With so many games adopting various ideas from the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre, it really is the era of the “hero shooter”, as Gearbox like to refer to Battleborn. Taking the cooperative shooter RPG foundations from Borderlands, they’re building it out in all directions.
There’s the subtle points, such as the shift from playing in groups of four, and then there are those which have been hammered home with a long marketing campaign, like the 25 playable characters that they’ve created. They’re split into factions, forced to work together in the face of the impending end of their universe and the extinguishing of the last star, but they come from vastly different backgrounds.
Looking at some of the more recent announcements – and they’ve finally announced the last of these – El Capitan is a hulking luchadore, ready to smash into the enemies, Kleese is reminiscent of Professor X, with a bald head and floating chair, Shayne & Aurox come as a symbiotic pair of a bratty teenage girl and a space creature that hovers over and protects her.
There’s a number of melee oriented characters, with Shayne & Aurox being one of them, and a duo that I found very easy to get to grips with. They’d fall into the Tank archetype, where others are Support and Healers, and excel in being at the front and taking a lot of damage. Whatever the character and their specialisation, you have to work well as part of a team, which is especially true online and in the Incursion game mode that Gearbox have unveiled today.
Of the three competitive modes in Battleborn, this is the most MOBA-like, albeit in a very simplified form. Instead of three lanes between bases with defensive towers lining the route, there’s effectively just the one lane, and each side has two shielded sentinel robots placed in sequence. Kill both of the enemy sentinels and you win the match.
However, you can’t do this on your own; a Sentinel will take out a player in a matter of seconds, so you need to escort minions and protect them as they head towards the nearest sentinel. Of course, the other side has been tasked with the same job, and so there’s a rolling battlefront that swings back and forth through the middle of the map.
There’s also a little bit of the so-called Jungle. There’s side routes where you can battle with some more powerful adds and minions, where defeating them allows you to summon them as tougher minions to give your side the edge. They also make for a great point of distraction, allowing you to get around behind the enemy in certain places.
Getting those enemy hero kills is all important to making progress. It gives you an XP boost early on, letting you level up quicker, pick between the two sides of the in-match Helix levelling system and unlock your ultimate sooner. It also sends the downed heroes to the sin bin for a short time before they can respawn. The time spent waiting is longer toward the end of the match, making it a crueller punishment that can be decisive. It’s always much better to recognise you’re in danger, pull back and teleport back to base to get your health back.
Compared to the other two multiplayer modes, Incursion is a fascinating shift. Though it clearly has those MOBA inspirations, it’s the other modes which force teams to split up. Devastation has you battling over three control points, while Meltdown has two lanes down which minions march to try and be fed to rogue machines. Having something that focuses so clearly on one spot at any given time feels like it will be a great change of pace.
If multiplayer really isn’t your thing, then there’s no need to worry, as Battleborn has a story campaign to work through in co-op as well, which we’ll be talking about in the not too distant future. However, with three varied modes and tons of contrasting characters to pick from, the game also seems like it will have plenty to offer for those who enjoy the competitive side of things.