Titanfall revisited: How is Respawn's shooter eight months on?, It's easy to forget about Titanfall with more recent releases such as Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare eating into our precious gaming time, but it's arguably the game that heralded the arrival of the new-gen shooter.
Featuring a winning combination of dynamic parkour and towering Titans, it provided us with so many spectacular sharing moments at launch. However, despite holding a Metacritic score of 86 on Xbox One, things took a downturn for Titanfall soon after release. Even Respawn admitted that players had burned through the game pretty fast, and this was only in April.
Having exhausted the original maps and game modes, and with new releases such as Watch Dogs, Dark Souls 2 and Destiny to keep me busy, I gradually lost touch with Titanfall, and so did many of my friends.
Fortunately, Respawn has been hard at work since, adding a slew of major updates, new game modes and map packs, something which has tempted me back to Titanfall, but for how long?
The firm started by making the usual balance tweaks, interface upgrades and bug fixes, adding more customisation options and letting users create Private Matches between friends.
Menus became much clearer, stats are now easier to track and even the dodgy framerate was improved, although it's still not perfect.
The first few updates definitely untangled the game's complicated interface and improved the in-game experience, but people were crying out for new game modes, something which would finally arrive in June's update.
June was the first time we sampled the brilliant 'Marked for Death' game mode, which sees a random user from each team become a target for the hunt.
A simple game mode on the surface, 'Marked for Death' can be approached in a multitude of different ways both offensively and defensively, as teams choose whether to protect their own marked pilot, or quickly launch an all-out assault on the opposing team.
It injects a much needed strategical boost to the adrenaline-fuelled action, and was wisely promoted to the permanent roster, despite initially launching as a short-term featured game mode.
Playing as the hunted really increases the tension, especially when you see an army of Titans closing in on your position. Fortunately, Titanfall gives you the means to make an escape, ensuring matches are both thrilling and fair.
Introduced around the same time, 'Last Titan Standing' is a much more basic deathmatch mode in which users start in a Titan and don't respawn on death.
Battles can be tense and last a surprisingly long time, but it's not the most creative of game modes, even though piloting Titans does remain a highlight.
It was odd, therefore, to see 'Pilot Skirmish' do away with Titans completely, and focus on straightforward 8-vs-8 multiplayer battles between pilots only.
Eliminating some of the game's best features, 'Pilot Skirmish' received a mixed reaction. It felt less chaotic than other game modes, and was a little unbalanced thanks to the game's smart pistol, which made it too easy to pick off enemies.
It could work with smaller maps and limited weapons, but ultimately felt out of place in the game Respawn had originally designed.
Arguably it's the latest update that has had the biggest impact on the game, as Respawn introduced a co-op survival mode called 'Frontier Defence'.
Joining forces with three other players, users must protect the Harvester tower from huge waves of enemy forces.
It's an intense game mode featuring tens of grunts, snipers, drones and Titans, some of which can fire mortars from afar, forcing players to venture off alone and leave the Harvester in the hands of teammates.
We love a good survival mode, and 'Frontier Defence' is definitely one of the more challenging and relentless versions we've played thanks to Titanfall's sizeable maps, dynamic movement and varied enemies - of which there are lots.
We especially love the way pilots are flown back into battle, catching a birds-eye view of the map and hotspots, all the while firing at grunts stupid enough to venture out in the open.
