Gearbox has announced Battleborn‘s upcoming game modes, which include solo, co-operative, and competitive play styles.
When Gearbox first rolled out Borderlands, it played like some bizarre mash-up of disconnected genres. This was a first-person, four-player shooter emphasizing RPG-style leveling and looting – and was so unique that gamers immediately fell in love with it. Now Gearbox is trying to pull off the same mash-up magic with its latest IP Battleborn – although this time the mash-up has a MOBA twist. When completed, Battleborn will offer 25 heroes – each with their own personalities and weapons – who can level up over the course of individual story missions and multiplayer matches.
Battleborn‘s gameplay is built around the Helix System, which allows characters to go from Level 1 to 10 within a single match. But there will be persistent elements as well – experience can be put towards Character and Command ranks. Your hero’s Character Rank lets you unlock skins and swap out augments from a skill tree. Meanwhile, the Command Rank levels up player profiles with badges, titles, and loot.
That’s all very MOBA-sounding, but there’s still quite a bit of variety within the actual gameplay modes. Battleborn‘s single-player campaign lets players fight alone, or with up to five friends, to save the last star in the universe, and can be experienced solo, split-screen, or online. Meanwhile, Battleborn also includes three competitive multiplayer modes. Incursion is a horde survival mode, where you defend a base from enemy minions while fighting alongside friendly minions of your own. Devastation is your more traditional multiplayer fare, challenging players to capture and hold key objectives around the map. Finally, Meltdown has teams protect minions who are marching into an incinerator at the center of the map, with points earned for every minion who reaches it.
Whether you’re looking for Gearbox’s latest co-operative story, or are more interested in the varied multiplayer, Battleborn sounds like it could have something for every player. We’ll find out more when the game launches this winter – but I suspect Gearbox will also have lots to say at E3 2015.
Battleborn will be available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
