Titanfall 2

Go buy Titanfall 2.

I don’t have anything against games that bet everything on multiplayer, so I wasn’t necessarily turned off by Titanfall’s lack of one, but Titanfall 2’s campaign is a marvel of level design. What makes Titanfall feel unique amongst a sea of first-person shooters today is character mobility. Nothing makes this clearer than the opening tutorial, which ends by having you speed run an obstacle course to determine which difficulty level is most appropriate for your skill level. The campaign’s levels are almost Portal-like in how they set up environments for you to gradually learn mechanics and then test your mastery of them.

The multiplayer is good, though I was surprised at the lack of ranked multiplayer or skill-based matchmaking, given how the game came from a multiplayer-only background. Most of the other shooters I have played over the past few years have had it, and I had forgotten how demoralizing it can be to be dropped into a lobby of people who’ve done nothing but play the game for the past two weeks, with little to no chance of contributing anything useful to the team. Time to kill is more in line with games like the Call of Duty series than something slower like Destiny, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it limits your ability to react to getting shot at.

By all indications, between the two futuristic shooters featuring robots this holiday season, Call of Duty will win the sales game just due to its name recognition, while Titanfall 2 is actually the better game. Go treat yourself and buy this game, you’ll have a fun time.