A Flatscreen Classic Trades Power For Presence

Titanfall 2 VR, a mod that brings the game’s campaign to VR headsets is no less impressive than the flatscreen version, but feels fundamentally different.

The original flatscreen version of Titanfall 2 leveraged an innovative combination of free-flowing movement, precision shooting mechanics, and mech-based combat to make you feel like the most powerful force on the battlefield.

While certain aspects of Titanfall 2 are more effective in VR, others get lost in translation. In the end, though there are frequent moments throughout its campaign that remind you the original game was not made with VR in mind, the Titanfall 2 VR Mod is still one of the best VR mods I’ve ever played.

What is Titanfall 2?

Titanfall 2 was one of the more interesting games released in the 2010s. It was made by Respawn Entertainment, at the time a new studio comprised of developers who had previously worked on the Call of Duty series, and it served as a follow-up to that studio’s highly anticipated first game, 2014’s Titanfall.

While the original Titanfall was well-regarded as a game with incredible mechanics that truly innovated the formulaic first-person shooter genre, with critics citing its parkour-infused run and gun combat and the ability to pilot enormous mechs in ever-fluid combat scenarios as major strengths, it was a multiplayer-only experience that landed prior to a time when multiplayer-only live-service games were an established force in the industry. As such, Titanfall left many reviewers and players wishing for a single-player campaign.

In 2016, Titanfall 2 addressed those wishes, launching with a single-player campaign that many critics and reviewers praised as an instant classic.

In Titanfall 2, you play as Militia rifleman Jack Cooper, who aspires to be a Titan Pilot. When a battle on the planet Typhon goes horribly wrong and Cooper’s commanding officer is mortally wounded, he spends his dying breath to transfer control of his Titan, BT-7274, to Cooper. Now, with the help of BT, Cooper must avenge his fallen comrade, stop the enemy from using a superweapon to destroy the Militia’s home planet, and earn the right to call himself a Pilot.

The game’s great gameplay hook was its mobility. This wasn’t a slow-paced FPS or a lumbering shooter. In Titanfall and its sequel, players sprint and wall-run and double jump with the help of sci-fi tech. In addition, the player often jumps into the cockpit of their faithful Titan, battling other Titans and infantry as a super-powered mech warrior. The relationship between Cooper and BT takes center stage, too, resulting in an incredibly evocative and affecting story of battlefield comradeship.

Though Titanfall as a series has been dormant since Titanfall 2’s release, its 2019 spin-off, Apex Legends, has become one of the most successful free-to-play battle-royale shooters of all time.

And What is Titanfall 2 VR?

Last month, a modder known as CircuitLord released a full conversion virtual reality mod for Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign. It features 6DOF movement, tracked motion controls, and fully articulated hands with finger tracking support. Established VR shooter norms are here, too, such as manual reloads and realistic weapon handling in which you physically eject magazines, grab fresh ones, and cock weapons by hand.

The VR port retains the fast-paced parkour mechanics of the original game, allowing you to double-jump, wall-run, and sprint slide independently of weapon aiming. You’ll also physically jump into your mech, using hand gestures to activate weapons and abilities, and like its source, the VR game is visually arresting and stunningly beautiful.

The mod launches with an incredibly simple installer that automatically detects your game files and works with any VR headset capable of connecting to a PC. We covered the noteworthiness of the mod’s ease of use in another article, and it really is impressive.  

Power Fantasy? Or Presence?

So, that’s Titanfall 2 in VR. But is it any good?

The bones are solid. The mod launches quickly and easily, the game runs great, and through the full campaign playthrough, I experienced zero bugs and no crashes. As far as mods go, there’s technically nothing to complain about. It looks great, sounds awesome, and feels nice.

But that’s not to say that Titanfall 2 VR is intrinsically better than Titanfall 2 on flatscreen devices. In some ways, it’s true. In others, it’s not.

The best part of Titanfall 2 on flatscreen platforms was the power fantasy. You were a Pilot with a legendary companion in the Titan, and whether piloting BT or running and gunning on foot, after the campaign’s first half hour, you were the most fearsome soldier on the battlefield.

In VR, this is no longer the case. The gunplay is slower, the combat occasionally awkward. No matter how much you practice, every now and then you’re going to fumble with weapons or screw up a reload. And nothing makes you feel less like a super soldier than dropping a mag in the middle of a reload or accidentally lobbing a grenade six feet shorter than you intended.

There are many design elements in the game that make it obvious that the original developers did not intend for Titanfall 2 to be played in VR. Weapons are complex, with critical parts, like bolts, which are a little too small to grip easily. Weapon swapping itself is cumbersome and clunky. Aiming down sights takes a lot of getting used to.

Similarly, the flatscreen game’s legendary mobility is less effective in VR. While wall running and sprint sliding are still here and super useful, there’s just not as much fluidity, speed, or effortlessness. Part of this comes down to the simple fact that you’re standing while playing, moving your body around to get where you want to go, physically crouching or weaving. For some, this will be extremely engaging. For me, someone who’s played over 500 hours in Apex Legends (a game that’s grown out of Titanfall 2’s movement mechanics) it’s just kind of clumsy.

But I’m being intentionally harsh. I love Titanfall 2, and the original game on which this mod is based is one that is legitimately among the best games ever made in the FPS genre. Can its VR mod possibly measure up?

The truth is that in Titanfall 2 VR, unlike in the game’s flatscreen progenitor, you are not a super soldier and gunplay and mobility are far from the best parts of the game. Instead, the best parts of Titanfall 2 VR are the parts with heart.

The relationship with BT, which has arguably always been as important as the game’s mechanics or game feel, is even more captivating than ever here in VR. BT is enormous, towering over you in virtual reality. He exists in real space, leaps into battles and smashes enemies; he picks you up in the palm of his hand and famously javelin throws you across the void. He struggles with you and succeeds with you, shoots you thumbs-up, which you can shoot back. He lives and dies on the battlefield with you, and the sense of connection with your larger-than-life mech is frankly powerful in VR.

So, the question is: what’s more important? Feeling powerful, or feeling connected?

Because, while the Titanfall 2 VR mod is a great mod, it isn’t perfect and it’s not a native VR experience. There’s jank, jitters, and flaws that don’t exist in the flatscreen game. And some other VR shooters play better.

But Titanfall 2 VR is a special experience, a must-play, just not for the same reasons it was a must-play on flat. It’s more interesting than that. As BT says, “Trust me.”

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.