Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 launched into brutal timing on 28 October 2016 — one week after Battlefield 1 and one week before Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare — a scheduling collision several reviewers cite directly as the reason a genuinely exceptional game never found the audience its quality deserved. Overwhelmingly Positive across more than 284,000 Steam reviews nearly a decade later, that quality has never been in serious question. What this review sets out to cover honestly is both that remarkable, sustained acclaim and a real, well-documented crisis this review can confirm directly from the developer's own communications, one that has shadowed the game's online component for years.

A campaign widely regarded as one of the genre's best

The consistency of praise for Titanfall 2's single-player campaign, specifically, is unusual even within an already Overwhelmingly Positive review sample. "I literally don't understand why anyone still plays Call of Duty in a universe where Titanfall exists," one of the sample's most-endorsed reviews states plainly. Another, with an extraordinary 7,559 hours of recorded playtime, still rates every individual category a 9 out of 10 nearly a decade after release: "Fast fluid movement, cool gadgets and toys, huge robots, teamwork and tractability, responsive shooting, and a fantastic campaign to go with it!" A third reviewer frames the game's commercial fate with genuine sadness: "This game is truly a gem in the rough... EA released Titanfall 2 smack dab in the middle of the 2 biggest shooters of 2016. Any chance for longevity and a healthy player [base] that the game may have had was pretty much dead on arrival." That specific, recurring "buried by its own release date" narrative recurs constantly throughout the sample, treated less as an excuse and more as a genuine historical injustice by reviewers who clearly still love the game nearly ten years later.

Movement and combat that remain genuinely distinctive

Beyond narrative praise, the review sample credits Titanfall 2's core mechanics with real, specific staying power. "Fast fluid movement, cool gadgets and toys, huge robots" recur as consistent, specific highlights, while another review frames the game's rarity plainly: "This is not competitive, tactical or strategic. It's just fun... The rush of having a 20 ton titan hunting you down as you run for your life is unparalleled." The blend of fluid, momentum-based pilot movement — wall-running, grappling hooks, double jumps — with giant mech combat remains, per this review's sample, largely unmatched by any shooter released since, a genuinely distinctive achievement nearly a decade on.

A real, years-long multiplayer crisis, confirmed directly

What separates this review from simply repeating nostalgic enthusiasm is a real, severe, well- documented crisis this review can confirm directly from the developer's own Steam communications rather than solely from player accounts. On 6 April 2021, Respawn Entertainment publicly told the Titanfall community that "help is coming ASAP" after acknowledging that years of DDoS attacks had made online multiplayer "unplayable" — a direct, dated admission from the developer itself. This review's own sample corroborates that the problem persisted well beyond that acknowledgment: "DDoS hackers pay much more attention to this game than the developers or the publisher who pays for the server. FYI: problem is still out there," one review states, dated December 2021, months after Respawn's public statement. Another, dated January 2023, nearly two years after the acknowledgment, describes the same unresolved issue: "This issue persists for months now and you people either are too incompetent, or just don't give a flying f*** about your game... I can't even edit my loadout because I get disconnected before any changes can be applied." Several reviewers connect the persistence of the problem directly to Respawn's other, far more commercially successful game: "Thank You Respawn and Apex Whales for Killing this Game," one detailed review states, a sentiment echoed by another asking directly: "If the devs could stop focusing on Apex and actually work on a good game again."

A real, persistent EA launcher complaint

Separate from the DDoS crisis, this review can confirm a specific, persistent complaint recurring across nearly the entire span of Titanfall 2's Steam release: the mandatory EA App launcher requirement. "The Steam version of Titanfall 2 STILL REQUIRES ORIGIN. It has NO useful Steam integration whatsoever," one early, highly-endorsed review warns directly, a complaint echoed by a review dated as recently as 2024: "The game is a classic but WHY DO I NOW HAVE TO USE EA LAUNCHER TO PLAY THE GAME. I bought it on STEAM, I should be able to play it through steam and not install bloatware." This matches the same pattern this review has separately documented in other EA-published titles from this era, where the publisher's mandatory launcher requirement recurs as a persistent, multi-year complaint regardless of the underlying game's quality.

Where this leaves a buyer

At NZ$39.95, discounted to roughly $6 at the time of writing, Titanfall 2 delivers one of the finest single-player FPS campaigns this review's sample has ever encountered, and that alone represents genuine, extraordinary value nearly a decade after release. The honest, necessary context concerns a real, well-documented multiplayer crisis this review can confirm directly from the developer's own public acknowledgment — DDoS attacks that made online play "unplayable" for years, with reviewer accounts corroborating the problem's persistence well beyond that admission — plus a real, sustained complaint about the mandatory EA App launcher. Players buying primarily for the single-player campaign are very likely to find exactly the genre-defining experience this review's sample describes so consistently and passionately. Players hoping specifically for reliable online multiplayer should go in aware of this game's real, documented server history before counting on it.