Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 ranks among the best-designed shooters of the last decade, even though it didn't get the attention it deserved at launch. The game builds on two layers: on the ground, the player controls a nimble pilot who wall-runs, slides, chains jumps and uses a grappling hook, while at any moment they can call in a giant combat robot called a Titan and hop inside it. The transition between light acrobatics and the machine's heavy power is seamless, giving the combat a rhythm that's hard to find elsewhere in the genre.

The single-player campaign was surprisingly strong. The relationship between the pilot and his Titan forms a surprisingly touching duo, and individual missions build on standout ideas, including the famous level where the player switches between two timelines of the same building and has to connect them mentally to progress. It's exactly this inventiveness that keeps the campaign moving from start to finish. The multiplayer mode then carries the acrobatic movement into fast matches where teams face infantry, robots, and Titans all at once.

On PC the game runs very smoothly, the controls are precise, and movement feels completely natural, which is crucial for this kind of design. Visually it's a clean sci-fi aesthetic without unnecessary visual noise, the music is orchestral and gains power exactly when a Titan drops onto the battlefield. Critics praised the game extremely warmly, but its release timing among other big titles hurt its sales. Today, Titanfall 2 is often recommended precisely because of its campaign, which can be finished over a few evenings while offering more ideas than many titles twice its length. Its pace never stalls, every mission arrives with its own idea, and the game never tries to pad its content through repetition. The influence of its movement system is also visible across a whole range of later action games that adopted wall-running and fluid jump-chaining as a given. Few, however, manage to combine it with such a well-crafted battle of giant machines.