Reviews// Battleborn

But the similarity to Borderlands doesn’t always work in Battleborn’s favour. If you haven’t played then you might not understand this analogy but bear with me. Claptrap is a recurring character and something of a fan-favourite in the Borderlands series. He is equal parts entertaining and irritating, many of the game's laughs come at his expense thanks to his overwhelming ego, despite a lack of self-awareness and competence.

In Battleborn every character is like Claptrap. They’re all fountains of wacky dialogue and weird personality quirks and frankly annoying voices. It’s too much. I found Borderlands very funny for the most part, but anyone who thought that the later DLC additions to Borderlands 2 were too overdosed in zany antics and parody will probably want to steer clear of this.

Earlier on in its life cycle Borderlands was played fairly straight while occasionally throwing oddball moments and Easter eggs into the mix that became highly memorable because they stood out. In Battleborn the formula has degraded into a constant barrage of jokes and juvenile bad language where anything rarely hits home as being particularly funny. It has the slightly embarrassing air of somebody who thinks they’re being hilarious while everyone is just quietly and politely waiting for them to stop talking. Or maybe I’m just a lot grumpier than I was four years ago when Borderlands 2 came out.

Working to unlock new characters can be fun. As a new player you’ll be hitting new unlocks at a steady pace just by experimenting with the default starting roster in different matches. But once you’ve started building up a larger roster it can be hard to find new ways to level up fresh characters. Repeating earlier campaign missions can get old pretty fast, but heading into online competition as an unfamiliar character without access to some of your character’s ability choices can stack the deck against you more than you’d like.

Most of the missions are also very impractical to complete using the less-traditional characters – focused healers may lack the firepower to succeed and strictly melee fighters may struggle to even approach some bosses. Fortunately you can use matchmaking to team up with other players and take on these missions, but that doesn’t fully excuse just how restrictive these missions can be to solo players.

At its core Battleborn’s multiplayer gameplay is great. It’s fun, fast-paced, and its genre-blending style stands out from most console shooters. And on their own merits the story missions are more than serviceable as well, if considerably more enjoyable when played with other players. The problems with Battleborn really stem from how hard it is for those two areas to coexist.

So many features work well in one mode but to the detriment of the other and vice-versa. If people head into this expecting a regular shooting game without being aware of the heavy utilisation of MOBA elements there’s a chance they’ll be left very frustrated. Similarly anyone who isn’t looking for an almost entirely multiplayer experience will struggle here. The story missions really don’t offer much replayability to solo players at all. But if you know what to expect and are on board with the genres involved then the online multiplayer is very solid and if Gearbox manage to support Battleborn with some quality updates and build a devoted community behind it then this game could keep you coming back for more for a long time.

Pros:
+ Levelling up characters and completing challenges is addictive.
+ Offers a fresh and different spin on the typical FPS formula.
+ Varied characters provide plenty of fun gameplay styles.
+ Occasionally quite funny.

Cons:
- A little light on different game modes.
- MOBA elements might not be to FPS fans’ tastes.
- Levelling up abilities during multiplayer matches can be awkward.
- Often painfully unfunny.

SPOnG score: 7/10