Bleeding Edge Beta First Impressions

Bleeding Edge is a new 4v4 team brawler coming soon to Xbox and PC. Visually it’s similar to Overwatch and Borderlands and has that over the top feel you may come to expect.

There are 3 classes of fighter to choose from including Damage, Support and Tank. Damage are your regular fighters, support helps you out with healing abilities and Tank’s provide the big attacks and damage. It’s good to have a mix in your team of different classes, but you can mix and match to see what works for you.

There’s plenty of fighters to choose from all with their own personality and augmented abilities. In the Damage class, you have Daemon your Ninja type with a Katana, Gizmo who offers up a little range with a blaster and Nidhoggr who’s a melee damage player. In the Tank class, you have Buttercup who has wheels for back legs, El Bastardo with his double swords and Makutu a melee tank. Finally, in the support class, you have Kulev, a ranged support character, Miko and Zero cool. During the bet aI played as Daemon and El Bastardo.

There’s plenty of attacks. You have your regular attack as well as three special attacks. For example, Daemon has Stealth, Shuriken and Shift. Each attack adds a new dimension to attacks with invisibility here you can sneak up onto enemies and then range attack with Shuriken. Mashing your regular melee attack can enter into a combo where you attack four times with the sword to tie up your enemies in combos.

You’ll need to master evade as when you get tied up in combos yourself from enemies you’ll need to roll out the way and get back to attacking them. You have three evades which operate on a cool down. You can also lock onto players and switch up the lock on to focus attacks.

There’s a couple of game types including objective, where you have to stand on the plates and control the zones A, B and C. There’s another where you have to collect and deliver power cells. I preferred the objective game type personally as the gameplay felt more open and focused on team attacks.

Bleeding Edge feels really good and once you get to grip with the combos and knowing when to attack it feels really good. The game has plenty of personality to go with it, but it’s unclear at this early stage whether it’ll grate over time.

The look and feel is very Overwatch. From the bright colours to the character select and set up, to the little plus signs that overlay the screen. This is definitely Overwatch inspired, but why not, it’s been a super successful game. Bleeding Edge differentiates itself with the brawling and the gameplay. From the relatively short amount of time I had with the game throughout the beta, I enjoyed what I played. I didn’t know too much about this game before, but I can now say I’m looking forward to the full game release coming towards the end of March 2020.

Ninja Theory has previously brought us Devil May Cry and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Xbox Game Studios picked up the company to be part of their first-party group of companies who Xbox hope will be able to turn the tide next generation with original, engaging titles hopefully like Bleeding Edge.

The first public beta was this weekend, however, it’s likely to be back early March before the final release on March 24th. Check out the Bleeding Edge website for more info.

Developer: Ninja Theory
Platforms: Xbox, PC
Released Date: 25th March 2020