There is a lot to take in with Battleborn. It's a first-person shooter. It's a MOBA. It's a co-op game. It's tower defense.
Battleborn's influences are many, and that makes it a difficult game to dive into at first. The game is essentially two different experiences in one. The first is a single-player, or co-op, campaign that takes more than a few cues from games like Destiny or even World of Warcraft. The other is competitive multiplayer, one that blends a FPS with MOBA elements seen in games like League of Legends.
Together, they form a package that is quite unlike anything else on the market right now. That's both a good and a bad thing, and that's without even mentioning the game's unique cartoon visuals or its quirky sense of humor.
A stylish, anime-style opening cutscene establishes the basics of what you need to know about Battleborn's "story" (if you can call it that): the universe is down to its last star, an evil madman is trying to destroy it and a group of heroes across five different factions have come together to make sure that doesn't happen.
It mostly serves as a way to explain the game's diverse roster of playable characters. There are 25 in total, ranging from the mushroom ninja Miko to a penguin in a mech named Toby. Each character is colorful and unique, both in their design and in their abilities. There are ranged damage dealers, up-close brawlers, tanks, supports and healers. There's a character for everybody, and each one is more interesting than the last. Even the game's generic "space marine" archetype character, Oscar Mike, is bursting with personality.
In the character department, Battleborn shines. Each hero feels like they bring something new to the table (even if Gearbox seems to rely a little too heavily on giving numerous heroes dash abilities), and are dangerous in their own right. Interactions between characters are great, too. Kill a certain enemy in multiplayer, and your hero of choice will toss out a one-liner specifically for your slain opponent, which more often than not is bound to get a chuckle out of you.
Anybody who has played Borderlands will immediately recognize Gearbox's signature style of comedy here. It's almost exactly the same kind of loud and self-deprecating humor seen in the studio's most well-known franchise, but it works. Nothing in Battleborn feels too serious, and that allows for players to focus more on the characters and the gameplay rather than Battleborn's lackluster story line. As stated before, the whole setup mostly serves as a reason to have all of these characters in the same place.
The missions themselves don't particularly add much to the story either. They exist to be played separately and out of order in a way that isn't so different from strikes in Destiny. Prior to the mission, a brief cutscene explains the who, what, when and why of a mission, with a splash of comedy for good measure, and before you know it your team is on the ground blasting bad guys.
Blasting bad guys is what Battleborn does best. In what may be surprising to some, the game's campaign mode is far more fun than most would've have guessed from what appeared to be a 5v5 multiplayer-focused title. Gearbox knows how to make a co-op shooter, and it shows in each of Battleborn's eight campaign missions.
Players level up their character over the course of a match, unlocking their ultimate ability at level five and selecting various augments each level all the way up to level 10. This lets players further customize their character to their playstyle. The game's gear system perfectly complements this. By earning loot from missions or purchasing loot packs with credits, players earn gear that, when activated in a mission or match, provide various passive bonuses.
The moment-to-moment gunplay (or axeplay, or bowplay, or whatever weapon your character is wielding) is as fun as anything else out there, and the fact that the game can be played splitscreen at a time when most developers are dropping the feature is a welcome addition.
What's less fun is losing, and you'll do a lot of it in Battleborn's campaign. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Battleborn is brutally difficult at times. These moments of controller-hurling frustration mostly stem from the game's defense-focused missions, where players must defend a certain point, like a generator; or escort a character, usually a giant spider robot, to safety.
You see, while Battleborn gives players a pool of shared lives to respawn from and a checkpoint system, losing at an objective results in instant mission failure. No second chances. These objectives can become destroyed in mere seconds if left unattended for even a moment, and enemies can also blast them from long-range for extra frustrating defeats. You'll regularly be throwing 30 minutes or more down the drain during any given failed mission, though you still get any XP and loot you earned prior to losing.
The game's raid-style missions, where players fight their way through the level conquering various mini-bosses that then culminate in a showdown with a massive final boss, fare much better than the defense ones; there's simply too few of them. In fact, there's too few missions in general. Eight levels that each take 30-50 minutes each to complete isn't much. Gearbox has plans to lower the difficulty of one of the game's most challenging missions, but it still doesn't change the fact that instant fail objectives are never fun. Escort missions are universally hated for a reason, and Battleborn is just yet another example of why.
It almost feels like Battleborn's difficulty is a way to pad out a game that doesn't have as much content as it should - a way to prolong the experience by having players repeat the same three levels over and over and over again in an attempt to emerge victorious. It's as if Gearbox doesn't want players to progress too quickly for fear of seeing everything Battleborn has to offer.
That idea runs throughout Battleborn, leading to another major source of frustration in what is otherwise an enjoyable experience. Nearly everything in the game - from heroes, to loot packs to character lore - is locked behind achieving a certain player rank or completing various challenges.
Players only start with a handful of characters to choose from at the outset. A few characters are earned early on by leveling up your player rank, which happens by earning xp from missions and multiplayer matches. Another few characters are unlocked by completing various campaign missions. Even with all of those, the majority of the game's heroes are still locked behind a wall in which players must play for hours upon hours just to experience the best part of the Battleborn experience.
In a game that is all about its diverse roster of playable characters, to lock so many of them for such a long period of time seems like a baffling design choice. The end result is campaign and multiplayer matches where both teams largely comprise the same team of starter heroes. It makes for an infinitely more boring experience.
Progression is one of Battleborn's worst enemies. Why, for example, must I achieve a high player rank to be able to purchase anything more than an uncommon loot pack, even though I have more than enough credits to do so? Why must I play a single character for hours upon hours to complete their lore challenges, just so I can learn a little more about their background and personality? None of Battleborn's progression, outside of leveling up mid-mission, feels worth it. Many of the free-to-play MOBAs that Battleborn attempts to emulate do the job much better.
Despite an entertaining campaign (outside of the frustrating instant fail objectives and glacial progression system), the real meat of the Battleborn experience is in multiplayer. It's here where players will spend most of their time after having completed all of the game's story missions. It's also where the game's more radical ideas come into play.
The game features three game modes: Incursion, Capture and Meltdown. Each mode features two different maps. Capture is a fairly straightforward capture point style mode that you've seen in numerous shooters before. There are three points, the team that captures and holds the most points the longest wins.
Meltdown and Incursion are much more complicated, and where the title's MOBA inspired elements are mostly found. Meltdown has players escorting minions along two lanes into grinders on the other side of the map. The more minions that make their way into the grinders, the more points your team scores. The only problem is the other team is trying to do the same, so you're both attempting to protect your minions while destroying those of the enemy team (while fighting other players, of course). Along the way you'll be building turrets, accelerators and supply stations to aid your team.
In Incursion, players escort their minions down a single lane in an attempt to destroy the enemy team's two shielded sentry drones. Once again, players are attempting to defend their minions by defeating enemy players while simultaneously destroying the opposing side's minions, with the ability to build various support defenses too.
Incursion and Meltdown don't sound too complicated on paper, but there is probably a reason that most MOBA-style games are played from a top-down perspective. Figuring out where to go or what to do is difficult at first, especially if you've never played a MOBA before. At any given time, players can be doing any number of tasks. You can farm money so you can activate your gear and defenses faster. You could be recruiting mercenaries that will help your minions push. Or you can simply be trying to kill everything in sight. There is a mini-map helping you along, but it doesn't give you a good idea of what anything is. You'll just have to figure it out as you go.
Of the three game types, Meltdown and Capture are the most enjoyable. Capture is simple, but sometimes it's just fun to pick your favorite hero and battle it out. Meltdown, due to its twin lane setup and more unique premise, is a mode that players can actually sink their teeth into. There is plenty of strategy and teamplay required to succeed, and it's a great example of what Battleborn's multiplayer could have been if it was firing on all cylinders. Massive comebacks are possible if your team works together.
Unfortunately, that's not the case in my experience playing Incursion. The game type's single-lane maps don't allow for much maneuvering or strategy. Matches are nearly always a one-sided steamroll, with one team pushing the other team into their base and claiming victory without any real way to counter. You'll be making use of Battleborn's surrender feature most often here.
As a complete package, Battleborn is truly unlike anything else out there. Its unique blend of genres, over-the-top personality and satisfying firefights offer up plenty of entertainment, but the entire experience is mired by frustrating mission design, an aggravating progression system and lack of satisfying multiplayer game types.
That being said, Battleborn is worth giving a chance for those who are looking for something different. It might even surprise you. Just go in knowing that Gearbox's latest is far from the home run many were expecting from the studio behind Borderlands.
Photo Credits: 2K Games
This review is based on impressions from a PS4 copy of Battleborn provided by 2K Games.
