The reveal earlier this year that fans almost got another Titanfall game before it was canceled and turned into the excellent Apex Legends came as a shock to many, especially those that hold Titanfall 2 as the gold standard of single-player FPS campaigns. While the news is certainly disappointing and no doubt creates "what-if" scenarios about the Titanfall 3 that could've been, in what is becoming a trend among indie developers, a smaller studio is stepping up to fill the gap left by the absence of a proper sequel. Sprawl, the new indie FPS from developer MAETH, absolutely scratches the itch for more Titanfall.

Taking place in a cyberpunk dystopia with more than its fair share of Ghost In The Shell influence, Sprawl is a new entry into the growing Movement Shooter subgenre of FPSes. And while it's not technically a Boomer Shooter per se, it definitely carries a lot of the same DNA of some of the best in the genre. But aside from its genre characteristics and aesthetic, Sprawl absolutely nails the feel of some of Titanfall 2's best moments with a cleverly implemented wall-run mechanic that rewards players for using momentum and positioning to their advantage in combat.

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Sprawl Draws From Its Collective Influences to Become a Must-Play FPS

Sprawl's opening moments smartly emphasize the importance and utility of the wall-run mechanic, cementing into place its importance as the protagonist's main means of both traversal and survival. Thanks to an intuitive gamepad control scheme that uses the shoulder buttons to jump and allows players to have three successive jumps before falling, it's possible to get quickly acclimated to the system and start zipping around Sprawl's brutalist future metropolis in no time. By the time the first mission starts folding in the actual shooting mechanics, players already have a strong grip on the game's movement.

While the Titanfall comparisons shine through in the game's movement and wall-running, Respawn's legendary FPS is far from the only major influence on Sprawl's gameplay. Similar to both Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, successive non-lethal hits on enemies result in foes becoming stunned and surrounded by a glowing aura. And just like the newer Doom games, this is the perfect opportunity for players to rush in and use a melee attack to instantly drop foes and get rewarded with a confetti-style shower of health and ammo pick-ups. Not only does Sprawl absolutely nail its primary movement mechanic, but its use of push-forward combat feels just as satisfying.

Movement in Titanfall 2 was certainly smoother than that of Sprawl, but one factor that the game edges out its inspiration on is its sense of speed. Very much in the same vein as other movement shooters like Ultrakill and Turbo Overkill, the sheer speed and velocity of the protagonist once players get into the groove of wall-running, jumping, and shooting is almost dizzying. Thankfully, Sprawl accounts for this by giving players a bullet-time mechanic in the form of Adrenaline. Taking down foes rewards pick-ups that refill the player's Adrenaline meter, rewarding players' efficiency with a consistently full meter to perfectly line up headshots.

Sprawl pulls from a variety of influences to become something greater than the sum of its parts. The developers at MAETH clearly have reverence for some of the greatest games in the genre, and that reverence shines through in the polish and precision of Sprawl's gameplay. Even though the leads at Respawn have expressed that Titanfall 3 is a possibility for the studio down the line, nothing has been revealed as of yet to suggest that the title is actively in development or even on the radar. In the meantime, games like Sprawl are here to provide the same momentum-based thrills afforded to players in the best moments of Titanfall 2 and Doom Eternal, reminding players why these franchises are so revered in the first place.

Sprawl is available on PC.

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