Battleborn Capture Mode Is The Borderlands Multiplayer You Always Wanted

The carefully curated chaos of an MMO-on-speed. 

My first-hand experience with Gearbox Software so far has been limited almost entirely to Aliens: Colonial Marines, so playing Battleborn at a recent San Francisco event gave me a very different experience. The first hour or so of gameplay I got to try was the co-op campaign, which was covered in our earlier E3 preview. The section of campaign I played involved taking down ISIC, who becomes one of the 25 playable characters after his defeat; in the section we played, he was being guarded by a giant robotic spider named Geoff who has identity issues. The focus of the event, however, was competitive multiplayer, and we got a lot of time with it.

We started with Capture, a 5-on-5 team-based deathmatch mode with three capturable positions on the map that conferred points the longer you remained in control of them, which gave us a good idea of how differently characters interacted versus live enemies as opposed to the campaign's MMO-like structure. The second game type, Meltdown, another 5-v-5 mode, involved shepherding a series of lane-unit minions into the maw of an AI-turned-deranged-tiki-god demanding robotic sacrifices, invoking a MOBA-like mini-game similar to SMITE (albeit with only one lane) with upgradable turret defenses that could also be destroyed to increase the player and team's point values.

Battleborn lives and dies on the character balance and the co-operative team play of different characters. This doesn't end with multiplayer, but the balance does shift. In the campaign, having the fungus-themed healer, Miko, in your party was extremely important to keep members alive. In the multiplayer mode this becomes much less of an issue, since there's no limit on respawns the way there is in the campaign. Maximizing offensive capabilities becomes much more important, but how you do so really depends on your style of play.

In both modes, a character like Rath, the vampire-like dual sword-wielding member of the Jennerit Empire, could quickly become all but invincible if the player leveled him up quickly early on (easy to do when the other characters are at a low level). His special abilities could be upgraded to add an attack that temporarily blinds his opponents and an almost unstable whirlwind attack. 

This is contrasted with characters like Montana, the giant mini-gun-toting, trucker hat-wearing goliath, who the player has to build into the tank he appears to be by progressively leveling him up, which can be done by taking down enemies in both modes, capturing points in Capture, or building lane defenses and taking out lane units in Meltdown. As the characters leve, you can choose between defensive versus offensive options and sometimes elemental effects which can be added to special attacks.

Different playstyles favor different characters (though pretty much everyone I played with felt Rath was a mite bit overpowered in the build we played). A character like Oscar Mike was ideal for players comfortable with military shooters, while those who liked to get in close and dirty might favor Dwarven axe-fighter Boldur and those who want more distance will like the longer ranged options like the gentlemanly robot sniper Marquis.

 

As someone who favors a support role in online shooters and MMOs, I found myself comfortable controlling Ambra, whose magic can slowly drain the shields—and afterward the lifeforce—of nearby enemies by siphoning it out with her staff, effectively the offensive counterpart to mushroom man Miko's defensive healing abilities. Hiding behind a large compatriot, like Montana or ISIC, to draw fire while siphoning away enemy shields made for solid teamwork.

While my first-hand experience with Gearbox's flagship Borderlands may be low, the humor and emphasis on balanced co-operative play clearly has carried over to Battleborn, albeit with adding a fifth playable companion and MMO-style combat roles… but without the tedium that often seems to drag down MMO combat. Battleborn manages to keep the fast-pace of a third-person shooter in both campaign and multiplayer. There may be some possible balancing issues that need tweaking—the aforementioned issues with Rath being unstoppable—but the dedicated character roles are all individually fun to play, even if their strengths weren't always immediately clear without the right team to back them.

Battleborn is shaping up to be a very slick game in both the co-op campaign and multiplayer, replete with the trademark humor Gearbox is known for. The stripped down not-quite cel-shaded art style has allowed for Gearbox to pack the game full of elaborate visual effects, making the game a beautiful font of visual chaos during high-intensity encounters. It's a hell of a lot of fun.