Titanfall

Campaign issues aside, Titanfall's expert mix of light-footed pilots and massive Titans brings something entirely new to the competitive arena. These systems mesh perfectly with existing shooter tropes, and the combination of new and old has reinvigorated my interest in a type of game I had all but written off. If getting back into shooters after Halo 3 was challenging for me, I can only imagine how hard it will be to find a game that can live up to the new standards set by Titanfall.

It’s a thoroughly successful evolution of the twitch shooter, broadening its scope both upwards and outwards as well as expanding its toolset. The genre’s focus on fast, responsive movement reaches bold new heights, too, letting you chain wall runs and double jumps into the sky before thundering back down in the cockpit of a giant robot. Titanfall might not be Xbox One’s killer app, or Azure’s proof of concept, then, but it’s a long-overdue adrenaline shot for a genre that seemed in danger of flatlining.