Battleborn Open Beta Preview

From the lunatic, bazillion gun trotting, RPG-fanatic minds behind Borderlands; Gearbox Software and 2K games, comes a brand new IP - which is totally not the Borderlands FPS MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). It’s instead: Battleborn. There was a recent open beta for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. I played for sometime, trying out the cooperative story mode and their MOBA styled competitive multiplayer and I’m here to tell you why it’s not Borderlands, but certainly shares the same aspects.

Battleborn, apart from sounding entirely generic, is a concoction of FPS gameplay, with MOBA mechanics with a dash of MMO style raids. It features two different kinds of games. First of which is a story mode, the story takes place in a star system called Solus, the last remaining star in the system, this is a result of a devastating event that destroyed most of, if not all, of the surrounding planets and systems. The villains behind it all are the Varelsi, and in order to stop them is by sending out the Battleborn, the best warriors from a wide variety of factions and species.

The open beta allowed players to try out a number of these characters, with a few unlockable, if determined enough to unlocked during the beta. I did not, but throughout my time playing, I did try out a fair few characters, but as someone who prefers going in headfirst, I primarily went with an attacker. I started with Marquis, a lunatic top hat wearing mechanoid; who wields a pistol / sniper-rifle cane. He suited my playstyle quite nicely as I like the combination of long range and close quarter sniping, not only that, the character himself amused me, as he looked like a steampunked, aristocrat version of HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. The other characters I tried out included Oscar Mike, one of the gun crazed soldiers wielding a grenade launcher attached assault rifle. Who, to me, acted more like an introductory character to those new to the style gameplay. I also tried out Rath, the dual sword wielder and Isic, the nihilistic AI who focuses on defense and taking out kneecaps - who’s also one of the bosses in the story mode.

It’s pretty clear from the get-go, Battleborn certainly doesn’t lack in player choice as each character has their own personality, design and skills. Anyone who’s played a MOBA will know that each defining character has specific traits, Battleborn is no different and has Attackers, Defenders and Support characters. So without a doubt, there is something for everybody. If you’re not a MOBA player, think of Team Fortress 2 and its ragtag bunch of characters and you’ll get an idea of what’s in store for you, heck there's even an imitation Heavy available.

Since Battleborn was created by the Borderlands team, they know how to combine style and humour, and the story of Battleborn revels in the madness of it all. The open beta allowed players to try out two story missions, The Algorithm and Void’s Edge. Before jumping in, you have the choice to go in solo or as a team of five; playable either using matchmaking or privately. Once you hop in you’ll get your choice of battleborn from a select screen, which looks similar to an arcade fighter, and be on your way.

You can’t call Battleborn a successor to Borderlands but the clear comparison can be found within the story missions. For anyone who’s played Borderlands you will know the mission structure is similar to that of an RPG. You clear out the enemies, pushing forward through the level, gaining XP to reach the finale and grab your precious loot. Battleborn works in a virtually identical fashion, after all, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The only differences are that Battleborn isn’t in a sprawling open-world like Pandora in Borderlands and XP, leveling is self-contained within each mission and resets after each play, just like a MOBA.

The first story mission I tried, The Algorithm took place on a massive facility controlled by the rogue AI, ISIC and it’s down to your team to take him down. It’s from here that hilarity ensues. The story is driven throughout the mission by the characters Kleese and ISIC, and in order to get a better understanding of what’s going on, you ought to be listening. This is solely because when I said hilarity ensues, I meant it, as the chatter between ISIC and his robotic henchmen will certainly amuse.

The other story mission, The Void’s Edge, took place on an icy world where the Varelsi plan to use a portal to wreak destructive havoc. Your team is there to stop them alongside an overly humble and not very smart AI sentry carrying a bomb to destroy the portal. So far, what has been offered shows plenty of variety. With the first mission featuring multiple Bosses, while the second was more of an escort mission with the focus on defending. If there is enough variety and humour within each additional mission in the final release, then Battleborn will clearly win the department of outlandish story-driven humour.

As you play through the story or multiplayer you’ll gain XP and level up. When you level up, you’ll gain new skills and abilities to make you more powerful to tackle your mission/multiplayer session.

With the ability to reach level 10 during each round, your character has unique abilities to be gained. Taking Marquis for example: he can learn the ability to launch a time slowing bubble and send out an attacking owl companion. Both these abilities start off basic but leveling up grants you ability points to contribute towards either improving your character or one of you skills. These can include: more damage output, increase AOE or special bonuses to the character's movement speed. There are plenty of skills available to choose from and gives the player choice on what type of character they’d liked to be.

Outside of story and multiplayer, you can visit the roaster, check out your unlocked characters, customise them with unlockable gear and create loadouts to further improve your character during a session.

As for the competitive multiplayer. I will start by saying that I’m not much of a MOBA player, I’ve never taken much of an interest in the genre, I see the appeal and I know why they’re so popular, they’re just not for me. With that said, I didn’t exactly go into the multiplayer with high-hopes but still kept an open mind. The open beta allowed players to try out two modes: Incursion and Meltdown; the final release will have a third mode called Capture, which is as you guessed, has you capturing and controlling areas to win.

Incursion, essentially the primary MOBA game mode and more than likely be played the most. In this mode you have to defend your sentry drones and guide your minions towards the enemy base, taking out the opposing enemy and their minions before they get to yours.

Meltdown, has you send out waves of minions towards an incinerator turning them into scrap, the enemy does the same, but at the same time you have to both defend your minions from the opposing team and guide them towards their death - I know it’s silly, but actually quite fun.

Visually Battleborn stands as being eerily similar to Borderlands, which doesn’t surprise considering the developers and that it is built on the same Unreal Engine. In fact, if you added Borderlands iconic cartoonish, black-outlined style to the mix, they’d be practically brothers. Nonetheless, Battleborn nudges slightly ahead with a bit more variety in its character design, weapons and environments. Performance wasn’t an issue either, running very smoothly and will be very comfortable on many gamer’s PCs.

Together the multiplayer package tries to offer something for everyone, but doesn’t quite get it right, at least for me. There was certainly a fair few balancing problems I encountered during my time, but so far the feedback from Gearbox has been good and with arrival later this month, they’ve hopefully taking them into consideration for the final release. As for the multiplayer as a whole, after a few rounds, I wasn’t totally convinced it was for me. As I said before, I’m more about going in headfirst and having to chip away at loitering minions to gain enough power to win felt like a grind, but that’s the nature of a MOBA I guess. And as such I spent most of the time playing the story mode, it has a great sense of humour around it and doesn’t feel ashamed to take inspiration from Borderlands, but in no way is it Borderlands 3.