Coming to Xbox One and PC on March 24, Ninja Theory's Bleeding Edge is a melee-focused action multiplayer game that is definitely MOBA-inspired.

Given my penchant for shooters as opposed to melee-focused action games, I'm a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed playing Bleeding Edge. At a press preview event, I played Ninja Theory's hero-focused multiplayer game for the first time (I missed chances at E3 and the open beta weekends) and Bleeding Edge impressed me with its satisfying combat and a surprising attention to sound design.

After spending 90 minutes with the game, it's so immediately apparent that Bleeding Edge started out as a multiplayer online battle arena game. Success is almost totally dependent on teammates communicating with each other and fulfilling the established roles of a balanced unit.

Now Playing: We Win As MVP In Bleeding Edge
Might Be Too Role-Focused For Its Own Good

Every character in Bleeding Edge fits into one of three classes: damage, support, or tank. Bleeding Edge seems entirely dependent on a team fulfilling an exact quota: one damage, one tank, one support, and a fourth player who changes their role to fulfill the needs of the team. Bleeding Edge's meta allows for experimentation (in that you can pair different damage, support, and tank characters with one another), but it's a rigid level of choice--going without any one class will screw over your team.

Speaking to the team, we learned Ninja Theory originally designed Bleeding Edge to exclusively appeal to those who already enjoy MOBA-like games. However, after the developer was acquired by Microsoft and turned into an Xbox Game Studio, Ninja Theory realized they had to reconsider who Bleeding Edge's audience is, given that the game would now be launching day one on Xbox Game Pass.

"[Xbox Game Pass] hasn't really changed the core of the game that much," Bleeding Edge creative director Rahni Tucker told GameSpot in an interview. "The main thing it has had an impact on is onboarding. We didn't have that much in terms of tutorials or ways that you could learn how to play the game before your first match. Before we were acquired by Microsoft, we found out that we were going to go on Game Pass and we said, 'Man, there's going to be all these people in the game that maybe have never played a class-based game before. Maybe they don't know what objective mod is. Maybe they have never played in a team before and they don't get the importance of the healer role or the role of a tank.'"

The tutorials are helpful, but the nuances of Bleeding Edge's mechanics are still somewhat difficult to pick-up without a veteran at the helm, on mic, directing newcomers into how to best play each role. Bleeding Edge does have a ping system, but it's very basic and doesn't convey much in terms of information beyond an enemy or item's location.

In Bleeding Edge, you need someone on comms directing the team, offering up strategies on which lanes to push, keeping everyone together (if you wander from your group, you're as good as dead if at least two enemy players find you), calling out objective changes, and letting allies know when the current squad loadout is flawed and needs adjusting. If you're unfamiliar with team-based games, there's an extremely punishing learning curve to Bleeding Edge--one which could dissuade newcomers.
A Controlled Chaos

Those worries aside though, Bleeding Edge is satisfying to play when everyone knows what they're doing--largely because the game does such a good job at communicating in-match information to players. Both in terms of visuals and sound design, Bleeding Edge constantly feeds you information that makes it possible to understand what's going on even within the twirling chaos of its melee-focused brawls.

For example, every character in Bleeding Edge has a unique footstep sound, allowing you to identify someone who's hidden behind a wall or sneaking up on you without actually seeing them. "The goal is that, if you're playing and someone gets behind you--if you know the game well enough--you should know who is coming towards you," Bleeding Edge senior sound designer Daniele Galante said in an interview with GameSpot.



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