Video Game Review: Battleborn – Master Of None

Developer Gearbox Software
Publisher 2K Games
Genre FPS, MOBA
Game modes Single Player, Multiplayer, Co-op
Players 1-10
Reviewed on Xbox One

Available on Playstation 4, Xbox One

MG Thabo

Published May 26, 2016

Have you ever had dinner at someone else’s house and was treated with such polite company and poise that you were pretty happy that you decided to put on some normal clothes and go out for a change? You see the people preparing your dinner with aplomb, pouring all their passion into this culinary creation. You rub your hands together expecting a wonderful meal the likes of which you haven’t tasted in weeks where your only sustenance was ramen noodles and microwave popcorn. Your food gets put on the immaculately decorated table, the host gives you a gentle smile and says “dig in”. With your first bite, your expectations get crushed like they just went under a hydraulic press. This food is unbelievably bland to the point where every bite feels laborious and hollow. You put up a facade and claim that the food is wonderful with a forced smile. You leave and then go to McDonald’s directly afterward.

That’s Battleborn in a nutshell.

Pretty, detailed and made with a lot of care. But just not fun.

Battleborn is one of many in the emerging “hero-shooter” genre, where we get access to a lot of characters with their own individual skills and personalities. It’s become extremely popular as of late with games such as Overwatch entering the fold. Battleborn brings along a lot of uniqueness to the formula, but falters in more ways than one. It tries to be a hybrid of many different genres namely FPS, FPS loot shooter, MOBA and it even has a little MMORPG features along the way as well. It’s certainly a jack of all trades, but unfortunately, it’s also the master of none.

There is a campaign component to the game with its own story, but it is structured pretty strangely. There’s 8 or so missions available to you and they all consist roughly of the same path with some deviations along the way. You play through the story as part of a ragtag group that has to stop a galactic power from rising and you have to get assistance along the way as well as sabotage the bad guys. These story missions are about 40 minutes in length and you can play them either alone or with 4 other people in co-op. However, playing alone is absolutely laborious and endlessly boring. If you expected to play this game on your own, then I highly recommend that you don’t since it is an uphill battle that will bore you to tears.

The story missions go more or less like this: follow path killing mobs along the way, come to an arena where you either fight a mini-boss or participate in wave based combat, continue doing this about 2-3 times, reach the end where you fight a big boss. For the savvy among you, you might notice that this is the same formula used in MMORPG dungeons. While a decent formula it also subjects itself to getting pretty stale after a while since you’re doing essentially the same thing over and over again. What Battleborn does in an attempt to alleviate this boredom is to provide a running narrative through these levels.

You can really tell that Gearbox was heavily influenced by Borderlands in the making of this game both in the aesthetic and the way they go about delivering a story. The game looks like an offshoot of Borderlands with it having many of the same design choices in characters, UI and other assets. The narrative also has a lot of funny quips, references and ironic humour associated with it and most of the time it succeeds. There’s some good little laugh out loud moments along the way and it all feels really charming. The characters are interesting in their own unique ways and you will find yourself enjoying the humourous backdrop as you go about your business. However, it sometimes feel like they were trying a bit too much, with it sometimes being just slightly over the top at times. But overall, I can’t fault the narrative too much.

The characters are possibly the marquee feature of Battleborn. There’s a ton of them and each of them has their own charm, look and mannerisms. Stuff like a gentleman sniper robot, a little penguin in a giant mech suit, a quippy elf with a bow and arrow and so much more. A lot of personality was placed into these characters with them often remarking in their own signature styles to what is going on around them and so on. Also, most importantly, they have their own unique powers. Each Battleborn has three skills, two of which are their basic utility skills and the third is their ultimate. These skills can vary wildly depending on the character with some buffing teammates, throwing area of effect bubbles or just basic lunge attacks. The ultimates are a little more extravagant with massive bursts of damage or spectacular attacks.

Each character also has a standard weapon associated with them. They have pistols, snipers, mini-guns, energy blasts or plain old sword attacks. These weapons are the basic utility weapons of the characters and what you’ll mostly be using. There’s no ammo or something like that, but you have to use them strategically. During battle, you will also gain experience for your character. This experience is exclusive to the match you’re playing and each level brings about its own bonuses with some being slight stat boosts, to changing your abilities altogether. Each character can get up to level 10 during a match and it’s imperative that you reach that level as soon as you can.

However, here comes possibly the biggest major problem I’ve had with the game. It’s just not as fun. The gunplay feels shoddy and uninteresting and the skill usage isn’t as spectacular as you might think. It feels sluggish and cumbersome to play and since that’s what you’re doing for the grand majority of the game, it’s a pretty damning fault. I didn’t feel compelled to jump into combat like I should have been and often times I just felt bored with what I’m doing. The gameplay loop isn’t interesting enough to hold my attention and it honestly felt like a chore to play. It’s competent, sure, but it’s skirting the bare minimum of that definition.

The versus multiplayer of the game is possibly its biggest feature, with three modes namely Meltdown, Incursion and Capture. Meltdown has you guiding creeps to gates and the team with the most creeps through gates wins. Capture is a simple hold-the-point mode where there’s set points on the map that players need to hold and the team that reaches the goal first, wins. Incursion is the more interesting one of the three with it being the most MOBA-like. You get sentries that you have to defend and there’s also creeps for both the enemy and you. The team that kills the most sentries, wins.

The multiplayer is where I think Battleborn shines the most. Matches can be frantic, exciting and fun with a cavalcade of heroes running around and doing all sorts of crazy stuff. It’s great to play the objective and work as a team. But once again, the gameplay holds it back from being truly fun.

Another point in the game’s favour is just how deep the content goes. There’s a plethora of stuff to unlock by gaining levels, unlocking loot crates (it’s always loot crates), completing challenges to unlock character lore. You get gear that you can use to get bonuses during combat once you unlock it and there’s rarities and special stats associated with this gear. There’s so much content to sift through and unlock that it can last you potentially hundreds of hours. You can replay missions on advanced difficulties, get skins, unlock more characters and so on. Each singleplayer level has a rating at the end of it and you can potentially try and get gold for each of them. You level up characters by using them in gameplay and they get their own bonuses along with that. So much awesome stuff to give you bang for your buck.

Too bad it’s still not fun.

Here’s where my dinner analogy from the start comes back. There’s so many good stuff surrounding Battleborn. It’s got the modes, it’s got the funny narrative and the cool characters, it’s got the monstrous amount of content and it’s got all the damn charm in the world. But it is just not enjoyable to play. Some can maybe see past the sluggish gameplay and enjoy it for what it is, but personally I cannot recommend it in good conscience when there’s better and more fun hero-shooters on the market right now. There’s nothing catastrophically wrong with Battleborn and it can be fun with a gaggle of friends, but it is so far from a truly enjoyable experience. Rather wait for a sale to give this one a go.

Have you ever had dinner at someone else's house and was treated with such polite company and poise that you were pretty happy that you decided to put on some normal clothes and go out for a change? You see the people preparing your dinner with aplomb, pouring all their passion into this culinary creation. You rub your hands together expecting a wonderful meal the likes of which you haven't tasted in weeks where your only sustenance was ramen noodles and microwave popcorn. Your food gets put on the immaculately decorated table, the host gives you a gentle smile and says "dig in". With your first bite, your expectations get crushed like they just went under a hydraulic press. This food is unbelievably bland to the point where every bite feels laborious and hollow. You put up a facade and claim that the food is wonderful with a forced smile. You leave and then go to McDonald's directly afterward. That's Battleborn in a nutshell. Pretty, detailed and made with a lot of care. But just not fun. Battleborn is one of many in the emerging "hero-shooter" genre, where we get access to a lot of characters with their own individual skills and personalities. It's become extremely popular as of late with games such as Overwatch entering the fold. Battleborn brings along a lot of uniqueness to the formula, but falters in more ways than one. It tries to be a hybrid of many different genres namely FPS, FPS loot shooter, MOBA and it even has a little MMORPG features along the way as well. It's certainly a jack of all trades, but unfortunately, it's also the master of none. There is a campaign component to the game with its own story, but it is structured pretty strangely. There's 8 or so missions available to you and they all consist roughly of the same path with some deviations along the way. You play through the story as part of a ragtag group that has to stop a galactic power from rising and you have to get assistance along the way as well as sabotage the bad guys. These story missions are about 40 minutes in length and you can play them either alone or with 4 other people in co-op. However, playing alone is absolutely laborious and endlessly boring. If you expected to play this game on your own, then I highly recommend that you don't since it is an uphill battle that will bore you to tears. The story missions go more or less like this: follow path killing mobs along the way, come to an arena where you either fight a mini-boss or participate in wave based combat, continue doing this about 2-3 times, reach the end where you fight a big boss. For the savvy among you, you might notice that this is the same formula used in MMORPG dungeons. While a decent formula it also subjects itself to getting pretty stale after a while since you're doing…

Video Game Review: Battleborn – Master Of None

2016-05-26

MG Thabo

A Missed Opportunity

Total - 6.5

65 6.5

A jack of all trades, a master of none. Battleborn has the charm and the content to hold itself up, but it severely lacks in the gameplay department. While there's a lot to like about the game, the core gameplay not being fun holds the experience back quite significantly. Rather wait for a sale to give it a go since it does still deserve your time, but not at full price.

User Rating: 4.6 ( 1 votes)

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MG Thabo

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Marko has played way too many games, listened to way too many metal albums and is probably taller than you. He is a qualified language and communication practitioner and likes to write about the good things in gaming.