If you’ve left your Xbox One unattended in the last few hours, you might want to check back with it and see if you have a prompt for the much-desired March update, because it’s rolling out to everyone throughout the evening. There’s a lot getting fixed and added, but the biggest points of interest are around the improved Party system, full Twitch integration with HD support, Dolby Digital 5.1 support, previous-gen headset support, improved Wi-Fi performance (especially on the 5 GHz band), along with some stability tweaks under the hood. We’re still trying to identify a few other bits and we’ll update the page as we find more. We’d expect everyone to have the opportunity to upgrade within the next 24 hours, so keep your Xbox One consoles on and await your prompt to update!
March
TitanFall Is Best. Period.
After 20 hours of beta play and plenty of time to learn and digest the fraction of what TitanFall will be come March 11, there is one inescapable truth that has been unfolded before myself and hundreds of thousands of beta players: TitanFall is incredible. The open beta on Xbox One, just like the PC counterpart, features two levels (Angel City and Fraction) and gives gamers the opportunity to sample three different game modes: Attrition (team deathmatch), Hardpoint (domination/territories), Last Titan Standing (self explanatory). You can choose to run one playlist or randomly cycle through all three. On top of that, you get to play up to level 14, which is extremely reminiscent of Call of Duty’s leveling system. As you level up, more opportunities and gear become unlocked for your disposal in-game. The game features 6 v 6 multiplayer only matches, though artificial intelligence players are inserted to keep things feeling slightly crowded, and even though it’s not on the scale of the massive Battlefield 4, it still works extremely well. The only disappointment to this game really comes at the limitation of you and five other friends that can play together. Because of how popular this game is already, as long as you have plenty of real life or online-met friends, you’re going to have a massive group to play with. Should levels ever be slightly larger in the future, 7 v 7 or 8 v 8 would sit well for TitanFall. But as it stands, the game is nearly impeccable and shows that single player campaigns aren’t necessary for first person shooters. We all just want to crush other players hard – something that TitanFall makes absolutely possible without appealing to only hardcore gamers. The AI makes certain of that since they’re more cannon fodder than helpful ally assistance, thus both lesser and more experienced players can have a sense of contribution and excellence while playing this rather straight-forward shooter. The addition of mechs simply adds a deeper level of combat to be experienced and keeps the feel of the game varied.
TitanFall is so good it’s hard to imagine how other games like Destiny, The Division and Halo 5 are going to meet this new level of addictive and frantic fun
Oh, I’m sure they’ll actually find ways to compete, but for how immediate TitanFall is I’m absolutely blown away by how fun it is to repeatedly play for hours on end when only a limited selection of game variants and equipment are available. This is something Call of Duty could stand to learn from. TitanFall isn’t hard to learn – the tutorial really walks you through all of the basics very well. Whether you’ll be a master on the field of battle is entirely up to you and your ability to think three-dimensionally and be strategic in your approach. Even the run-and-gun approach can be a strategy as long as you’re quick on the trigger and don’t run into any mechanized giants strolling into your path. It’s truly impressive to think that playing as a “pilot” (standard foot soldier with the ability to control a Titan) can be just as advantageous as playing as a Titan, only you’re more frail and thus need to be careful with how you will approach certain encounters.
While the game doesn’t feature Call of Duty’s iconic and steadily-dulled killstreak system, Burn Cards act as a way of allowing players to gain an upper-hand so long as they don’t die, otherwise a burn card is consumed and nullified. Burn Cards can be used to call Titans in faster/immediately, gain extra XP, gain access to special weapons/abilities, and so much more. You can play as many as three of them per match and can hold a maximum of 26 cards before you have to cycle out cards. Some cards are more common than others, so be sure to consistently use a card or two per match in case there’s an opportunity to earn more rare cards. Titan are on a 4-minute countdown at the beginning of a match, so using a card like “Pull Rank” to eliminate 80 seconds off of your timer can be a huge advantage in a game of Attrition, and eliminating enemy players and AI can further shorten that countdown, allowing you to gain access to a powerful Titan well before enemy players do.
All the pieces together make for the greatest FPS experience I’ve seen in many years. Games like Far Cry 3 and Halo 4 were great, but just like so many others, they didn’t keep everyone mesmerized for hours on end without throwing what some might call fodder content to keep things somewhat fresh (something Call of Duty has really fallen prey to post-Modern Warfare 3). TitanFall could easily be addicting day one as it is month six, and that is why March 11 cannot come fast enough. I don’t want to play anything else right now. I just want the full TitanFall experience to waste my hours on. If you would have told me parkour + mechs + FPS = best shooter of the last five years, I would have been very skeptical. But playing this open beta has convinced me that everyone owning an Xbox One or a PC (capable of playing the game) needs to pick up TitanFall the day it comes out if possible. Unless you have a pure hatred toward FPS’ and aren’t open to reinvented experiences, you are going to love this game. Now I have to wonder where a game like this can go with future iterations. But for the time being, I know it only has one place it can be: at the top.
This is what Microsoft needed to convince on-the-fence buyers to empty store shelves of Xbox Ones. This is what we can call next-gen gaming. Get ready.
TitanFall Beta Signups Are Live – TitanFall Footage Available Online
If you head over to titanfall.com, you’ll be able to sing up for the PC and Xbox One multiplayer betas, which are said to go live somewhere around 2.14 and 2.17. For the record: these two dates have been reported by different sources, but the announcement video showed 2.14. TitanFall is getting heaps of praise and heavy press coverage right now as closed beta invite gameplay footage has been allowed to make it’s way to various news reporting sites. Over at theverge.com, there is a 24-minute gameplay video available if you really want to see this game in action. But if you are looking for a description of what is to come, “controlled insanity” might be the best way to summarize TitanFall. In interviews with Respawn Entertainment devs, TitanFall is said to be designed with a balanced approach to open conflict that avoids one-sided domination by either team. The game will make newbies feel good about their skills and make skilled players feel incredible, something found in a game like Battlefield but with a smaller learning curve. All the words in the world can’t really give you a good idea of what to expect, so peruse the web and find your in-game footage videos. For the moment, enjoy the beta signup video which shows TitanFall’s nearly-finished HD graphics.
Speaking of graphics, TitanFall may not run at 1080p on Xbox One but Respawn Entertainment is working with Microsoft to create a superior upscaling method to narrow the differences in detail between a 720p or 900p image and one set natively at 1080p. We haven’t heard anything for sure about the final product, only that the game is output at 1080p but whether that’s its native resolution remains to be confirmed. Graphics aren’t everything, yet they are the most noticeable element of any game. TitanFall will look good, it’s just a question of how good it will look.
Xbox One Game Source 