Battleborn Review

Development Studio Gearbox Software has always been known for its crazy humour and over the top gun fights… their latest creation Battleborn, has all that. The issue with it is that it is missing the target that it aims for on almost every level. Its PvP is probably the best thing about it, other than that, there is really nothing much going on here besides the heroes who add a great variety to each map and mission you take on.

The game is divided into two section, the story campaign and the competitive multiplayer. Starting off with the campaign, you can select one of a few playable Battleborn characters that you can take with you into the mission. There is a brief story to the overall game, but it never fully expands as much as I hoped for. You are a team of heroes who set out to stop an evil villain and his army from taking control of the last star in the galaxy.

If you play MOBAs you will feel right at home in Battleborn as each character fits into one of the normal classes like Tank, Support, Medic etc. With 25 playable characters, there is more than enough variety here for anyone who wants to experiment with different characters and really master each one of them. The personalities also make each character extremely enjoyable to play with as their snarky remarks and humour really add that Gearbox comedy to the game we all love.

Missions are basic at the least, you head into each one with the Battleborn character you choose, fight hordes of enemies, protect certain points from damage, and along the way gather shards and level up your skills and gear. Often I felt that I was disconnected from the objective and character in general as the sound design is something I have never experience before. You know when you plug in our earphone half way and you can hear the sound, but only certain beats? Well, Battleborn’s sound design has this issue, and it really does not help to make feel like you are in a match or mission at all.

As you go about a mission you will level up your character by earning XP, and ultimately choose from two to three skills for your character. These skills change certain abilities relating to your character, and will essentially impact what type of attacks the character can dish out. This is where the game really shines as thanks to this level system, you can change it up every mission to add a bit of variety. Once a character reaches level 5, they will unlock their ultimate ability, which is normally a devastating attack or healing ability, it’s all dependent on the character you are playing.

A normal mission will see you start at one end and fight a boss at the end. Your chosen character would have reached max level three-quarters of the way into a mission, so by the time you reach the boss fight, you would have chosen and mastered their abilities for the fight ahead. Battleborn also has a great gear system, which sees you equipping sets of items which give you buffs on certain character traits. Customizing a loadout to fit various characters would be the best bet as certain gear buffs healing abilities, reload speed, and more. Having a reload speed item on a melee weapon character would be pointless, so this is where you really need to pay attention to what you are doing.

Your hero, their equipment, and the way you decide to level up their skill tree is the variety I loved in Battleborn. It was moments when I could change Oscar Mike’s grenade from a standard one to an incendiary one that burnt enemies over time, that made the character so much more appealing. Chances are that if you hated a character at first, you would love them by the end of the mission. I played with 22 out of the 25 characters available and enjoyed every one of them, some more than others, though. I played with some so much that I unlocked all their challenges, which revealed their lore for a little back story on them.

When it comes to PvP, the game has a solid offering for players. There are three game modes that are so well designed, that they too rely on you to take a different route in your skill tree for each mode you play. Capture is a simple zone control mode where you take control of zones and hold them so your opponent cannot get them. Killing enemies and levelling up along the way. Incursion sees you and your minions push into the enemy’s base and try and defeat their sentry. It is a new spin on a MOBA Mode and, but also feels well-constructed. The last mode Meltdown, sees you escorting minions to furnaces to sacrifice them for points, the highest points wins.

This is where Battleborn shines the most, but at the same time I could not help but feel that they should have scrapped the story mode, as it is not that great. Adding more maps and modes to this would have been even better. There are only 2 maps per mode, which is not that great, and the PvP is so addictive, you would want to play across even more of them.

Conclusion:
Overall Battleborn is not a bad game, but it feels like it is all over the place all the time. Missions are fun with friends, but that is it. It’s the PvP which is the game’s strongest mode, but there has been so little focus on it, that it is a kind of a wasted opportunity. Battleborn could get better over time with updates and content, so we will just have to see what happens to it.

Final Score: 70/100

Reviewed on the PlayStation 4

Editor: Darryl Linington
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