Surprise! Titanfall is out on Steam now, but it's not been a trouble-free launch

EA surprise-released the first instalment of its critically-acclaimed Titanfall series on Steam yesterday, but less than 24 hours later, the game is sporting an ominous "mixed" user score on Valve's PC client owing to technical woes preventing players from connecting to the servers.

Complaints chiefly concern matchmaking. Some people report that the game refuses to match them with other players, stating they haven't got the right DLC maps installed when they have, while others say they can't connect at all – which is problematic, given Titanfall has no singleplayer content.

Others report issues with the audio installer, which reviewer "swaggy p" on Steam says is "super loud static" that "ruins the experience".

Some later reviews, however, insist the issues have now been rectified, but even recent feedback continue to report that connectivity and audio issues persist.

"Had a rocky first day, but all issues were swiftly patched," reported Fresh Pancake (thanks, Eurogamer). "Titanfall 1 has several significant differences from 2, and a lot of the community still prefers 1. Absolutely worth buying if you love 2, and if you like fast paced shooters its a great game in general."

ICYMI, Apex Legends' latest map, Olympus, originally began life in Titanfall 3.

"At one point, there was a Titanfall 3 in the works after we launched Titanfall 2," said Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier, explaining the origins of the map. "And Olympus wasn't called Olympus at the time, but that style of map was something that we were exploring for the next Titanfall game."

Grenier delves into detail on the scrapped Titanfall 3, saying that while they were "building Titanfall, we sort of discovered this battle royale game mode within that." This battle royale mode would turn into Apex Legends, which the team would then choose to work on over more Titanfall.