Forget the Titan, watch me surf this sheer wall

It's been a while since my last fully linear, rollercoaster-ride shooter campaign. (I checked! it was Wolfenstein II.) Your everyday Call of Duty or Battlefield entry just doesn't catch my eye; but Titanfall 2 did, with its generally positive internet reputation and its - well - big ol' robots.

The campaign's story isn't very noteworthy, really just an adequate excuse to run through levels and chase down some big-bads. I appreciate that the game's mid-bosses have just enough personality to make defeating them feel satisfying; but it's hard to take the story's stakes seriously when villains pop open their cockpits mid-battle to taunt you, or when ridiculous shit like time travel happens and everyone is totally unfazed by it.

And the shooting is also, really, "just pretty okay" in both Titan and Pilot formats. Most of the Titan loadout options feel like they exist more for variety than for practicality, and few of the Pilot's weapons were particularly memorable for me. (Which creates a usability problem, since the game doesn't tell you what kind of gun you're looking at until you pick it up. Like, dude, just show me the "shotgun" or "rifle" designation when it's on the ground; the models aren't distinctive enough!)

But! What does make Titanfall 2's campaign stand out, and what enhances the story's pacing as well as every shootout encounter, is its slick locomotion. Like some kind of Mirror's Edge-with-jetpacks chicanery, Titanfall 2 lets you wall-run around the arena, vault over enemies with a double-jump, even crouch-slide past a vanguard and shoot them right in their confused butts.

And although the campaign doesn't last very long (4 hours), it nevertheless manages to take great advantage of these parkour-with-guns mechanics with some really radical level designs, from floating walls and rotating platforms to running around the exterior of an airship. All while shooting at things!

Titanfall 2 doesn't exactly flip the script on first-person shooter campaigns, but its high-maneuverability combat encounters are a bunch of fun while they last.

(Also, between this game's BT and Jedi: Fallen Order's BD-1, I'm starting to suspect that someone at Respawn likes robot characters more than human ones.)

Better than: Bulletstorm, SuperHot, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Not as good as: Wolfenstein: The New Order
More engaging gameplay, but a less compelling narrative, than: Spec Ops: The Line

Progress: Finished campaign on Regular difficulty.