Battleborn is the latest game developed by Gearbox Software after many years of inactivity, a first-person shooter published by 2K Games. It was released in May 2016 and will be available on Microsoft Windows as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

• Battleborn Ps4 Review

Battleborn is one of developer Gearbox Software's biggest investments of time and money ever. Packed with heroes and powered by the mechanics of a first-person shooter, Battleborn is an amalgam of a number of different sorts of shooters pulled together with the art style and humor of a Borderlands game. In its campaign, which can be played alone or cooperatively with up to three friends, you play as one of 25 characters brought together to save the last star in the universe. I liken it to picking up a comic with a great cover, but totally different interior art More than anything, that campaign is just a chance to test out and level up the characters, earning gear upgrades as you go. The bulk of the game, though, is about taking that gear and those characters into three types of multiplayer modes. To test out the breadth and variety of content available in Battleborn, we decided to split reviewing duties between two editors.

After spending a week with the game, executive editor Brian Crecente and engagement editor Jeff Ramos sat down for a back-and-forth discussion of their thoughts. Brian Crecente Battleborn's Aeon Flux-meets-'70s-cartoon-inspired animated introduction was a startling way to drop into a Gearbox game. But the mix of Deltron 3030 music and faded art really hooked me. It has this Ralph Bakshi vibe that I love. Jeff Ramos It was definitely a bit odd. I liken it to being at the comic book store and browsing the aisles and picking up a comic with a great cover, but totally different interior art.

The opening animation sets up expectations that aren't matched by the actual game. Some of Battleborn's most confusing aspects exist within the visual design choices. A lot of the UI feels crowded or difficult to understand at first glance.

And looking at your skill tree midgame for upgrades is an ordeal. As in most MOBAs, as you level up, you're picking new talents for your character in real time. In Battleborn, pulling up a fullscreen menu to pick new talents isn't great, considering how many different angles you can get shot from. Brian Battleborn definitely borrows the visual style of Borderlands. I think Gearbox excels at character design, and that's a great fit for however you want to describe Battleborn — MOBA, first-person shooter, hero shooter. A broad mix of very different characters is part of the draw of MOBA-like games for many people, including me.

But that mix feels super disjointed in Battleborn's story mode, which is about a third of the game. The eclectic mix of characters works That's 25 characters with 25 different backstories, weapons, modes of movement and specials, all of whom can be used to play through the narrative-driven campaign. I gave up on the idea of seeing the story mode as something that tells a meaningful story and instead saw it as a chance to explore the characters, and ultimately, that didn't really hurt the experience. Viewed through that lens, I think the eclectic mix of characters works.

I'm also a fan of how the game makes you work to unlock them. Each of the characters has two methods of unlocking, typically through leveling up your player rank or by completing some sort of challenge. Those challenges urged me to try out characters I probably would have never used if left to my own devices. Jeff While unlocking characters through challenges is a fun way to explore the game's systems and try out new characters, some players will be shocked to find out that nearly half the roster, for this $60 game, is locked. In the typical, free-to-play MOBA model, this is permissible.

But I found it a bit odd to have half the characters siloed in a full-priced game. As far as characters go, a lot of my initial experience with Battleborn came from the beta. During it, I spent most of my time with Marquis, a gentleman robot sniper who oscillates between charming killer and foul-mouthed rascal.

Since I already had so much experience playing with him, he's anchored the most enjoyable parts of my time with the final game as well. That extra time learning Battleborn has given me a necessary edge, because this game can be extremely confusing. Battleborn assumes too much Battleborn takes it for granted that you understand all the things baked into its design. I didn't expect much hand-holding, but I was shocked that the mandatory prologue explains nothing about the game's mechanics. There's a host of characters talking in your ear, guiding you through the critical path and developing the story. But Battleborn assumes you know that you can collect shards for upgrades.

It assumes you know where upgrades are and how to best leverage them. It assumes you know which upgrade to choose when given a choice. And it assumes you'll make sense of the upgrade system on the fly. But the biggest, most flawed assumption Battleborn makes is that you'll care about how all these characters are mixed up together. It thinks you'll get why someone is branded a traitor and the impact from that, or why a hero was locked away for their actions. Over time, as I was forced to replay the same story levels over and over, Battleborn's characters grew on me, but Gearbox seems to believe that quick bits of dialogue are enough to develop backstories I would care about, and they really weren't.

Brian You're absolutely right that the game drops you into the deep end and expects you to figure a lot of things out. The story mode feels like something designed more to help you master a character and find gear than to impart, well, a story.

The eight missions comprising Battleborn's campaign offer up some laughs, challenges and a bit of tactical puzzle solving, but I don't feel like I've learned much more about the overall backstory. Unfortunately, a disjointed story isn't the only issue I ran into in the campaign. Occasionally, bad guys spawned or wandered into an area where I couldn't find them; these instances left me futilely searching the map to figure out how to get to that one last red dot. Eventually the game pushed me along to the next setpiece. Battleborn is also inconsistent in its rules, especially when playing with others cooperatively through the campaign.

In general, the game gives you a pool of lives to use up as a team. Once they're used up, no one can respawn, and extra lives are given sparsely at best. On one occasion, I ended up as the sole survivor in my team and spent more than half an hour whittling down a boss's massive health bar while my teammates watched. That made for some nail-biting gameplay, but once I beat the thing and moved past the new save point, I wasn't awarded with any new lives. My teammates had to either quit or simply sit and wait for me to survive or die. I died, in case you were wondering.

Of course, all of this play — all of the gear you can collect, characters you can unlock and levels you can reach — seems to be focused on what I'd consider the main component of the game: online multiplayer. Battleborn offers three modes of online play that all seem to borrow at least a little bit from some of the tropes of multiplayer online battle arena games. The easiest mode to understand is Capture Maps, where teams must capture and hold three areas to increase their score. The first team to hit 1,000 points wins. While this mode is familiar, it mixes in some enemies for easy leveling; the ability to build different sorts of emplacements, like cannons or health regenerators; and, of course, lots of shards for collecting. The Incursion map mode might be my favorite. In it, you defend two sentient, kinda whiny walking turrets against enemy attacks while trying to take down your enemy's turrets.

It plays a lot like a MOBA with creeps, mercenary camps and the tug-of-war play that makes that genre so much fun. The mode also adds its own twist with shards, emplacements and the fact that the turrets sort of move around. Well, maybe mope around is a better way of putting it.

Finally, Meltdown mode is the closest thing to a traditional MOBA that Battleborn has to offer. You're basically defending your creeps as you try to escort them to the enemy team's side in an effort to sacrifice them. Once you sacrifice enough of your minions in the first area, a second area farther into enemy territory opens up. The first to make the required number of sacrifices wins. The three modes offer up very different sorts of online play, all balanced in a way that evenly matched teams can spend an hour picking at each other's flanks trying to garner some momentum for an all-out win.

The diverse selection of heroes, some with very unique modes of attack and movement, also helps to make Battleborn feel like a fresh approach to an established genre. And then there is the gear, which is where Battleborn really stands out. Players create loadouts holding three pieces of gear that can be activated during play using the shards you've collected for a variety of buffs.

Because you have to pre-create your loadout, and stick to it once the game starts, and because there are so many sorts of gear available, gearing up requires a much more tactical approach. The right mix of gear for the character you're playing can have a significant impact on how well you do, which adds basically a third layer to the game. I know you weren't a huge fan of the game early on, but I suspect that was because you were soloing the missions, and because you don't get access to gear until you hit level 3. Now that we've spent some time playing together and you're geared up, what do you think? Jeff I was certainly missing something at first when I was looking at the experience without being properly geared up. I think gear makes a notable difference in replayability of campaign missions, and that gear can also make your competitive experience that much deeper.

The difference between an ungeared newbie and a player with high-end drops can make competitive play feel a little unfair for beginners, but in the end, that persistent character development is a worthwhile trade-off. The most interesting thing I found was how differently I built my character for competitive play compared to the campaign. As I said before, I was drawn to Marquis as a character because he's so versatile. He can snipe and handle himself at close range, and has talents that let him control the flow of the battlefield. In the campaign, I focused more on buffing his Temporal Distortion skill, which allowed me to slow time and eventually damage enemies inside of its field of effect. When it came to playing online, I focused more on his Predatory Strike skill, which launches owl drones that scout an area and reveal enemies on the map. Competitive play is also where you get to see tactics for each character evolve in real time.

I learned the most about how to play new characters in competitive modes by watching how other people played against me. As in most MOBAs, creativity and on-the-fly teamwork is what makes for memorable experiences in Battleborn. Every match we played within the first week was intense and came down to the wire. I never felt like my teammates didn't know how to respond to threats or capitalize on situations.

It was refreshing to not have that early-frustration-with-new-players-online feeling that I've experienced with other games that had a healthy beta period. While we have differing opinions on character designs, I do think that each character is fairly balanced, and that most people will find a character they'll resonate and excel with. All of this makes me curious about Battleborn's future updates, and how Gearbox will support it. Are we going to see a steady flow of new characters? Or new modes, like a Payload map?

Brian It certainly sounds like Gearbox has a lot of support in mind for the game. When Battleborn launched, for instance, you couldn't replay the intro mission — which also happens to include that groovy '70s-style cartoon — and Gearbox has already fixed that issue. It's great to see a developer paying that much attention this early on to a game that it obviously wants to see become a service.

Battleborn Ps4 Review

With its mix of co-op and single-player missions, and three existing multiplayer modes, Battleborn seems to have the groundwork laid to be a long-lived game. The deep bench of characters, and promise of many more, helps as well. I've loved my time with the game, managing to squeeze in much more play than I usually would in a given week. There's some work to be done, but the promise of new characters and plenty of support means the game I already like quite a lot is sure to succeed at drawing even more players over time. Jeff After diving into the multiplayer modes with you, I'll admit my opinion of the game has changed. It'll be interesting to see how the game stacks up over time. Still, I can't help but feel like Battleborn is suffering from some identity issues.

It feels like Gearbox wants to have the game both ways: with a strong, multiplayer-driven campaign and full fleshed-out hero shooter / MOBA modes. The problem is, you can't have free-to-play mechanics (unlocking new characters through challenges) in a full-priced game. It's true that other retail games have held back some content through unlockable challenges, but it bears repeating that half of Battleborn's characters are unplayable until you put in the time to unlock them. It's one of Gearbox's oddest choices. Wrap Up: Battleborn is inconsistent but still has an opportunity to shine Battleborn is inconsistent in every sense of the word.

Its character design is interesting, but the heroes often don't feel like they live in the same universe with each other. The game's visual design choices bounce from stylish to overwhelming.

And its progression system borrows freely from free-to-play titles, despite the game selling for full retail price. Gearbox's trademark blend of action and humor stands out among these problems. It's certainly what carries the game over the finish line. But Battleborn is trying to be a lot of things and doesn't fully succeed in one particular place. There are a lot of potentially strong ideas floating around the game; if the developers can take the next few months sharpening some into a fine point, Battleborn may yet find its sweet spot.

Battleborn was reviewed using final retail PC code provided by 2K Games. You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy.

Overview Battleborn Overview Battleborn is a space fantasy arena FPS where players fight in MOBA-stylzied arenas. Choose your hero from a large catalog of characters with distinct abilities, such as the katana-wielding Rath or supportive healer Miko. And each hero has their own personality matching their skillset. Earn experience and level up to choose between two skills from a helix menu, distinguishing your play style. Battleborn employs a persistent progression system where experience earned from any one game mode contributes to player's Character Ranks and Command Rank.

Hop into the campaign and complete story-driven scenarios with friends or tackle the missions on your own. Or join one of three competitive game modes: Meltdown, Incursion, or Devastation. Meltdown tasks players with scoring points by hurling minions into an incinerator. Players fights off minions while trying to destroy their opponent's base in Incursion. And Devastation is an objective based deathmatch.

Battleborn Key Features:. 25 Heroes - choose from a huge library of heroes with unique abilities on the battlefield with more characters planned. Persistent Progression - earning experience from any game modes contributes to your global level regardless of game mode. Campaign Mode - tackle a story-driven campaign with friends or play solo. Three Multiplayer Game Modes - Incursion, Meltdown, and Devastation; from multiplayer team death to cooperative MOBA-style action. Flashy Effects - a bold aesthetic distinguishes Battleborn's world from other genre-related titles. Battleborn Screenshots.

Full Review Battleborn Review By, Sean Sullivan Battleborn is a steroid-injected team battle arena where colorful maps, quirky banter, and flashy skills converge in hectic clashes that will fill any ADD kid’s attention span. Twenty-five heroes, three online game modes, and PvE campaign missions offer more content than the genre is used to. And the completionist will find endless ranks and character progression to fuel their addiction.

Battleborn is the latest arena shooter to release but it’s far from the last. Should you be rooting for it? Action Hero Start Games with character rosters can struggle to take off because their characters are unfamiliar and have no depth.

But Gearbox knows what they’re doing. A mandatory prologue introduces Battleborn’s heroes with an exaggerated animated sequence that looks like an Adult Swim block. It’s got pizzazz I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Then you’re dropped in Battleborn’s mandatory tutorial, a narrative mission setting up the plot.

But it’s really there to show off the game’s world. From that first moment Battleborn flexes its aesthetic muscles. Everything is splashed in a vivid palette that gives off an almost uncomfortable boldness.

I had to rub my eyes to adjust but afterwards I loved it. Levels are ornate hallways brimming with dazzling designs and stellar background animations—like enormous starships flying into the distance. It has an unmistakable art style that compliments chaotic gameplay. Tedious Missions What separates Battleborn from other genre-related shooters is it’s episodic campaign, which can be completed alone or online.

While it’s a neat addition the missions fall flat, becoming stale once you recognize the regurgitated formula. Every level tasks you with reaching objectives by mowing down enemies, where you’ll then defend an object from multiple waves of robots before tackling an algorithmic boss. And since each mission can be played in any order there's an ostensible connection between them. There’s no deeper universe to care about beyond the prologue, no interesting plotlines. Sure, there is a fairly fun good vs. Evil trope pulling the strings but it’s not enough.

And it can’t be compensated with stellar visuals. Missions need gameplay variety.

Instead you get a plain turkey sandwich on whole wheat eight days a week. Quirky one-liners try to add depth through characters but motivate nothing more than a sensible chuckle. And the worst type of joke is one that relies on a censored curse word. Jokes feel adolescent, like a kid who’s afraid to curse in front of his parents but giggles around his friends as he mouths off.

But Battleborn is one of the only new FPS’s offering co-op gameplay. And if you have a group of friends you may find something to enjoy. Missions aren’t pushovers and do require teamwork to succeed, especially when an enemy wave surreptitiously spawns and takes out the reactor you should have been defending. But it’s nothing like Borderlands and ends up feeling scrapped together to warrant the price tag, rather than the reason to purchase Battleborn.

Chaotic And Addicting Teamwork Multiplayer earns Battleborn a golden star to slap on the fridge at Gearbox headquarters. Its objective-based cooperative play where the team that works together wins together.

While clearly influenced by traditional MOBA elements Battleborn spins competitive play through its own lens. Players are given three modes to choose from: Capture, Incursion, or Meltdown. Capture Maps: plain and simple; capture the objectives and hold them while defending your own.

No minions in this mode leads to constant fights between heroes. Incursion Maps: attack the enemy base and destroy their oversized spider mech before the enemy destroys yours. Push minions towards the enemy base and build structures to defend against minions. Elite minions spawn that can be killed to assist you.

Meltdown Maps: feed minions into the enemy’s oversized tiki torch skull. The team that feeds more minions wins. While Capture ends up functioning like a map-awareness-team-deathmatch, Incursion and Meltdown stress the importance of teamwork and objectives. Don’t prioritize player kills or you’ll get merced. You need to focus on turning enemy robots into a pile of gears and secure your defenses. The guy gloating over Discord about his frag ratio as “You Lose” slides across the screen missed the memo. 'The Best Offense Is A Good Defense' As someone whose ability to aim is on the cusp of retirement the FPS objective gameplay fills a snug niche.

Twitch reactions aren’t needed to be successful. Knowing your heroes role on the battlefield, earning shards and spending them wisely, and killing minions is all it takes to be MVP. Of course being able to aim your crosshair is a bonus. But as a team-oriented game you’re a far more valuable asset if you can survey the field and understand where you’re needed. And the player who builds their towers is clearly a more valuable team member.

In games like or towers are default structures to rally behind when an enemy pushes too far. But in Battleborn players have to actively build towers by spending shards, currency collected during a match. And maintaining defensive structures is paramount to winning. He who controls the field secures victory. When enemies take over a tower you blow it up and build your own. Too Many Heroes After completing the prologue players are granted a handful of heroes.

Some function as sneaky assassins backstabbing opponents while others keep heroes at bay with translucent arrows and crowd control attacks. While a few heroes are available immediately the vast majority must be unlocked. I’m not a fan of the process. A player who doesn’t find a hero they like may give up on the game too soon.

Although unlocking additional heroes isn’t difficult but it does require quite a bit of time. Each player has a Command Rank which dictates what heroes are available, e.g.

Toby the adorable penguin requires Command Rank 24. For every game you play, whether it be the campaign or PvP, you earn experience towards your Command Rank. Heroes do have secondary unlock qualifications, such as killing 50 enemy players for Phoebe.

But Command Ranks are the most straightforward path to progression and the most obvious way to grind. If you want to unlock em’ all you have to be prepared to invest the time. But wait, there’s more. Each hero has their own level progression.

There are 25 heroes with 15 character ranks each. It’s an insane amount of leveling up that requires dedication to max out. And it’s worth leveling. Taunts and outfits are appropriately locked behind levels, but so are skills. In one sense it creates an uneven playing field, giving an upper-hand to the player with more logged hours. It’s a bit of an annoyance but I didn’t notice an extreme difference in my own playthrough.

Since Battleborn is a game focused on cooperative play rather than player kills it doesn’t create disparity on the battlefield. Additional skills serve as an alternative upgrade rather than the preferred choice. Battleborn’s philosophy stresses achievements, character levels, and unlocks to secure its longevity, hence why so many heroes have a latch on their character portrait. It’s not necessarily wrong. But the game is not pick-up-and-play. That’s important to remember. Battleborn is a game you play because you want to sink time into a competitive first person action game.

Extra Stats And what would a battle arena be without stat-enhancing gear? Just by playing you’ll earn decorative items with multiple stats to enhance your character. Or you can pray to the RNG gods and roll for gear by buying gear packs with in-game currency. You then assign gear to a, for a max number of three pieces. But they’re not automatically equipped.

Gear must be purchased with shards earned during a match. So you have to balance gear and building structures. Is it more viable for me to build a turret or buy boots that increase my movement speed?

The decision isn’t always clear but it’s safe to lean towards towers unless you’re Mr. Final Verdict - Good Battleborn offers tons of content for its value: three PvP modes, a single-player campaign, and hero-specific progression for hours of unlocks. Unfortunately, story missions are formulaic and can’t be saved by middle-school humor. Luckily, the game’s PvP offers enough variety and tactical gameplay to stand on its own. Battleborn’s game design is one where players devout time like its a day-job to earn mico-rewards and experience the game completely. Only if you’re motivated by progression and objective-oriented teamwork is Battleborn the arena game for you. Additional Info Battleborn Additional Information Developer(s): Gearbox Software Engine: Unreal Engine 3 Other Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One Announcement Date: July 08, 2014 Closed Beta: October 29, 2015 Open Beta: April 13, 2016 - April 18, 2016 Release Date: May 03, 2016 Development History / Background: Battleborn is developed by independent video game development studio Gearbox Software, also responsible for the 2009 release Borderlands.

It was announced through Game Informer on July 08, 2014, and it is scheduled to release across all platforms on May 03, 2016. A Closed Beta test was held on October 29, 2015 and was under an NDA. Open Beta began on April 13, 2016 and lasted until April 18, 2016. Battleborn was fully released on May 03, 2016.

On October 03, 2016 2K announced a new game mode would be added to Battleborn, called Face-Off, and would released on October 13, 2016. Face-Off launched alongside the first DLC Story operation titled “Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion.”.