Putting this up for sale tomorrow. I tried the update, I can at least reload properly now instead of wasting two thirds of my magazine's ammo, but the game is just boring and plain stupid.
Also, the more I play, the more I dislike the exo-movement mechanics. I was really looking forward to seeing a game changer in the series, so when this was first talked about I was very open about the idea. I wanted it to be good and to effectively change how COD is played. This so-called "innovation", though, is definitely for the worse. In my opinion, it doesn't work as it should. It's not properly integrated and balanced. I complained in a previous post of mine about how short-sighted it was to limit this supposed core game mechanic by making every exo movement appear on the radar; I also complained about how the series' extremely low time to kill hindered the capabilities of exo movement. But those are not even the main problems.
The problem is how stupid and awkward these new movements make confrontations now. Chances are, if you stumble upon an enemy from the front, he will jump. The end result is a moment of awkward confusion where your target suddenly leaves your sights and is way up in the air, and you can never quite tell where exactly. It's not like things are any different for your opponent either. Even though he decided to make the move, you also left his line of sight, and though he will try to reacquire you as a target, he will have just as difficult a time doing so. This is only aggravated by several other factors. First, this is a series that is mostly played on consoles. Console FPSs are just not as good at precise and fast aiming, that's a fact of life. Secondly, the control scheme is garbage. This is a game where a lot of the time you are supposed to be jumping, aiming and shooting at the same time, yet the only available control schemes force you to take the finger off the aiming stick each and every time that you want to make a jump. For a game that makes of jumping such a core game mechanic, this is downright idiotic.
I know this comparison has been made a million times before, but Titanfall really is the perfect example of how COD with more freedom of movement should be. Jumping is more fluid, controllable and offers more possibilities, gameplay-wise. The maps in Titanfall are quite big, as opposed to AW's tiny, close quarters-focused maps, confrontations tend to happen from further away, and the jumping mechanics are not so sudden, or so quick; this all contributes to creating less situations of the annoying kind I described above in AW. All in all, Titanfall is an FPS whose core gameplay was made with complete awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of what it means to be a console FPS, just as Goldeneye, Halo and COD4 before. Ironically, even though AW comes from a series that has, for a long time, made of consoles its main staying place, as a console shooter it really just doesn't work as well.
