Developed by Ninja Theory
Published by Microsoft
Released for Xbox One (3/24/2020)
Also on PC
Bleeding Edge was released in late March 2020, brought to us by Ninja Theory and is a class-based, team-centric online-multiplayer 4v4 brawler. I enjoyed the previous games from these developers, though I was bit skeptical coming into Bleeding Edge since multiplayer was never really something Ninja Theory had dipped into before. With Ninja Theory being purchased by Microsoft in June 2018, Bleeding Edge was featured on Game Pass from day one, making it easy to check it out if you're on the fence about it like I was, so let's take a look at the game and see if it's worth the download...
Bleeding Edge features a colorful art-style and characters with over-exaggerated traits that look a bit cartoony, similar to the styles of Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch. The levels themselves look nice and the game makes great use of bright colors. The music fits the theme well, though I can't say I found any of it particularly memorable. The sound design is about what you'd expect, with lots of appropriate hi impact sound effects and quips from the colorful roster. Menus are clean and easy to navigate, so overall Bleeding Edge does a nice job in the visual and sound presentation. Despite the fact that the word bleeding is in the title, those expecting buckets of blood will be disappointed that there really isn't much to speak of here and the depiction of violence is not graphical in nature.
There were a total of 12 characters to choose from as of April 2020. The fighters are broken up into classes, with 5 damage characters, 3 supports and 4 tanks. Each character have unique move sets, with a normal attack, 3 special attacks and 1 super move. The special attacks have a recharge after each use, so you can't just sit there and spam the best moves. The super moves can only be used every so often, featuring a longer recharge than the special attacks but inflicting more damage. Upon selecting a character, each has 2 different super moves to select from. Each fighter can be customized under the workshop, which can be accessed from the main menu. From here you can change up mods, boards, emotes and skins in addition to reading that fighter's bio. Mods will give little boosts to certain skills or stats and up to 3 of these can be applied at once, allowing you to customize to your playstyle a bit. Additional mods can be purchased or they will be slowly unlocked as you just keep playing. Boards, emotes and skins allow you to select between a couple variants in each category. Other than starting out with a handful of boards, you'll have to purchase all of these. Currency unlocks very slow, so only those in it for the long haul will get to see many of these. Overall it's an interesting character roster offering a good amount of options and a reasonable amount of customization. When I first started playing Bleeding Edge, there were only 3 tank characters available. By the time I was wrapping up my play for this review, an additional fourth tank character was released, so this looks to be a good indicator that the developers will continue to support this game as time goes on.
The classes are very important in Bleeding Edge and having the right composition of classes can make the difference between winning and losing. The most important thing is to make sure that there is at least 1 support class on the team and if there's not, do the team a favor and switch over to one since the game allows you to switch classes on the fly, so long as you're in the starting spawn point. The support class is without a doubt the most important class since they can specialize in keeping the team members alive. Tank and damage class players are focused primarily on killing the enemy, giving the game a decent variety of roles for players to take. Upon death you'll be sent back to the base spawn and will have to wait a few seconds before popping back in.
While the gameplay in Bleeding Edge will seem hectic for the first few rounds, once you get the hang of how all of the characters play it's manageable. Staying together as a team is key, as you'll quickly learn that trying to take on anything by yourself will almost always end in death. Matches with teams that stick together vs uncoordinated teams will end up very lopsided. If you get into a match and see all of your teammates running off doing their own thing, prepare to lose. The game gives you a message if you quit out of a match early, stating that you will be penalized by being put into a queue with other quitters, making it harder to find a match. I don't know how this works, but I didn't want to test it so I stuck out out all of the terrible matches. Finding a match was never too bad, usually finding a game in under 2 minutes but I'd imagine that if you frequently rage quit that this time could be much longer.
Bleeding Edge is an online-only game, featuring multiplayer battles of 4v4 going at it in 2 different events. It's recommended to play through the brief tutorial when you first load the game up and there is also a practice mode that lets you mess around with the characters. In order to enter into a game, you select fight from the menu and then play the waiting game while a search is conducted. This usually took no longer than a minute or two before you're loaded into a game. Unfortunately, there's no way to select which type of game mode you'd like to search for, so you've got to take what you get.
The first game mode is objective control, where players fight to capture three capture points. These points only appear for a limited time and it randomizes it up so different points will be active throughout a round. The team that holds the capture points the longest wins. The other game mode is called power collection, where the first part of the round spawns a bunch of canisters scattered around the map. Once you bust these canisters open they'll drop a power cell. Once all of the power cells have been collected or the timer runs out, a point (or sometimes multiple points) will open up on the map where you can deposit your power cells. The first team to reach 50 wins the match. Eliminating an enemy player also gives points and if you take out somebody before they drop off their power cells, they'll drop them upon death. It takes a few seconds to deposit the power cells, meaning you can interrupt a player doing this with an attack. Power collection can be extremely frustrating when you die and lose a bunch of power cells, but it can also be quite gratifying to kill an enemy and steal all of their cells. Both modes will vary in enjoy-ability, depending on how competently you function as a team. A king of the hill or capture the flag style of game mode would work well with this style of gameplay and hopefully there are some new game modes added in the future.
Bleeding Edge is off to a decent start in several aspects, but there's certainly lots of room for improvement. There needs to be some additional game modes as only having 2 gets repetitive in a hurry. Also, after playing a round you have a summary screen that lists stats and can view highlight plays, but the timer is so short on this screen you'll hardly have a chance to look at it. After the summary screen times out, you're kicked back to the main menu. Why is there no option to stick with the players you have and keep playing? Having the game load into another round after playing would surely tempt more players to stick around for another match.
An option to play with bots would have been nice, both to help new players get more comfortable with the game and to have something to play once the inevitable server shutdown happens in the future. Another minor nitpick is that you can't view the scorecard during the match, only once the round has finished. All of my other issues were already mentioned: takes too long to unlock stuff, a bad team means a bad time and there need to be more game modes/maps. In the end, Bleeding Edge features some nice graphics, some cool character design and can be a good time if you get placed on a team that sticks together. However, your fun is directly correlated to your team, so if you have a bad team it can get rough.
Note: This review was submitted on April 30, 2020 and therefore is reflective of how the game was at that point in time. There will no doubt be new features, characters and tweaks added to this title over the coming months/years, but this review should at least provide a general idea of whether you should check this one out and perhaps I'll write a follow-up review if the game sees massive changes.
Final Verdict: Bleeding Edge is a team-focused, class-based 4v4 online brawler. While still early in its life, the game shows some promise and can be fun if you get placed with team-minded players. Worth checking out on Game Pass if you're into brawlers/hack 'n slash gameplay.
Purchase Links:
Buy Bleeding Edge - Microsoft Store
Buy Bleeding Edge - eBay
Game Pass - Microsoft Store
Related Links:
Bleeding Edge - Official Site
Ninja Theory - Official Site
Xbox Game Studios - Official Site
Bleeding Edge - Metacritic
Bleeding Edge - GameFAQs
Bleeding Edge - True Achievements
Bleeding Edge - Xbox Achievements
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