One of the hottest and most highly anticipated video games of 2014 dropped last month. It’s called Titanfall and it is one of the most raved about video games to grace the Xbox One’s presence since the console’s release.

Titanfall if you haven’t heard of it is a new series exclusively for the Xbox One console that blends the first-person shooter genre and giant mechanical pilot-driven robot characters into one fantastic game.

If you enjoy other popular video game series like Call of Duty or Battlefield then Titanfall is right up your face-smashing and gun-toting alley.

This game has been developed by veterans of the first-person shooter genre that practically reinvented what a first-person shooter is with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare back in 2007.

After disagreements with the direction of the franchise, Infinity Ward dissolved and what came next was Respawn Entertainment.  This new game studio wanted a fresh take on the genre and that’s where Titanfall comes in.

The game has no single-player storyline, it simply consists and multiplayer and that is all.  The reason being that the developers wanted to solely devote all of their time to one aspect of the game and in this day what rules the most is the multiplayer.

What Titanfall does differently than other shooters is place the player in vertical area maps as opposed to horizontal or “flat” styled maps.  There is no camping (for the noobs, this means hiding in one spot not moving) or spawn killing (only killing other players in their set designated spawn zones, much like cherry picking in basketball).

The game handles extremely well too because the controller is finely tuned with the specific play style that Titanfall calls for.  They even had Microsoft release a specific update to their hardware and console to reconfigure how the controller’s joysticks operated while playing the game.

This type of dedication proves and shows how masterful Titnafall really is.  In an age where video games can be cranked out year-by-year, this game stands alone in a genre that is crowded with many disasters.

Players or “pilots” are what you control in-game and the objective is simple, eliminate the other team and achieve the almighty Titan.  Titans are the essence of Titanfall, hence the title of the game, and they are only rewarded to players who gain a certain amount of point quicker than other players who have to wait on their timers for the Titan to spawn.

Gaining a Titan earlier rather than later is key because it puts the opposition at a disadvantage since Titans are highly durable, can unload crazy amounts of damage and basically swing the momentum of a game if one team is full of Titans instead of measly human pilots.

But in the hands of a masterful pilot, they can actually outplay a Titan even though they’re a lot smaller and do less damage overall.  This is because the game also rewards players who understand the “David vs. Goliath” aspect of the game.

David being the pilots and Goliath being the Titans.  Pilots are smaller and nimbler than giant mechanical Titans so they can use their speed to dodge and damage while confusing the enemy Titan.

This is why Titanfall will be known as one of the best shooters to hit the market for this generation of consoles.  The game is fresh, understands balance between players and finds a new angle on an already abused genre.

And best of all, Titanfall lives by easy to play, hard to master.  So gets your guns ready and Titans prepared because Titanfall will be a game you remember for the next couple generations that even your kids will be pulling out old copies, much like we do for the classics from SEGA and Atari.