Titanfall was great. The setting was evocative, and gameplay was a class of its own, both halves of it.
One part was fast-paced, highly mobile ground combat pitting teams of Pilots against each other and a bunch of CPU mooks. The other part were the titans – massive, powerful mechs which introduced another layer to the actions. Somehow the game managed to put these two very different playstyles side by side, making each match a fascinating, multi-layered, dynamic battleground.
Two years later, Titanfall 2 arrived, and not only did it have all the juicy action of the original with better graphics and technology, it also had one of the best singleplayer story campaigns first-person shooters have seen in years. Exciting, full of tightly designed levels, and featuring a budding friendship between a field-promoted Pilot and a titan which used to work with the rookie’s predecessor.
Eight years later there’s no Titanfall 3 in sight, and while fans of the setting and gameplay have an alternative to enjoy (we’ll get to it), a true sequel is floating in the sea of possibility and shows no desire to become reality.
This is obviously not optimal, so while the community is still waiting for Titanfall 3, let’s take a look at ten games which might help fill that void. Most of them are mostly centered around precise FPS action and high mobility, but there are a few exceptions you might find interesting.
Let’s dive in!
| Game | Release | Genres | Developer | Trailer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Apex Legends | 2019-02-04 | Battle Royale, Action & Shooter | Respawn Entertainment | |
 | Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare | 2014-11-03 | Action & Shooter | Sledgehammer Games | |
 | Warframe | 2013-03-25 | Action & Shooter | Digital Extremes | |
 | Destiny 2: Legacy Collection | 2024-06-04 | Action & Shooter | Bungie | |
 | Call of Duty: Black Ops III | 2015-11-05 | Adventure | Treyarch | |
 | HAWKEN | 2014-02-14 | Action & Shooter | Adhesive Games | |
 | Battlefield 2042 | 2021-11-19 | Shooter | EA Digital Illusions CE |
Neon White
| Release date: | 2022-06-16 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Developer: | Angel Matrix |
Neon White was a surprise treat 2022 dropped on us.
It’s a first-person shooter with exciting movement, impactful combat, a well-paced campaign, and an interesting card system affecting your options and tweaking abilities. Neon White’s particular design also emphasizes level mastery without being really rude about it, so it might even become your intro to speedrunning.
NW also happens to look really cool, with vibrant colors and clean, sharp character designs complementing the plot. You’re playing as the titular character, who awakened in Heaven and immediately got tasked with killing demons who somehow infested the holy afterlife. As you progress, you’ll also start learning about your past and figure out your role in this whole mess.
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Apex Legends
| Release date: | 2019-02-04 |
| Genre: | Shooter |
| Developer: | Respawn Entertainment |
Apex Legends is a spin-off from the Titanfall series, set in the same universe, but this time in the form of a speedy, vibrant battle royale/hero shooter mix.
AL keeps Titanfall’s exciting movement and precise gunfights, but sadly, it doesn’t feature the Titans themselves. Instead of mighty, stompy mechs, we’re given a roster of over twenty Legends with unique abilities and personalities.
As a battle royale game, Apex Legends is oriented towards working in small teams of twos or threes. There’s even a powerful ping system, which does a great job conveying diverse info to your teammates. As a multiplayer-only game, AL relies on a robust playerbase, but so far, it’s managed to remain among the most played games on Steam alone, not to mention other platforms.
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Destiny 2
| Release date: | 2019-10-01 |
| Genre: | MMORPG |
| Developer: | Bungie |
Perhaps you’d rather playing and FPS that’s more MMO-adjacent?
Destiny 2 might be a good thing to check out, then. It’s set in the distant future, and players take the roles of Guardians, people revived by the mysterious Traveller and imbued with powerful abilities so that they can become humanity’s shield against the darkness, or so the story goes. But what about the gameplay?
It’s a class- based FPS, with three broad classes, each splintering into specialized subclasses with their own abilities and progression. The main event, however, are the guns themselves, ranging from fairly mundane to quite exotic. Gunplay is precise and exciting, and finding weapons that synergize well with your playstyle is a big part of this looter-shooter.
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Doom Eternal
| Release date: | 2020-03-20 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Developer: | id Software |
You, a selection of powerful guns, a horde of demons, and no rules.
Diablo Eternal has the speed of Titanfall, it’s but it’s not graceful, you’re an angry wrecking ball. DE is a sequel to 2016’s Diablo, and while its predecessor is great, Eternal adds a grappling hook, which allows Eternal to achieve a bit of that juicy Titanfall mobility… just in a much more gruesome manner.
Doom Eternal’s story, because it has surprisingly a lot of it, takes place over a decade after the events of Doom 2016. The Earth is screwed, demons are running rampant, and the Doom Slayer is back with vengeance and a whopping space station to rid the planet of the infestation. And also find out more about his own past… who would have expected a committed story campaign in Doom?
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Warframe
| Release date: | 2013-03-25 |
| Genre: | MMORPG |
| Developer: | Digital Extremes |
Warframe is a lot to take in, but at its most basic, it’s a science fiction, third-person perspective action game combining gunplay, melee combat, and superpowers.
There’s also a lot of lightning-fast traversal which includes a lot of sliding, wall-running, and bullet-jumping. Most missions become a flurry of motion, special effects and overwhelming enemy numbers.
You won’t be playing as a singular character, either. At your disposal (well, once you farm the necessary parts) is over 40 different warframes, suits imbued with superhuman abilities. The setting is a far-future of our solar system, with several conflicted factions, lots of vibrant characters, and a ton of entertainingly bizarre stuff going on, up to and including divergent timeline shenanigans.
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Shadow Warrior 2
| Release date: | 2016-10-13 |
| Genre: | Fighting |
| Developer: | Flying Wild Hog |
Let’s get this thing out of the way: the protagonist of the Shadow Warrior series is called Lo Wang.
Insert your joke here. Now, that being established, it must also be said that SR2 is a riot: a pretty un-serious, violent, fast-paced, over-the-top action game which will keep you entertained for the entire duration thanks to its vibrant aesthetic and FPS action powered by guns, blades, and magic.
Shadow Warrior 2 has a dedicated singleplayer campaign, but it’s mostly just a great excuse to bring in new, weird enemies for you to face and thrown more one-liners. It also features a co-op mode for up to four players, who can play through the campaign together. SR2 isn’t serious, but it is seriously fun, especially if you enjoyed B-movie action flicks of the VHS era.
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Bulletstorm
| Release date: | 2017-04-07 |
| Genre: | Adventure |
| Developer: | People Can Fly |
We’re not done with non-serious games. Bulletstorm launched in 2011 and it might have been ahead of its time.
The Skillshot system encouraged players to make each kill as creative as possible. Lifting enemies into the air with a gravity leash, sliding into them from a sprint, using environmental hazards and guns’ alternative firing modes, targeting body parts… a lot to work with.
Most actions have a point value, and you can make combos to get even MORE points, which you can then spend in the shop on ammo and upgrades. Bulletstorm also has a singleplayer story mode, and it has the highest density and intensity of creative swear words you’ve ever heard in a game, on top of a fun story about surviving on a planet full of people driven mad by [spoilers].
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Ghostrunner
| Release date: | 2020-10-27 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Developer: | ONE MORE LEVEL |
Ghostrunner brings us back to games with a more serious tone, with a cyberpunk-styled game about parkour, quick kills, and, to an extent, speedrunning.
Mobility plays a key role in Ghostrunners, and since both you and your enemies die in a single hit, it’s not a bad idea to stay on the move, find the best route, and outmaneuver your foes. Each level can be quite a puzzle, indeed.
Instead of a highly-mobile pilot of a mech, the game puts you in the cyber-body of a titular Ghostrunner, a once-decommissioned superhuman that used to serve as guardians of a massive tower housing the remnants of humanity. Now brought back into function, the runner is given a task which will put him in opposition to the current rulers of the tower, for better or worse.
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MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
| Release date: | 2021-05-27 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Developer: | Piranha Games Inc. |
Let’s abandon the speedy, parkour-friendly games for a moment, and consider a game which goes all-in on the other half of Titanfall experience: the mechs.
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, as the title might suggest, is all about them. It’s set in the classic Battletech universe, which has received many video game adaptations over the years.
The mechs in MW5M are hulking, powerful machines. Some of them are so large they could kick a titan like it’s a trashcan, but the tradeoff for armor and firepower is limited mobility. The game offers more than 50 different mechs in several weight classes, and put you behind their cockpits in intense, mechanically complex action-filled battles in diverse landscapes, from forests to cities.
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Mirror’s Edge (series)
| Release date: | 2009-01-13 |
| Genre: | Adventure |
| Developer: | EA Digital Illusions CE |
Mirror’s Edge games are on the opposite end of the spectrum, compared to MechWarrior.
Where MW5M was all mechs, ME are similar to TF because of parkour. They even barely have combat in them, except as a punctuation mark between pathfinding the best way to keep running, jumping, climbing without losing momentum. Thankfully certain viable paths are highlighted with vibrant red.
In both Mirror’s Edge and its prequel, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, you’re playing as Faith Connors. When we first met her in ME she was a courier running deliveries for a resistance working against the oppressive government of a vast dystopian metropolis. Of course, with a setup like this, complications are inevitable, providing an engaging story linking challenging parkour-oriented missions.
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Prepare for titanfall
This concludes our list of games which might give you a bit of that Titanfall vibe while we eternally wait for TF3. We’ve got several shades of science fiction, a few shifts in tone, and even some dips into different gameplay concepts. All in all, it’s a fairly diverse bunch that focuses on different aspects of what made Titanfall… Titanfall.
Have fun!