Bleeding Edge (XOne) - Review
by Lee Mehr , posted on 07 April 2020 / 6,415 Views
Years after grinding on a pet project originally intended as a MOBA, Ninja Theory’s Bleeding Edge was introduced as their newest IP with Xbox Game Studios. When considering its aims there was reason to be suspicious. For one, an acclaimed narrative-focused developer sidelining its strongest qualities for arena brawling is uncharacteristic; likewise, I doubt I’m alone in saying their gameplay is typically among their weakest virtues. But being placed in a creative corner can sometimes work wonders. After dozens and dozens of matches, those confines have resulted in one of their most mechanically rewarding games to date.
"Sometime in the future..." cybernetic augmentations have become a reality, as have the dystopic conditions often found in these cyberpunk narratives. Daemon and his anarchic misfits have other plans in mind. Enter an underground fighting ring called ‘The Bleeding Edge.’ Teams of four duke it out with the hopes of amassing an army to challenge the corrupt system.
As stated before, this background is surface-level context about the fights with hints of a structured narrative later. Like that of Overwatch or Rainbow Six: Siege, each character has a backstory in their bio with the potential for video supplements expanding upon that in the future. Outside of audio barks or pre-game chatter, don't expect much dialogue or grander narrative stakes at play; yet, even with this consideration, I'm still fond of the attitude and exuberance emanating from these misfits.
For what little is done from the writing perspective, the diversified roster sells me on the gameplay. The rundown on character roles is straightforward: damage, support, and tank. Within each of these categories come sub-categories of melee or ranged. Aside from the emphasis on melee combat and the third-person perspective, everything I'm describing will be familiar to someone who's played hero shooters like Overwatch or Paladins. But for all the snark brought up when comparing it to Overwatch's general aesthetic and attitude, this formula feels more enticing by not constraining you into a singular role.
Although I don't want to knock Overwatch's streamlined approach too hard, I'd say one of the toughest hurdles to returning is the expected job rendered by whichever hero's selected. The rote mechanical understanding can be fun, but experimentation is still limited. While Bleeding Edge is in a different subgenre, the focus remains the same. The disparate choices of a hero’s two supers combined with the plurality of unlockable mods grants greater flexibility. There's an assumption of your role but a nuanced split in playstyles should you make an effort to develop them.
For someone who—typically—does an ordered breakdown of the base mechanics first, I sure did jump on the Overwatch comments, huh? Considering the comparisons surrounding it, I think it's important to firstly delineate on design ethos before baseline mechanics. And these mechanics may rank as Ninja Theory's best to date.
Their fondness for melee combat is well-incorporated and expanded upon in both mechanical and visual nuance. Basic attacks are relegated to one button (X in this case), with three disparate abilities (RB/Y/B buttons) on cooldowns, and one selected super (LB) on a countdown. With defensive counters being evades and parries, the overall set list is easy to grasp. This is complemented by several ranged combatants as well. The number of abilities and supers are the same, and primary attack is relegated to the X button, but how they're forced to consider their range and location can be crucial in protracted fights.
Outside of learning and sharpening your skills in Training, the meat of the game is currently split between two modes: Objective Control and Power Collection. Control is your go-to territory capture mode where three specific locations will activate in phases. The A, B, and C locations aren't activated all at once, so fights will occasionally funnel into capturing one point. Power Collection is about breaking scattered canisters during the collection phase and dropping them off at an unlocked site during the delivery phase. It's possible for your character to amass over twenty at a time, but it's incumbent on you to deliver them. Failure to survive or re-entering your spawning base results in all of them being up for grabs.
That, shall we say, clinical explanation doesn't sound so exciting on its own. But the elements around those modes feel scientifically suited to me. One of Bleeding Edge's biggest boons would be the length of each match. The demand to reach 600 control points or 50 power cells (with kills contributing to the total) gives ample time for losing teams to make strong comebacks. Those matches where my team was initially down but managed to win by the margins have been among my favorite gaming moments of this year.
Extended match times aside, the design ethos around maneuvering and combat also feels deliberately slower: movement speed is toned down, it takes nearly two seconds to transition to your vehicular state, the respawn timer is roughly twenty seconds, and your stamina timer for evading is quite limited. While it may seem constraining for an action-brawler to employ such limitations, it's not without purpose. It's like pulling back on a horse's reins. Giving such importance to your role and the opportunity for any character to retreat comes with advantages; those times of nearly killing someone make for nail-biting chases, but also leave you open to disregard the objective.
These are the kinds of considerations that fuel my excitement in understanding the game. A simple template is NOT the same as simplistic. This is made crystal-clear by the heightened emphasis on team-oriented play. Failure isn't limited to singular responsibility but also to misunderstanding your team's makeup and under-utilizing your role. All the interlocking cogs to consider with a squad's comparative advantages and disadvantages is part of what makes it so enticing.
What excites even more is just how fun it is play with this surprisingly balanced roster. The plurality of specializations ranging from trappers, harassers, heavy-hitters, and more feels substantial and engaging. While I won’t insinuate Ninja Theory released a balanced roster akin to Chess, I would compare it to Gigantic's 1.0 state; some tweaking is in order but any team configuration can be managed. The elder witch Maeve is the one most often accused of being OP. Although that’s technically true, I’m a bit apprehensive on the extent, since she is a glass cannon. Using a well-timed evade against her cage ability leaves her awfully vulnerable. And that's something to consider with each team formation: the ability to counteract your opponents is there. While I do believe nerfing some characters’ abilities should happen, my greatest defeats felt like actual lessons rather than gripe-fests about a stacked deck.
Another contributing factor to any character's appeal is the eccentric design and smooth-as-silk animations. Just like with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Ninja Theory utilize AAA-echelon expertise in this modest title. Whether it's the kinetic brute force of Buttercup’s uppercut or Níðhöggr’s death-metal inspired toolset, every move is clearly telegraphed and feels polished. Even innocuous extras, such as flecks of paint flying off Daemon’s sword with every swing, showcase aural & visual distinction between them that feels substantial. Although ranged characters don't stimulate the same lizard-brain sensations in hitting someone, sound foley and visual communication of their moves is crystal clear too.
Despite successes on such technical fronts it's not without annoyances on its artistic liberties; namely, the outlandishness of some characters can be grating. Most are refreshing, like a robotic snake controlling a mummified corpse, but a couple of duds are found. A tank like El Bastardo looks like a 40-something male dancer who has finished his Chippendale's shift and donned a cowboy hat as his best disguise. Even when examining the cast from a bird's eye view I understand the variety sometimes feeling too much for the sake of it. But when you get past wondering why a corpulent southern-belle human/motorcycle hybrid is there, the diversified designs act as complements to the game's chaotic nature—instead of distractions.
The elements of straightforward game design, upbeat tracks, and visually sumptuous chaos all give Bleeding Edge this unspoken harmony. One shouldn’t anticipate deep combat systems, but that’s not where the focus lies. It’s in the emphasis on presentation, whether considering the UI, vivid color usage, to the general polish (solid online infrastructure included), that makes it so rewarding. Even the urban-electronic soundtrack hits that perfect mood before, during, and after fights. The fact that David Garcia Diaz transitioned from the guttural, earthy tones of Hellblade to an upbeat revision of Jet Set Radio shows remarkable talent.
One of the most consistent qualms you'll find is the slim launch content; you can include this review to the list as well. Yet I'm still left not feeling the sting of it, all things considered. The first consideration comes down to the thirty-dollar retail price. While the drawbacks of having eleven characters, five unique maps, and two modes at launch warrants it being called slim, I simply find the dynamics across all the available content to be totally engaging. Each map is aesthetically distinct and well-crafted. The environmental gimmicks give them a special energy and I like learning the various pathways and shortcuts. Supplementary content like sundry hoverboard designs and fume trails are worth unlocking; that said, the current range of unlockable skins is a bit disappointing. All of these extras are purchasable exclusively with in-game currency, though perhaps that could change. In the end, my appeal to "quality over quantity" is intended to display my enthusiasm as merely dampened rather than outright deflated.
When it comes down to it, Ninja Theory should be applauded for stepping outside their comfort zone. By venturing into untrammelled territory, they had to concentrate on what's historically been a less-praised quality of their titles. Despite the odds and new ground broken, Bleeding Edge is a worthwhile multiplayer game that's incredibly satisfying across visual, audio, and mechanical fronts. In a generation of modestly-praised hero shooters & MOBAs failing to conjure a healthy audience, it's tough to say how the team will handle successive updates. But with the game we were given, I consistently internalized this thought after a match: "just one more game... just one more game." The mantra every multiplayer game strives towards.
VGChartz Verdict
8
Great
This review is based on a digital copy of Bleeding Edge for the XOne
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The game is pretty fun, not a master piece but a good alternative to Overwatch. I had an alright time playing it. Does need a good patch of content.
The roster is incredibly small. You need 8 characters just to have a match, and this game only has 11 at launch. That's like a fighting game with a roster of 3-5 characters. If they had launched with at least 16 characters I could see the game being fun, but as it is now, you're going to see so many mirror matches, and quickly get bored of the same heroes.
I like to use arguments that I think will convince the other side. Even if I think my original arguments are perfectly acceptable. People tend to get more interested that way. :P
Attacks and counters didn't have anything to do with my point. But I do agree that a well played team of mostly any makeup should be able to counter a team of mostly any other makeup. I'm just talking about how it's so easy to get bored with such a small roster.
And I don't mean mirror matches as in both teams having the exact same four heroes. I mean mirror matches as in there's almost always going to be the same character fighting on both teams. A match of league in which both top lanes are Garen, but all other lanes are different champions would be considered a Garen Top Lane Mirror match. This would look like Garen Top, Garen Top, Malz Mid, Fizz Mid, Warwick Jungle, Khazix Jungle, Cait Bot, Ash Bot, Janna Support, Thresh Support.
The game is incredibly one sided for most matches. This is because, like League of Legends, all it takes is a single player not sticking with the team, and off doing his own thing to throw the match. As far as I can tell the game lacks any rubber banding elements to allow a team to regain their balance. In League, if most of your team is dead you tower hug and farm. What do you do in this game if you have one or two downed teammates and the enemy team is being aggressive?
Having played way too much League in my life, bad players continue to be bad. When people do wise up, it's usually only after the opposing team fails to end the match quickly. League has ways of giving people time to recoup, and rethink. But even then, I'd say 70% of goofball players, keep wandering off on their own.
How does kiting or retreating to base help rubber band? I would imagine that a team of 4 can grab more power cells or claim more territory than a team of 3.
Being harsh for mistakes would be fine, if the game just ended once one team got a commanding lead. Games are fun when the outcome is unknown. When a team gets so far ahead that both sides already know the outcome, the match becomes less interesting. Maybe BE needs a vote to surrender button?
I really do think that players simply aren't going to adapt quickly enough. League's biggest problem is that it's free to play, easy to learn, but hard to master. This is just a recipe for getting a lot of players that wander off on their own, even after losing repeatedly. I think BE mirrors this recipe, and then adds a bit of fuel to the fire, making it even worse. BE isn't free to play, but it is easily accessible on Gamepass. And given that BE has abilities, and cooldowns just like league, it's pretty easy to pick up and learn. And I think we've already agreed that the game demands even more teamwork/positioning than League. So the hard to master checkbox is there too, alongside elements that exacerbate these issues.
I know it's still possible to make great comebacks, as your anecdote attests to. But I also think that unless Ninja Theory goes in to do a large overhaul of how matches work, a majority of matches will be one sided.
The art direction and character design are just bad as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I like the Snake Zombie, and the Ninja. But Buttercup, the Sumo guy, and Chicken Lady are all ugly as sin. El Bastardo is unoriginal and bland. It's like the entire game's art direction sits in this uncanny valley between cartoony, and realistic. Look at early Civ 6 characters for a good example of what I'm talking about. A lot of the cast are just overdesigned in general.
I wouldn't call it vibrant. There too much of an overuse on neon color here. When you make so many things a laserbeam, or bright light, or hot pink it just loses its strength. Think about how in the original Star Wars movies the only really bright things are lightsabers, engines, and laser beams. Everything else is mostly old degraded equipment. Bright things are either used sparingly, or take up little of a shot, so when they do get use, or dominate a shot, they are important. In contrast, your 3rd from last screenshot has at least five neon-thingys standing out. One character is entirely bathed in an orange neon light. Another is shooting a large yellow beam, that dominates the screenshot.
Your second screenshot is another good example of this. The neon lines in the belly of the sumo character, the hot pink all over the gun of the engineer, the glowing eyes, chest, belt, of the shaman. I swear, if these guys had designed Iron Man, they'd have given him an arc reactor on every major limb, and his crotch to boot!
So in rebelling against the principles of good character design, they are selling the tone of the world they live in?
Yeah, visual coherence should definitely be considered just as important as color, balance, proportion, unity, etc. But it shouldn't take precedence over all those other elements combined. If for example you write a game's main story about eyeball world, where every character is a mass of eyeballs, in human form, the character design sure is coherent. But having everyone, and everything be eyeballs isn't going to look good. Or at the very least it is going to be a massive challenge to make it look good, without sacrificing all those other elements of design.
Having played Jet Set Radio Future, I can say that it wasn't anywhere near as overdesigned, or in your face as some of these designs from BE are.
The 3rd-last picture as a bad example then. Sounds like you just snapped the camera as exactly the wrong point in time, where everybody was casting their ults or something. So I'll just withdraw that as an example.
If you like the Iron Man idea, I can see why you like the design of BE. It just rubs me the wrong way though.
Not in a million years.
This game sits at 66 on Opencritic. The overall critics' consensus is that this game is trash.
Critics aren't the general populous. They would be akin to well informed individuals in a particular field. But yeah, I'll discuss points when I have more time. COVID is really keeping me busy at work and doing a ton of OT right now. -_-
Throwing a collection of what other random people think isn't an argument. Throwing a collection of what several people who were paid to carefully consider a piece of art's merits is an argument. Argumentum ad populum isn't that much of a fallacy when dealing with subjective things.
Questionable history?
Consider the optics? The average consumer is misinformed and lacks taste. What they think of critics is irrelevant. The user scores for this game are right in line with the critic scores anyway, so for once they agree, that the game is bad.
P.S. I put actual criticisms of the game in another comment on this article.
P.P.S. Make that three comments. The system doesn't allow for paragraphs unless you are in a comment chain for some reason.
Not sure what you mean by your first sentence. Vgchartz isn't recognized by Opencritic as a "top outlet", and review articles on vgchartz don't even get a fraction of the audience as most other sites. So don't try to put yourself on their level. You're barely more than a random forum user. Coming to the table with extra arguments doesn't negate previous arguments.
Yes, yes, it's the other critics who are wrong! You are the only one that has been fair with this game! Those other critics with years, maybe decades, of writing and gaming under their belts, just don't know what they're talking about! Also the MSM is just wrong all the time about Trump! Only Fox news gets it right!
I don't need to pick a lane, because I'm using a dilemma style argument. If the average consumer's opinion is worthless, then your "consider the optics" comment is toothless, and you are wrong. If the average consumer's opinion has value, then they agree with critics and you are still wrong.
P.S. Sorry for the Fox comparison. I meant to edit, but the comments section is not a place for long forum posts. I can't even delete and rewrite here. -_-
The difference is that when something is subjective, and a large group of people like it that can be considered at least a strong inductive argument. It can be overthrown by multiple strong inductive arguments against it though, but it isn't considered an outright fallacy, in this context.
It's kind of hard to move the goalposts when Opencritic's criteria for what they consider a "top critic" hasn't changed in years. "Top Critics" are counted in the actual average score. Prominent youtubers, and smaller publications are listed on Opencritic, but not counted in the actual average score, due their longstanding policies. The goalposts weren't moved at all. You simply misunderstood where they stood from the beginning. All I did was open the playbook, and show you where they've been since the start. Or do you want to accuse the Opencritic team of retroactively conspiring against you?
I'm sorry that I asked you to go get a metaphorical stick,and you came back gleefully with an entire tree trunk. Now, I'm over here trying to explain that a stick and a tree trunk are two different things, and you're over there crying "MOVING THE GOALPOSTS!"
Does the other site you write for have recognition as a "top critic", under Opencritic's standards?
Yes, when it comes to subjective subjects nobody can be legitimately, objectively wrong. But you accused me of saying that "critics CAN"T be wrong/misguided". Your previous accusation flies in the face of what you are now admitting about subjective topics.
Just because something is subjective doesn't mean it lacks truth entirely. For example: If you were given the task of saving pieces of music from a doomed planet earth, would you solely pick out songs you personally liked? Or would you have the intelligence to try to save songs that were culturally or historically important? I have a feeling, given such a situation you would be frantically googling the history of music, and trying to save as much of the musical culture/history of earth as possible. Your own personal tastes would take a backseat. This is because how good food, or a game, or music, is can't be boiled down to "This is what I like, and this is what I don't like." There's something more to it than that. Something that I can't quite explain or put my finger on. But it is definitely there.
All those scores that contributed to the 66 Opencritic average came with their own 1500+ word reviews, and multiple inductive arguments of their own. If this were just a generic poll, where Top Critics simply submitted a score sans review text, you'd have a point here. But it's not. Again, all those reviews came with their own arguments. Please stop trying to regulate my argument to "Argumentum ad populum".
Expansionary language? Explaining the obvious isn't expansionary language. Do I have to define everything to a level that would make even a patent lawyer blush? C'mon man you know full well that there's a difference between polling the general populous and polling professional game critics.
Regular "Critics" on Opencritic aren't used in the Official Score. That shows how much they regard them.
I'll move past dishonest tricks of mindreading, when you move past the dishonesty of insisting that adding arguments is somehow an admission that previous arguments were wrong. Also, when you move past the dishonesty of repeatedly attempting to apply logical fallacies where they don't apply. Those two tactics of yours are a form of dishonest mind reading in themselves.
Got it the other site isn't registered as a Top Critic (hence you don't write for any important publications, which raises you to the level of little more than a blogger). Please ask your EIC why it isn't. Speculation on that front isn't going to get us anywhere. Also, if the site was good, and was around during the inception of Opencritic, it should have gotten grandfathered in. The fact that it didn't raises a red flag.
Well under your hypothetical, I almost certainly wouldn't say those things about those games. But suppose I did. Suppose you countered with "Other critics disagree". I would have taken that as a serious rebuttal, and not attempted to regulate it to "Argumentum ad populum" like you just did. I would have gone through what I felt were the most common complaints/praises from those other critics, and explained why I disagreed with them one by one. And in cases where I felt they were factually wrong, I would have shown why they were factually wrong. In fact, I've done all those things in these forums quite a few times. I'm sure you can find me doing those exact things in the old Xenoblade 2 review thread, or the Xenoblade discussion thread.
It's clear to me that you want to be a professional game critic, and yet when I point out that professional game critics largely disagree with you, you take offense. Why? This seems to me like someone that is semi-pro, wanting to go Pro, but gets angry whenever somebody points out that modern NFL players largely disagree with their training methods.
Sure, not every single reviewer would have written a 1500+ word paper. Perhaps some of them stopped at 990 words, or 1488 words. The point is, they all gave their own arguments, and weren't just dropping scores down, sans review text.
It's not the high score that disqualifies you from consideration, it's the lack of being marked as a Top Critic. I don't expect every single Top Critic to be picture perfect in their review scores. Everyone has that one game that they love, but most other people don't like. Or vice versa. A Top Critic occasionally getting a score here or there, way wrong (this usually happens once a year per critic), shows that they are human. What's important to me is the strength of all of their scores added together, and the strength of all of their praises/criticisms being considered as a whole.
What specifically are these other sites that have a lower Alexa score?
Right, and I had the accusation of you thinking all the other critics were wrong, based on your previous statements too. Quote-"I'm not going to respond with dull reasoning like "critics CAN'T be wrong/misguided."" But the difference here is that once you clarified that you mean critics can't be factually wrong, as opposed to wrong in their scoring, I dropped the accusation. You on the other hand have repeatedly tried to bend my words into some admission of my initial argument being dropped. Even after I explained to you that I prefer to use arguments that the other side will actually accept, regardless of actual validity. An argument can be sound, valid, and perfect in every way, but what's the point if the person you are trying to convince refuses to accept it? At the very least add in more arguments, that they might find convincing, even if you really want to keep on hammering home the initial argument, that you know they'll keep denying.
The Opencritic conspiring against you question was rhetorical, and the Fox News thing was intended to have been edited out. If this were a regular forum post you wouldn't have ever seen it.
Hmmm. Your explaination of how OC works seems contrary to their FAQ. Quote (Opencritic's FAQ) "Publications can submit review metadata themselves using OpenCritic's homegrown content management system (CMS). For more prominent and notable publications, OpenCritic uses web crawlers that scan for new reviews every 10-25 minutes. When the crawlers discover a new review, OpenCritic's system extracts the necessary review metadata."
But I get what you're saying. Basically this EIC hasn't submitted enough content to cross the Critic to Top Critic threshhold. What really gets me though, is if this other site you work for has been around since the PS2 days like you said, and if this mystery (to me) site carries as much weight as other publications, then why weren't they just grandfathered into Opencritic at the start? This raises a red flag for me. At least without knowing specifically what the other site is.
In general yes, I would accept a publication being on Metacritic/Gamerankings as a "Game Critic". For clarification, "Game Critic" in this sense would be regarded as synonymous with "Top Critic". But I can't guarantee this acceptation for every single publication that was included on Metacritic/Gamerankings. For example: If you were to reveal the other site you write for as Playboy, I'd scoff at it for obvious reasons. Or if you were writing for a resurrected Gametrailers.com, that was Gametrailers in name only, without any of the original staff, I'd scoff at that too. (Hypothetically, just imagine if some company bought all the rights to Gametrailers, and brought it back sans original staff.) There were a few sites on Metacritic/Gamerankings (MC/GR was run by the same company BTW) that just didn't have any business being included in any aggregate reviews gaming site.
I forgot to mention the film critics thing. I've always found that both film, and music critics are far less disciplined than book, or game critics. I think that has a lot to do with the huge difference in access accessibility between these four mediums. Watching a film is a relatively short ordeal. The same can be said for a lot of albums, but not all of them. The majority of games and books however, require a much larger time commitment to complete. The accessibility issue goes beyond time though. Lots of games require experience in the genre to review properly. If somebody were to review an RPG, during his first ever RPG playthrough gamers are sure to notice. On the flip side, somebody reviewing TLJ who knows very little of Star Wars, compared to even a modest fan, is going to get a free pass from most of the movie-going public.
Lee Mehr is it just a coincidence, that every PS4 exclusive you rate, you massively under score, compaired to metacritic.
While the oppersite seems true for xbox exclusives?
Essay Pro