The interactive entertainment industry knows many examples where the lack of pressure on the developer from the publisher generated interesting projects. On the other hand, insufficient control can lead to the appearance of unclaimed products, which have become the embodiment of the old fantasies of several people in the ranks of the authors.
Today we’ll try to figure out which category the multiplayer action belongs to. Bleeding edge from Ninja theory.
After the acquisition of the studio by the company Microsoft in 2018, many eagerly awaited the next announcement, being impressed by the latest work of the British – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. A gloomy plunge into the abyss of the Scandinavian hell proved to the world that it is quite possible to release a game with a powerful history, an interesting idea and a picture of the level of leading blockbusters, being in the most severe budgetary framework and without the support of the publisher.
Naturally, everyone expected only a masterpiece with a deep plot and emotional characters from the new project with the financial support of Microsoft. Unfortunately, instead we got Bleeding Edge – a network action game focusing on close combat. It is not surprising that his announcement was a real disappointment for everyone.
Nevertheless, the multiplayer orientation of the game is not a sentence at all. With proper implementation, a strong online project can prove the studio’s ability to adequately step into the territory of new genres. But did Ninja Theory do it?
Bleeding Edge is a multi-player team action game in which battles take place in 4×4 format. The basis of the gameplay is the use of various heroes, divided into classes and possessing unique active and passive skills, as well as special ultra-abilities.
The set of classes is standard for similar games. You can choose from: tanks necessary to distract enemy attacks on yourself, support heroes whose task is to heal and temporarily increase the characteristics of your comrades, and fighters focused on dealing damage.
In total, the game has 12 characters, including the recently announced Mecco dolphin, which has not yet been uploaded to the server. This is not much, but they are quite different from each other, even within the same class. Moreover, even the same character can be played a little differently due to the ability to choose the type of “ult” – for each of the characters in two ways.
Characters can inflict damage to the enemy with the help of a basic attack (three or four times pressing the hit button adds up to a simple combo, but no more) and with the help of abilities, of which three are allocated for each. They are activated by pressing a separate button. This can be attacking skills for tanks and soldiers or aimed at increasing the survival of a squad of support skills (healing, improving the characteristics of allies and their deterioration for opponents).
Ultimate attack becomes available as soon as a special scale is filled. But the problem is that for almost everyone, ultra-ability is not felt as something special. IN Overwatch timely applied ultra-ability is often able to withstand the entire enemy team. There is nothing of the kind here at all. As a rule, the hero performs an attack that does a little more damage or even receives a temporary boost to the characteristics.
In addition, at your disposal are blocks, jumps, dodges, fast movements on a hoverboard and so on.
