It is obviously not a AAA product – it is very, very far from that in every possible way – but it is also very clearly on the right path.
Titanfall remains one of the most underrated FPS series around, and it is hard not to stay angry at Electronic Arts for killing it while it was still at its peak. It was not Titanfall 2’s fault that it launched between Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, a release window that practically sentenced it to failure from day one. That was Electronic Arts’ decision, not the game’s. The frustration never really went away, and with no sign that EA – or any other AAA studio chasing the same space – intends to do anything meaningful with the idea, it has fallen to indie developers to carry the torch for mech-heavy movement shooters.
That is where ShatterRush comes in, a spiritual successor to Titanfall built over the last year by the two-person team at Tetra Studios. There is already a pre-alpha build available on Steam, although Tetra itself jokingly labels it a pre-pre-pre-alpha when you launch it. The textures and sound effects are clearly very basic right now, but ShatterRush already has that spark.
It opens with the kind of fast-paced tutorial you would expect, teaching the controls through an obstacle course while pushing players to chase the best score possible before heading online. Even at this early stage, the movement feels fluid. You slide at absurd speed, run along walls, and fire yourself skyward with a grappling hook that can be swapped out for sprint, stimulant, or jetpack abilities. The rhythm of Titanfall hits immediately when you are bouncing between walls while unloading bullets into enemies or hurling yourself at them like a cannonball with a rifle in hand. The levels may look simple visually, but they are cleverly designed to encourage this kind of agile, aggressive mobility. And just like in Titanfall, running and gunning gradually charges up your pilot-operated mech.
You can trade that in for airstrikes, but why would you? The Guardian Mech comes loaded with huge machine guns and rockets, it can sprint, and it can even extend its arm to deflect incoming fire. When the mech is on its last legs, pull the eject lever and get out, because it is going to explode. On paper, all of this sounds like a low-budget imitation of Respawn’s iconic shooter. In practice, that is not really a bad thing – and ShatterRush has one trick of its own that helps it stand apart: destruction.
Following the lead of Battlefield and The Finals, the environment is fully destructible. The mech can smash through floors from above. The system is still a bit buggy, and players do get stuck at times, but tearing buildings apart to carve out new routes – or simply because it is fun – does not stop being entertaining. According to the developers, the game is being updated roughly every two weeks, with a PC release planned for the third quarter of 2027.
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