[Editor’s Note: Our current review impressions of Battleborn are based on a one-day review event held by 2K, where Dave was able to play through the co-op campaign (with a few level replays), and some time in the beta. That obviously isn’t enough for a full review, so we’ll run our review in progress until we feel we’ve had sufficient time to experience everything, including the competitive multiplayer. If all goes well, we’ll finalize our score by the end of the week.]
With Battleborn's campaign, I feel like I'm at a shooting range with some of the best gunmen in the world using some of the sickest skills I've ever seen... but we're all stuck in a plain warehouse full of paper targets.
There are over two dozen unique playable characters, each with quickly unlocked branching skills that go a long way toward ensuring every level playthrough and multiplayer match will feel different from the last. The character taunts and in-game dialogue add a nice flavor that's almost on par with developer Gearbox’s other co-op shooter, Borderlands. Unfortunately it's all set against a backdrop of repetitive stages populated by unoriginal, hit-sponge enemies and levels that can end in bitter, cheap-feeling defeat. While I wish Battleborn could be a bit smarter and sharper, it’s crazy enough that I'll still be playing through its quick campaign on multiple occasions to see all of what this frantic shooter has to offer.
The visual style, humor, and development team force comparisons to the Borderlands series, but Battleborn's characters and setting never quite reach those endearing heights. It's all done decently; there are a few chuckle-worthy lines and the animated intro and ending gave me fond flashbacks to Aeon Flux, but it didn't land as much as I expected it to. The NPC character portraits that spout exposition back and forth with a twinge of snark are tough to care about since those characters rarely show up in-game, and most major enemies have a similar Bender-from-Futurama-like delivery, which causes them all to blur together. While I'm all for humor in my shooters, Battleborn never really lets a joke breathe, which can be a bit tiresome. It's all tied together around a story of formerly warring factions fighting to save the last hospitable star from a universe-conquering scourge, but I never felt that urgency while playing.
The MOBA-inspired leveling system adds to the insanity.
The breakneck pace of joke delivery is no match for how fast the action is while in battle. When you're on the battlefield with a team of four of these colorful characters, you'll be scurrying to pick up powerups and spending the in-battle Shards currency to set up turrets and bots to help in the wave-based defense missions. That itself would make for madcap co-op, but the MOBA-inspired leveling system adds to the insanity. Defeating enemies and picking up items grants XP, and each player can (and usually will) level up 10 times over the course of the eight campaign levels that each run roughly 30 to 40 minutes.
If you're playing alone, Battleborn slows down when you open the Helix leveling system to allow you to put some thought into choosing between upgrades, but as part of a team, you can either be quick and make an impulsive upgrade decision or wait for an enemy raid to end and play as an under-leveled character for a minute or two. When a team is in desperate need of revives and an extra gun, picking between grenades with greater damage or a wider area of effect can become abnormally stressful. It's a sensation I've rarely encountered with shooter campaigns, and I have to say, I liked the extra tactical level added to these frantic battles.
I found myself returning to personal-favorite characters.
Even though I'm rarely the type to stick with a single character with a roster the size of Battleborn's 25-strong list, I found myself returning to personal-favorite characters like deranged space marine Oscar Mike and multi-limbed magician Orendi to see how their weapons, melee moves, and special attacks would change after 10 upgrades. For example, I now know that Oscar Mike's scope (unlocked at level 3) is preferable to that same level's choice of a laser sight and that his devastating focused laser strike unlocked at the last level is way more up my alley than the wider-ranged tactical bombardment. Those are encouraging signs of depth.
I'm really looking forward to checking out even more of Battleborn's character variety with multiple playthroughs. Playing in close quarters with three other reviewers, we made sure to have a balance of up-close brawn with characters like the sword-toting Rath or the monster-human hybrid of Shayne & Aurox, longer-range shooters like the sniper Marquis and standard soldier Oscar Mike, and specialized characters like healer Miko and the team-defense-focused ISIC. Based on my brief time spent attempting stages solo during the beta, I wish the levels could be tailored to allow any character type a fair shot at success, but there are certain circumstances where it's nigh impossible. Taking down a tank of a boss with Miko's piddling firepower is a tall order, but beating a flying boss with Rath's array of ground-level strikes seemed like an impossibility.
Most persistent upgrades are cosmetic additions like new taunts and outfits.
While Battleborn's persistent loot and unlocks aren't as explosive as the in-match leveling system, they still do a good job of making replays worthwhile. Most loot items are stat bonuses that you can put into a three-item loadout and apply to your character over the course of a stage, provided you have the Shards to activate them (which makes for a nice pull between using your shards for the good of your team with turrets or being slightly greedy to upgrade your character's speed, firepower, or health regeneration). Leveling up each character is also interesting; since the upgrades reset with each campaign level, most upgrades are cosmetic additions like new taunts and outfits. However, on a rare occasion you'll earn a third option to pick from during in-match leveling, which makes the character growth feel more than just skin-deep.
There's an out-of-battle currency system based on performance and linked to this loot system, but I found myself running out of item storage so quickly I was rarely inspired to buy packs of additional loot. I would have preferred to buy more storage or quick-pick loadouts, but those upgrades cost more than an entire campaign's worth of earnings.
I could have done without the weird character-specific objectives needed to unlock new backstory and fully max out each character. When I had found a particular skill branch more suited to my style with a certain character, I loathed the idea of having to work with upgrade I didn't like. When I found that Rath's blade attacks worked better for me with longer-range strikes at the expense of damage, I scoffed at kill-focused objectives when my role was better suited getting the first hits in before my team's long-range attackers finished off enemies. It felt like chasing those meant I'd be working against the team's best interest, just like when working to get obscure achievements in Left 4 Dead that required I kill enemies in a specific way. I can tolerate objectives like these in a single-player focused campaign, but given how co-op driven Battleborn's campaign is, I'm not sure I'll ever warm up to this element of upgrading characters.
I enjoyed campaign stages that constantly pushed the crew forward through weird areas.
The bigger issue with Battleborn's campaign is that it doesn't feel all that fulfilling. At roughly seven hours, it's not all that long, and what's there is plenty repetitive. Perhaps to make the turret purchases feel worthwhile, stages often have you going back and forth between spots on the map and defending strongholds or slow-moving vehicles, which means retreading ground frequently. The defense-focused levels also suffer from the least-inspired level designs, as I enjoyed campaign stages that constantly pushed the crew forward through weird areas like trap-filled ruins or a gothic underworld. Adding to the repetition for the non-linear levels is that if a stronghold is destroyed, your progress in the campaign ends – regardless of how many lives are left in the shared player pool. After 40 minutes of a bitter battle, being sent back to the beginning because an enemy got a few lucky strikes in on a briefly unattended base can be extremely frustrating. The campaign levels require a pretty high level of cooperation, but these rounds go on unreasonably long to demand that level of perfection.
That repetition is compounded by the fact that Battleborn's rank-and-file enemies are rarely memorable. Though they have different looks depending on the master they serve, dealing with the constant waves of soldiers, tanks, and snipers that make up 95 percent of a campaign level's opposition starts to become routine halfway through the campaign. Most of the bosses are a nice respite that require a change in strategy, like a multi-legged creature that can only be damaged when a limb is destroyed, or the first stage's boss who is invulnerable until you destroy poison-emitting shield generators. But two of the eight bosses are just glorified hit sponges and that includes the underwhelming final boss.
I've enjoyed most of Battleborn’s campaign during my initial playthrough, though it's mostly due to the handiwork of the insane playable characters than the drab enemies and stages. The unlocks both near (in-match leveling) and far (unlocking new characters) have kept me anticipating each new campaign level attempt, though I wish said campaign were just a bit more exciting and varied. Hopefully some time with competitive multiplayer will make my upgrades and unlocks come even faster.
We're shooting to have our final review ready by the end of the week. But in the meantime, here's what we think of Battleborn based on what we've played so far. Read here for more on why we're scoring reviews in progress.
If we had to score Battleborn today, we’d give it a (not final) score of 7.3.
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