Right: Unique, Great Feeling Combat
In my review of Bleeding Edge I wasn’t always kind, but the most important thing that Ninja Theory got right without a doubt was the combat. If you’re a fan of brawlers and beat-em-ups, Bleeding Edge does feel great to play and is absolutely worth a shot.
Every character has a set of basic and advanced combinations unique to their play style and of course a suite of special attack abilities that define them.
For example, Daemon is a ninja/samurai-like character that can go stealth and sneak up behind other characters to unleash powerful combos and special moves. Gizmo, on the other hand, is also a damage dealer hero, but she prefers to set up turrets and combine them with her minigun for slower, but steadier, ranged sustained damage.
You can dodge and evade attacks easily, perform get-up attacks reminiscent of fighting games, and some characters have movement skills that stand out from the rest.
Buttercup rides a motorized unicycle and instead of evading, she can just simply drive away for a limited time. Cass can’t even mount like the other characters and instead, she uses her cybernetic legs. After a few seconds to build up speed, she can run around the battlefield as if she was on a mount to chase down enemies.
Although I wish there were more characters to experiment with, and I’ll get to that in just a second, the ones that Bleeding Edge does have are fun to play with and thrive in the battlefield that Ninja Theory has created.
Wrong: Lack of Characters, Game Modes and Maps
Bleeding Edge only has 11 characters at launch with a 12th coming out in the near future. Even if we count the twelve, it’s not enough to keep things varied for very long. With only three tanks and three supports at launch, it’s not long before you’ve seen most of the possible party makeups. For comparison’s sake, Overwatch had 21 and Battleborn had 25.
This is compounded even further by the lack of game modes and maps to play them on. There’s only two modes: Control Points and Power Collection.
Control Points are your standard stand on a spot and hold it to gain points, and Power Collection has you and your team competing with the opposition to find Power Cells across a map and then safely transport them to a collection point without getting killed and dropping them.
Both of the modes are fine, but that’s all there is at launch and they get repetitive quickly. That problem isn’t helped by the fact that there are only five maps at launch, and while they are also fine they get old fast too.
Maybe at the start of a console generation when the competition is thin this would have been enough, but with the competition as thick as it is now, it’s just not enough to cut it.
Right: Teamwork is Rewarded
If you’re someone that wants a deep team experience than you’ll be very satisfied with what Bleeding Edge has on offer.
Perhaps more than any game I’ve played in recent memory, success in Bleeding Edge relies on working together as a cohesive unit with your three teammates.
This is because there’s not a whole lot that a super-skilled player can do to hold off a 1v2 or a 1v3 attack from the opposing team. Without support, they will eventually either go down, or be forced to run away and give up their position.
The team that communicates well, picks a balanced party composition and intelligently pursues players and objectives will win the vast majority of the time even if there’s a god-like player on the other squad.
Wrong: Lack of Role and Solo Queue
Conversely though, while yes, teamwork is rewarded in Bleeding Edge, there’s not a whole lot of consideration for the solo players that don’t have anyone to play with.
Players will be at the mercy of the matchmaking gods to give them a team that communicates or at the very least is willing to be open about what hero they pick to balance out the team. If you don’t get either of those things, you’re going to have a bad time in Bleeding Edge.
What Bleeding Edge really needed, at launch, is a role queue, something that funnels and locks players into a specific role such as tank or support, and rewards players for taking up roles in need; and also a solo queue that creates games out of exclusively solo players so everyone is on an even playing field all of the time.
The lack of a ranked mode at launch hurts too, but that is at least confirmed to be on the way eventually.
Published: Mar 26, 2020 04:13 pm