I wanted to quote myself and re-examine the opinion I posted early on in this thread. I initially came away from the game with a pretty negative impression and I even went as far as to delete the beta. I decided I perhaps hadn't given it enough of a chance and redownloaded it, now I really enjoy it.
Went into this optimistic but I came out disappointed.
Animations are crap, texturing is awful and even if we resign to the idea that it's intentionally low quality in order to keep up with the action on screen (it shouldn't need to be when games like Titanfall can be equally chaotic yes visually, several grades above this), various visual elements stand out as being super-low resolution.
Even the AA solution is poor, heck there's aliasing all over the character select menus even. It's a very ugly game.
As for how it plays? It's okay. I only played a few rounds, and two co-op matches, but I found it felt rather monotonous, the game appears quite orientated towards coordination and team work, with AoE abilities, stuns and such, but with the janky and over the top animations, the game just looks much more visually busy than it needs to.
Heck, as a very basic example when Oscar Mike reloads, his arm covers more than half of his screen. It's visually obstructive without reason and I don't feel that much attention has been placed on how this may negatively impact the games design. That's an issue at the most basic level, but speaking more generally powers gunfire, animations etc. all interact to make an experience that's not that comfortable to play visually, and this has a cascading affect on how enjoyable the game is to play.
In regards to the singleplayer / co-op play, I found this very mindless. High health makes it very forgiving, and I found myself playing passively after a very short span of time. Enemies are bullet sponges and do not adapt or enforce immediate consequnces to your mistakes, therefore you can get into a habbit of holding R2 mindlessly until the game begins warning you that your shields are gone, or your low on health, then take cover for a bit. Even if you die, you simply respawn, no big deal. I'm sure there are difficulties which make this more engaging, but that doesn't help the gameplay overall, it should be entertaining at a basic level, and it just isn't for me. I shouldn't be falling asleep playing the missions on normal difficulty. They were very reminiscent of strikes on Destiny. About the same in quality, though I appreciate that the dialogue was better in Battleborn.
Stacked upon other issues, such as the lack of offline singleplayer and co-operative options, I don't see myself enjoying this. I have my hopes on Overwatch instead.
Reflecting back on a lot of this, most of what I say isn't wrong. Some of the animations do appear to lack appropriate weight and impact to them, in general they are very fast, which as I say, causes them to laugh weigh, but I inflated this issue to be more significant than it is, and it could be argued as part of the games style.
The artstyle and amount of aliasing however can't be excused. Going between this and an equally visually chaotic game like Plants Versus Zombies Garden Warfare 2 (which is in fact, much more chaotic with 24 player online multiplayer and an equal number of effects, abilities and NPCs, it's hard to understand why Battleborn does not perform and look better than it does. There is a good amount of aliasing that really hinders what the game wanted to achieve, and the framerate appears to run at 30 per seconds on console (?) which isn't really excusable when similar games (like Paragon) look a lot better while managing to maintain 60 frames per second.
With that said, when forming my initial opinion these issues about its technical performance were overrepresented as I did not spend enough time with the game to determine if I enjoyed its gameplay or not. Having spent a good 5 more hours on the beta, mainly focused on the multiplayer component I have come to really enjoy it. It feels strategic like games like Smite and Paragon, but yet the first person camera makes the experience feel more visceral. Mechanically the game has a different focus, as there's more of an mix of skillful control, map awareness and strategy than in other games. For instance, accuracy is not a persistently demanding factor in a game like Smite or Paragon. I can play most of the characters I play there without much issue, landing powers can be a challenge, but it's not especially tricky to become very consistent with them. In Battleborn there's a lot more depth to this side of the mechanics, and landing your basic attacks and powers is respectively a lot more challenging, this then promotes manual control as a significant factor when determining your success in a match.
More over, one of the really cool aspects of this game is how diverse the cast is. In games like Smite, and Paragon most of the characters can be categorised into specific archetypes, and then from there their moves represent one of several options for that archetype, but very rarely are they especially unique. Together the unique combination of abilities, passives and the damage on these moves makes a unique character, but it's very uncommon for many character abilities not to appear elsewhere. For instance, Hou Yi and Neith are both Hunters, they both have an escape, a ranged stun, an AoE, and a high damage basic attack. These attacks take different forms, but they're often used very similarly. Now if we compare Thorn to Marquis on Battleborn, we have two hugely different characters whose moves have very little overlap. I think that element of the game is really unique. It's really cool having to dedicate quite a bit of time to each character in order to really understand how to play them, and not being able to pick them up immediately because they fit a similar archetype.
In this regard at a raw gameplay, controlling your character, using your powers at the right times, landing your hits. I would say the game has a greater level of complexity than other, similar games. I believe that this is supported well by the focus on these gameplay aspects, with some of the strategic factors removed (Incursion features just one lane and items are simplified to merely needing to choose from 3). I think this makes the game much more accessible for newcomers from the strategic side, and also makes the game more enjoyable for people that want their performance determined by their ability to control their character and co-ordinating with their team. For me, this has made the game really refreshing and enjoyable to play.
One element that my initial post places heavy criticism on, is how I did not immediately enjoy the co-operative modes. In hindsight, when I was playing these co-operative gametypes I was playing with friends who did not enjoy them either, and that did not help. Furthermore, as I became more invested with a character, I found the co-operative missions more appealing as I wanted to replay missions to see how well my character fared, and hopefully unlock some new items to use with them. Once contextualised around an experience I already enjoyed (the PVP multiplayer) these co-operative modes made much more sense to me, and I simply enjoyed playing them a lot more. I can see myself using these modes as a way of taking a break from PVP, and as a means of try to learn new characters.
In regards to my crticsms of the overall business of the game. All I can say on this is that I have felt like it all begins to make a lot more sense the more you play, and as the cast is quite small, it's fortunately relatively easy to learn matchups and understand everything that's going on. The map icons help a lot too, as even though you can't see an enemy behind you, you can know what their doing based on the class they are. For instance when I see Rath behind me, I know he's hitting me with a stupid sword, so I place an AoE at my feet and run away. When I began playing at first, I wasn't aware of what each character did and it made it difficult to supplement my knowledge taken from the field of view ahead of me with the additional information that is provided via the in-game map. It would be nice however if the icons on this map could be a little clearer, as even on my 50" television it feels as though they are only barely recognizable at times.
The biggest problems I see the game having stem from gameplay balance and a lack of refinement in some particular areas. The game should be running at 60 frames per second, and characters like Alma have unjustifiable efficacy. With that said, I think the overall balance seems decent for early days, and provided they do not flood the game with characters, instead focusing on refining and balancing the existing cast, Battleborn could evolve into something truly brilliant.
I'll conclude this with a brief some of my pros and cons on the game, as others have done similar earlier on in the thread
- Pro
- Unique and creative character designs
- Gameplay is contextualised within a charming and creative universe, supplemented by lore and story missions
- Artstyle is very pleasant, especially on the more lucious jungle maps
- Raw moment to moment gameplay is very fun, much more in-touch with the action than its contemporaries
- Unique character playstyles add ample depth to the games mechanics
- Both gametypes are very enjoyable, and very different
- Simplified itemisation places more emphasis on moment to moment gameplay, which I like
- Character level and global progression systems in the form of challenges and a 'level' system encourage repeated play across varied gametypes and multiple characters. Helps you develop a sense of ownership with a character.
- Con
- Can be chaotic at times, especially if you're a melee base character
- Some balance issues, certain characters have unjustifiably high efficacy in certain scenarios
- At times I found that I became stuck on or between other NPCs, this is annoying
- Technical performance while stable and tolerable, does not match its competition, in neither fidelity or fluidity
- The game should have LAN options, with everything unlocked
Over the past few days I went from really disliking the game, to deciding to buy it when it launches. I've had and am having a lot of fun with the beta and I'm sure I will continue to do so over the final four days (though Ratchet and Clank and Dark Souls III are not helping). I find the whole game really endearing, for some reason. I feel more connected to the characters and universe than I do in other MOBAs, and for me that's a great feeling. One concern I have though, is just how popular this game is going to be. I feel that Gearbox have messed up with the marketing, and should have sold it as a 'Borderlands type game with a really cool set of MOBA mutiiplayer modes. It's not that the game is bad or anything like that, it's just that $60 is a lot for this type of game and I'm not sure the marketing model fits the content on offer. Either way, I absolutely love it and will be picking it up come may third.
Long post, but if you read any of it, then thank you.
