BATTLEBORN Hands-On Impression - Comic-Con 2015

Review Games Battleborn Comic-Con about 8 years agoby Willard Brannen

Battleborn is a First-Person Shooter, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (FPS MOBA) style game coming from 2K. While that might sound like a strange mix, the gaming community has taken to calling this new sub-genre a 'hero shooter.' When I first heard about Battleborn and its unusual mix of genres, I was on the fence. First-person shooters I'm familiar with, but I have not been overly impressed with the MOBAs to date.

I have to say though, Battleborn is awesome. The demo we played at the Nerdist Conival at SDCC was one level (about 15 minutes) with 9 different playable characters. I played as Jennerit, who is basically a vampire Samurai. With no real ranged ability to speak of, I was more than happy to get up close and personal with the foes thrown at us. The gameplay is much like any other MOBA — you fight groups of enemies as you continue toward an end objective — but this round, however, had no opposing players, just the mobs of enemies for us to handle.

Each character, from the design of their look to the stat block you'll look at before choosing one, has a pretty easily designated role. The environments look amazing, the light snowfall putting the occasional random snowflake across the screen. Sound design is likewise impressive, with each move and attack from each character and opponent being easily identifiable. Our team got a little turned around a couple times until we figured out how to navigate the minimap, which is actually very detailed itself. Everything we encountered looked extremely polished, especially for a game so far from launch.

On the overall, Battleborn is a beautiful game, with smooth, easy to grasp gameplay, and fun, widely varying character options. My final opinion: I'm sold! I'll be buying Battleborn when it launches, which is slated for a 4th quarter 2015 or 1st quarter 2016 release, on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.

From the creators of Borderlands comes a new first-person shooter For Every Kind of Badass. This is what people experienced when they played Battleborn at E3. The gameplay demo follows a team of five heroes on the planet Bliss as they infiltrate an old Peacekeeper base and attempt to close a portal that's allowing the evil Varellsi to enter the Solus system.