With what could possibly be the hardest hitting game in the media right now, Titanfall continues to impress as the beta closes and millions of beta testers are left in shock. Game creators Respawn Entertainment launched the Titanfall beta on Feb. 13 to select beta testers who applied for early access to the game on both PC and Xbox One consoles. The beta was so widely popular that Microsoft’s servers crashed within 24 hours of it being available for closed access on Xbox One alone.

Two days following the closed launch, Respawn opened the beta of the Titanfall game to the entire public on Xbox One, and soon after opened up servers on PC as well. Between the dates of Feb. 15 and Feb. 19, more than two million gamers fought for their space on one of the Titanfall multiplayer servers to get their chance to test the game themselves. Since their official title launch on Mar. 11, the game has sold 2.5 million copies for a total of more than $200 million in revenue on the sales of the game.

Titanfall is a first-person shooter (FPS) future-style war game that is set on an unnamed planet devastated by war. Players, referred to as pilots in the game, fight in team vs. team or free-for-all multiplayer matches against other online players. The game supports 12-person multiplayer matches and does not feature a single-player campaign of any sort.

At first, the game seems like any normal FPS of its genera. Players are deployed to each team (red or blue, as is verbatim for every FPS war game) on opposite sides of a moderately sized multiplayer map. The players, called pilots, can choose various weapons and various classes to fight with. The goal? There are various game types, but the overall idea is to kill the other team. So why does this game stick out among the rest?

The answer to this question is in the name of the game itself. After a certain amount of time, displayed on the screen throughout the game, pilots can call in their Titan. With the press of a button, an oversized and highly dangerous pilot driven mechanical (mech) suit is deployed directly from the sky, landing at the feet of the pilot that called it. The mech suits, aptly named Titans, are fully equipped with massive guns, explosives, and a shield tech that do a phenomenal job at eviscerating everything in their path. Pilots can choose to manually drive the titans around the battlefield or set the suits on an automatic mode that makes the mech an AI (artificial intelligence) that will fight for their team.

Suddenly, the battlefield goes from player-on-player deathmatch to full on mech vs. mech vs. player vs. player and every combination of such chaos. This aspect of the game calls for diverse fighting styles and crazy vehicle combat that has only sort of experienced in the past with games such as Halo with its mantis mech robot.  This adds for insane game diversity and incredibly fun gameplay mechanics that leave you glued to the game for hours.

So what does all of this hype mean for the actual game itself? Gameplay is fun, easy to learn, and fun to progress in. It is easy to feel good at the game no matter at what level. Newcomers can spend the game practicing by killing grunts and assisting their team mates while higher level experienced players can engage other pilots that match their skill for competitive titan and human deathmatch fights. The interfaces are easy to use and the entire engine is very gamer friendly. Overall, Titanfall was a big hitter in terms of games released for Xbox One. Rating: 4 stars.