‘Titan’ delivers rewarding story, gameplay

By Cody Hood

The tension in the air was almost palpable. Titans flowed through the first line of humanity’s defense against their natural predators. As the first titan approached a lone, slow civilian, a blur flies through the air, cutting off a hunk of the titan’s flesh near the neck. The titan falls over, damaging a nearby building before disintegrating, the odor of melting skin and muscle filling the air.

Alone, the blur reveals itself as a member of the Garrison Regiment lands on a rooftop before jumping down to the civilian, checking for wounds before commanding the civilian to leave. Several more blurs appear in the sky, moving toward the incoming titans with unyielding courage and bravery, determined to end the assault on the last stronghold of humanity.

Attack of Titan: Wings of Freedom is developed by Koei Tecmo Games Co. The game is priced at $60. The game is based on the anime/manga series Attack on Titan, or Shingeki no Kyojin. The game highlights moments from the Attack on Titan anime and manga, although the main story of it all is based around the last stronghold of humanity with three walls fighting against large, humanoid creatures called Titans that enjoy eating other humans.

The story follows Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert at first, although halfway through the series, additional supporting characters are shown and expanded on.

The gameplay is … exceptional. The maps are quite large, and titans tower over any normal human. The way to get around this is that there is a tool that humanity uses called the Omni-Directional Mobility (ODM) Gear. WIth this, the player character is capable of zipping around the large maps at high speeds and approach the titans in combat, using dual swords to expertly cut the nape of a titan’s neck.

It’s very reminiscent of Spiderman, and controls beautifully and fluidly. Once locked onto a Titan, the character will hook onto it and begin combat. Players can cut off any limb of the Titan’s in order to slow it down or reduce the ability for it to attack, but it will not die unless the nape of the neck is cut.

Speed is brought into the factor of damage, although typically most hits will do massive damage, if not instantly kill the limb or Titan.

Players also have resource bars, which are gas and blades. The ODM Gear uses gas to control the grappling hook and boost, and the blades dull after each slice. If the gas runs out, the player will be unable to boost, and if the blades break, then they will do almost nothing, if not nothing, in terms of damage.

Gas and blades are held on the character’s person, although there are suppliers throughout the levels that also give out gas and blades if the player is running low on them, which rarely happens.

The game ranks performance based on the amount of time it takes to complete the mission and the amount of subjugations (kills.) Subjugations are ranked on how many misses on the limb or nape occurred, and how many times the player had been grabbed by the Titan in question. While some missions are easy to get an S rank on, others are very difficult and require the mission to be completed very quickly while subjugating many Titans. S ranks will also give players extra materials in order to upgrade and create new equipment, which can increase the speed of the ODM Gear, the damage of the blades, the amount of blades and gas among other things.

When talking about the story, it’s just a short version of the Attack on Titan anime, although it manages to make every fight feel fun and surprisingly epic. While I do think there are some problems with replayability and how repetitive it is to kill Titans, the first time that a Titan is felled, it’s truly a great feeling that only gets better as enemies get tougher. I personally recommend to play it on normal or hard difficulty, as easy is pathetically easy and not very fun.