarding and interesting. It's also worth noting that your Titans fall from the sky in a blaze of glory, making them even more rewarding to get.

So I've given a bunch of reasons as to why this game is good, and if you're anything like me you're probably wondering why on earth Titanfall isn't more popular than it is. Well, ita ll comes down to EA. EA, or Electronic Arts, is commonly referred to as the studio killer, and Respawn (the developers of Titanfall) are a huge example of why. EA signed a publishing deal with Respawn to publish Titanfall, and once the deal was signed they pushed for early release dates, monetary changes to the game (EA is infamous for their greed) and other changes that directly led to the struggle of Titanfall. It is worth noting that technically EA didn't push for early release dates, just on time ones, but releasing behind schedule is a common practice in the video game industry, and for good reason. Bugs, glitches, other unintentional features and just straight up reworks often push games past their release dates, and many companies simply roll with it, fix the problems, and move on. But not EA. Oh no, everything had to be done on time, or else. This eventually worked out, but the tension involved in this caused a rift between EA and Respawn that would only make development harder. Now we come to the real reason why Titanfall struggled. Please note, beyond the actual dates and info about the release of the three games that I will be talking about, everything else I say is just speculation. I am not the only one to speculate such things, but it has not been confirmed by ANY source, at least that I am aware of. Titanfall 2 was released on October 28th, 2016. Now in and of itself, this date has no incredible significance. This is a relatively common time for game developers to release their games, as it's coming up on Christmas and people are starting to look for gifts to buy. The problem with this, however, becomes apparent when you look at a game release calendar of that time: EA's other big game, Battlefield 1, was launched amid a huge advertising campaign just one week before, and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare was released (again, under a large advertising campaign) just six day after. Here's where the theory begins: I believe that EA intentionally put Titanfall 2 in a spot where it was almost doomed to failure from the beginning, and here's why. First off, they wanted some sort of a buffer between BF1 and CODIW, perhaps in the hopes that overloading that specific time frame with game releases would make people less likely to play any games other than the first few, namely Battlefield and TItanfall. Secondly, not running a large advertising campaign for Titanfall 2 (despite being in between two large, heavily advertised franchises) would make it seem like a "Battlefield vs. Call of Duty" sort of thing. This would be advantageous to EA as Battlefield and COD have always had a rivalry, one that COD had traditionally won, but Battlefield was moving up after outcry towards COD developers, with people wanting to go back to more classic WW2/Modern eras (BF1 was set in WW1, CODIW was set in the future). Finally, the big reason: EA wanted to buy Respawn. In November of 2017 EA bought Respawn for $400 million, which is a fair chunk of change, but Respawn would never have sold out to EA had Titanfall been more successful. And, with the launch of Apex Legends (also by the now EA-run Respawn), EA's plan appears to be working. Apex has gone off the charts (check out my article on Apex Legends for more) and while we don't have monetary figures as of yet, it doubtlessly is making EA a decent amount of money.

So there it is. All the reasons that I think Titanfall 2 is today's most underrated game. I highly encourage you go check it out and play it, for all the reasons I stated above.