At E3 today, Stevivor had the chance to go hands-on with Gearbox Software’s Battleborn.
Fans of Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise will absolutely love this new IP, leveraging the same shooting mechanics and humour as experienced on Pandora. Visually, you can see that Battleborn is the spiritual successor to Gearbox’s other franchise, but charges ahead with its own, mimicking yet distinct styling. I didn’t need a Gearbox dev to tell me that the game wears its influences on its sleeve – even though she did, citing RPGs, fighting games and a range of first-person shooters; bow-wielding Thorn looks as if she’s been grabbed right out of World of Warcraft while heavy Mike looks like he’s just one hat away from Team Fortress 2.
Battleborn’s premise is rather simple; a baddie is bringing about the end of the universe, somehow burning out every star in every galaxy. With only one star in the universe still burning, survivors from literally all over have taken up orbit around it. In multiplayer, representatives from each surviving faction – the titular Battleborn – fight for territory. In the game’s single-player or co-op multiplayer campaign, the Battleborn are fighting the evil entity who wishes to snuff out that remaining star. You go about that fight in first-person view.
Each of the 25 playable characters in Battleborn, as mentioned, has his or her own look and feel, but so too fighting style. Each character possesses two special attacks mapped to controller shoulder buttons, an ultimate attack and a passive attack. Some characters are close-quarters combatants, but most are projectile-firing mid- to extended-range fighters. Each has the chance to be personalised to some extent with the game’s Helix menu, Battleborn’s equivalent of a skill tree. Heavy Montana, for instance, can be specced to wield fire or ice.
With my hands-on time, I had the chance to play with Phoebe, a close-quarters fighter with the ability to use some ranged attacks, and the aforementioned bow-laden Thorn.
I much enjoyed using Thorn over Phoebe, as her bow is devastating. Her volley attack fires off a horizontal grouping of five arrows that deal decent damage and also bounce off of terrain. Her Blight attack deals damage to anyone in its area of effect, while her ultimate, the Wrath of the Wild, can be used to knock enemies backward – just so you can line them up with the bow. As with specials in MOBA, the real trick to Battleborn is to figure out ability combos, not only with your own powers, but with your teammates, to deal devastating damage.
Phoebe simply wasn’t my cup of tea because I really wasn’t able to figure out how to use her effectively; she’s able to teleport, throws four blades at enemies and can call down a rain of swords. I think she’s perhaps more ranged than I cared to admit, and I suffered by trying to do everything up close and personal.
With a multitude of multiplayer modes and such a wide array of characters, Battleborn is sure to appeal to those who long for glory on the online battlefield. Already, we’ve been told that three main modes will be present at retail: the horde-like Incursion, hardpoint-like Devastation and the MOBA-like Meltdown.
I couldn’t help but think directly of Borderlands as I played; bright colours, a form of levelling and quirky humour resonate from Battleborn in waves. While it may not exactly be my cup of tea – I admit, I got a bit bored of dealing with wave after wave of enemy, even with all the quirkiness — I know of quite a few gamers who I’m sure would disagree.
We expect Battleborn will be released near the end of the year on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4.
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