Battleborn: With a slew of technical issues, boring campaign, repetitive character design use, and lack of fun at least multiplayer sometimes fun.
Hello my dear reader, and welcome to my review of Battleborn. I’ve played this game quite a bit in multiplayer the past few months alongside the lovely Ninjafiretruck. You’re probably wondering why I’ve waited this long to do a review on it, and the simple answer is I was waiting for a lot of the promised updates to kick in, which a lot have now. This won’t be your typical review; yes I will do a pros and cons, but I will be doing it as my alter ego, Brooklyn Rage. So let’s hop right on in…
Easy to use and easy to bruise!
The game mechanics are fairly simple to grasp. As you play your character and level them during a match or campaign mission, you slowly build a skill tree which makes you stronger. Sounds simple enough, and it is. However, that becomes simple only after using a character several times and learning what each skill plateau does. This can become cumbersome mid match as you make yourself an easy target while choosing your upgrades, so make sure to do it while you’re in the comfort of your base or hidden away. I believe an easier way to have incorporated a skill tree would be an offset on the screen which allows you to quickly elect a skill from a button combo i.e. R1 + △.
Additionally, each match type has an objective. At this time they do not feature a slayer only play list, and most of the matches consist of escorting small robots or taking a point. There is one match type that I find to be fun which plays a lot like Kill Confirmed from COD, but with A.I. At this time they are very limited in their game type options and matchmaking can become dull if you’re not playing with a friend or two. Another thing to point out is that more often than not, the community doesn’t utilize the in game chat system, and this game does require a lot of communication. Now that we have all the pros out of the way, it’s time to get into the cons….
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!” is something I constantly asked myself as I played this game. Look, I understand thousands of hours go into developing a game and that it takes a toll on the developers. However, there are several times those playing this game will realize that Gearbox is either dumb or lazy. There are a small amount of maps available to the general public, and the lack of variety when it comes to game types hurts. I understand that in a sense this game is still new in the larger scheme of things, but it’s been out for almost a year now and features a slew of issues including horrendous frame rate drops when certain characters use a specific ability and characters that need balancing overall. I’ve personally reached out to the company for some feedback and have only been met with deaf ears. This is typically a bad sign, as I watched the company only respond to compliments but avoid any discussion when it comes to game breaking issues. All I was asking was if they were aware and received nothing as a response. Now I don’t want to go into a true blue tirade about their multiplayer, which can be fun at times. In the end you’ll have to judge this game yourself. Just make sure to buy a used copy as I don’t believe the multiplayer is deserving of $60.00 and is easily obtainable at Gamestop for $10.
Campaign: The Lack Luster Years!
My sentiments exactly Thorn
There are many words to describe this campaign, but I only offer a few. This has been the worst campaign I have played since the uber lack luster campaign that was Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and is very akin to Aquaman 64 not only in scale but repetition. Firetruck and I found ourselves constantly using foul language as it became apparent that the person behind the scripting for this game had no idea what they were doing. Every stage is unique in only one aspect, environment. After that you can readily expect the exact same enemies over and over and over again. Whoever thought this was a good idea, shame on you. Gearbox could’ve at least easily reskinned the A.I., but chose not to. It’s a decision that was extremely poor on their behalf.
Literally how the campaign loops folks.
Additionally, you do the exact same missions which consist of either escorting a spider bot to a certain location or surviving the oncoming waves of A.I. while protecting a generator. I’ve seen gerbils with more imagination. I would also like to point out that after the first three missions, everything just becomes a survive the wave while protecting the generator kind of deal. The very last mission, which offers up the main boss in conjunction with some mini bosses, is easily beaten. At no point during the final battle did Firetruck or I feel like we may lose. By the way, it also featured survive the wave again. I can genuinely say outside of making fun of the horrible decisions implemented by Gearbox, I had no fun with this campaign and wouldn’t recommend playing it to my worst enemy. (Check out our rage induced game play video.)
FINAL SCORE! 3 out of 10
It’s not often I feel something is deserving of such a low score but with its slew of technical issues, horrendously boring campaign, repetitive character design use, and lack of fun the most I could give this game is a 3 for sometimes being fun in multiplayer. I wish Gearbox had stepped up like they did with Borderlands 2, but this just falls short of being the worst game I have ever played campaign wise. I hope for their sake that the sequel to this brings their “A” Game. My dear readers, this has been the Brooklyn Rage edition of Rsmokey. Thanks for stopping by, and remember to avoid this one like the plague.
I wanted to include this… so I’ll just leave this here as I try to cool down from playing this game. Later Gators!
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