Titanfall Without The Titans: A New Humans-only Mode

Titans are fairly central to Titanfall. They're right there in the name--that's what the game calls it when your honking great mechs plummet from orbit to the battlefield. I actually preferred the plain old manshooting though, darting about, double-jumping, and wall-running as a regular supersoldier with a jetpack. Well gosh golly, the next Titanfall update will introduce a new mode with simple 8v8 manfights, no Titans and no AI battlefield buddies.

Which makes me wonder: if we can remove the Titans from Titanfall, what titular elements can we remove from other games and still have something interesting?

Cut SimCity's Sim to make City, an urban counterpart to Mountain. Remove the Craft from Minecraft and we'll go exploring procedural tunnels and caverns in Mine. It's possible that, at the end of a long week, I am longing for quiet and peaceful and relaxing games.

Anyway, that Titanfall update. The 'Pilot Skirmish' mode will be the new Featured Game Mode, developers Respawn explain in the patch notes, a temporary fixture that'll get rotated out for something new after a while. Or maybe not. Respawn have turned their first featured mode, Marked For Death, into a permanent fixture as folks liked it so much.

The update, which hasn't been dated yet, will also bring improved matchmaking, with faster search and better team balancing. That's certainly needed. It also optimises performance, adds colorblindness options, and brings other good things. It's all in the notes.