“Belive the hype” is the new tagline for EA’s hit, First Person Shooter, Titanfall. Whether you believe it or not, there is a pretty good chance someone you know is probably playing it right now (possibly over-caffeinated and sleep-deprived).

We here at the Trojan Times are strong proponents of DSU’s total domination of the virtual world. As such, we are proud to bring you the Trojan Times’ Titanfall Tips (now with 110% more alliteration).

1. Wall-run, Forrest, wall-run!

Do you know about Titanfall’s really cool-looking parkour and wall-running gimmick? Well it’s not a gimmick. If you want to stay alive long enough to see your robot buddy drop down from the heavens (preferably on someone else’s robot buddy), you have to make sure you leave your footprints on every surface in a given battlefield. Staying grounded and using conventional FPS strategies (read camping) will leave you riddled with Smart Pistol rounds, at best, or as chunky human salsa at worst.

2. The Carbine is your best friend.

Decent range, decent accuracy, decent fire-power, and decent fire-rate – the carbine does not excel at any one particular area. Instead, it presents itself as your Jack-of-all trades gun. However. If there’s one thing that going through every pilot loadout possible can teach you, it’s that a Jack-of-all-trades master of none is often better than a master of one. Since pilots are limited to one primary weapon and one side arm for dealing with other pilots, and since the game is extremely fast paced even on particularly slow days, an all-purpose gun is super useful! The best part? You get it right from the start!

3. Stand-by for Titanfall, not Titanfail.

Oh, you just got your Titan? I bet you can’t wait to call him down. BOOM! That was awesome! I bet you can’t wait to get inside your cyber serial-killer and lay waste to…and he’s gone. Wow.  You see, your titan might be a big beefy behemoth of a brute, but even he won’t be alive for long if you decide to summon him right in the middle of five other big, beefy brutes that want to turn you into aforementioned chunky salsa. The dome shield ensures your titan won’t get destroyed on drop, but it only lasts so long. If you can’t get to your Titan in time, well, let’s just say that the auto-pilot function is a few processors short of being a fully realized fighting fanatic. Don’t let this fool you though. An auto-Titan can and will kill pilots ,or even other Titans, if they get complacent.

4. Be ready to re-queue, a LOT.

As of writing this, Titanfall has been out for a little over 3 days. Because of this, the matchmaking is not exactly the best – at least for now. The moment you enter a queue you are locked into a team and you stay on that team until you re-enter or leave the queue. Now, this is good news if you get put into a team that’s composed of 4 level 40s and the random prestige classer. But if you get put into, let’s say, a team that has 4 level 2 players and maybe even a hardcore troll, you probably won’t have the best time. What makes it worse is that the opposing team is also locked into the same queue. So your team just lost 10-250 in a match huh? Well better luck next time, right? You’ll be sure to get matched against a team that’s closer to your skill level? Nope. Say “hi” to the same team that kicked your butts a minute ago (now with 110% extra gloating).  If you end up losing more than three or four matches in a row, we recommend you re-queue.

5. Believe the hype.

You know how we said you don’t have to believe the hype. Disregard that statement and enjoy the game!