Hands on with Battleborn – This is not an Overwatch Clone

April 11, 2016

If anything, Battleborn is a rather fresh new take on a shooter. Its over-sized character roster with all its unique personalities might bare quite the resemblance to Blizzard’s upcoming shooter Overwatch, but it is far from it.

Spending the weekend with Battleborn really forced me to take back every negative thing I have said about it. At first I was worried that it lacked substance and was trying too hard to fit into the overcrowded FPS genre. I was then worried about how Gearbox planned on keeping players from completing a mission and never coming back.

The beta proved to be a really enjoyable experience, and even though I replayed the two available missions a dozen times, every time I did it was with a new character that mixed up my play style.

Orendi is just misunderstood.

Battleborn takes place across planets, as a band of heroes – all 25 of them – set off to defend the last star Solus from the evil clutches of Varelsi. It sounds rather simple, but there is a lot going on in the game which you can either get into or forget.

Like Gearbox Software’s other baby, Borderlands, Battleborn is not short on its humor. From the start to the finish of the two missions, I kept finding new jokes funny as robots had responses for everything and each character had their own set of dialogue full of one liners. Every swear word was beeped out, and every joke had a hidden message.

25 characters is quite the load, and although they are all available in the beta, not all of them are playable at the start. You will have to complete certain challenges or objectives to unlock certain characters.

This is a great way to keep players coming back. What is the point of playing a game if there is no reward in the end, am I right? After a few hours I had unlocked two characters, which again forced me to go back into the missions to try them out.

Orendi uses some pretty dark magic attacks.

Every time you start a new mission, your Helix – which is your upgrade tree – resets. While you kill enemies and progress through the mission you will level up, opening up new Helix upgrades you can choose from.

As you go about your killing spree, these upgrades change your abilities and basic attacks. The upgrades range from reduced reload speed to quicker cooldowns. What’s great about this system is that each time you play a mission, you can take a different approach to the Helix tree, further expanding your play style.

The missions were fantastic to play through. The beta had two missions which saw you head into a frozen tundra and take down a spider-looking robot named Geoff, who had a serious identity crisis. After you killed him you were tasked with hunting down Isac, who was then available to play with after the mission.

The Helix System.

The missions take about 30-45 minutes to play through as you go from one end of the planet to another, taking down hordes of robots and enemies along the way. Every moment was either filled with explosive boss battles or enjoyable gun fights. Every time I thought I was over it, I killed a few more enemies and the addiction came back.

Gearbox have really crafted an addictive shooter with a strong emphasis on replayability. Battleborn has a solid character roster to really sink your teeth into in each mission, and the shooting and combat has received quite the amount of attention since the last test.

Although the game can be played alone, it can also be played with friends or a bunch of random people online. Which leads to the next half of the beta, which was the PvP portion.

Battleborn has a pretty dense stat page.

Unlike traditional shooters, the PvP part of the game is more tactical and objective based. The two game modes were all about team work, as you and your team had to work together to take down the enemy team.

In Meltdown, you and your team must escort minions to their death in an enemy grinder to rack up points. The minions can be killed by the opposing team and you also need to juggle their minions.

Incursion follows a MOBA-type game mode, where you and your team push into an enemy base while destroying their turrets long the way. The map is packed with Thrall camps which, once defeated, can be summoned to walk with you as an army.

As much as the PvP was enjoyable, there is still work to do – as certain characters need adjustments. With 25 characters, Gearbox have some work to do to ensure that the PvP portion remains balanced.

Everything you do in the game must contribute to something right? Well the game has a pretty in-depth ranking system. When you complete missions and such, you will unlock titles, character shaders, and loot packs.

It is Sir Marquis to you!

The loot packs contain items which you can then equip in missions and during PvP, which then give our character buffs like more HP and damage increase. These items come in different rarity which changes their effect they have on you.

As for shaders, it would be nice to have different costumes for characters rather than just a different skin tone, but hopefully Gearbox do something to make these character shaders worth grinding for.

After waiting in a queue to get into the beta, it was all worth it in the end. Battleborn looks like it has its gameplay nailed down. The missions are great, and the PvP is worth returning to. I personally cannot wait to have more to do in the game when it releases in May.