Bleeding Edge is a new IP from the developers who brought us games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and DMC. The Bleeding Edge Beta just passed on Valentine’s Day weekend and it gave us a chance to dive into the intense combat and unique characters that make up the bleeding edge universe.

Right from the beginning, Bleeding Edge reminded me of Overwatch, but after a few matches, I noticed that there were a few things that could potentially give Bleeding Edge the leg up over Overwatch. 

The story for Bleeding edge is similar to overwatch. You have one character who is fed up with the government and decides to form a team of capable heroes and heroines for a better cause. In bleeding Edge’s case, you can replace the word heroes with misfits or rebels. 

1. Unique Character Design

Immediately when you start playing Bleeding Edge, you’ll notice how unique the characters are. They all have some sort of cyberpunk vibe to them as the majority of the characters have body parts that have been infused or completely replaced by robotic upgrades. Which explains their super abilities.

Take Nidhoggr for example. He’s an augmented musician who wields a guitar that has a deadly ax on the bass. When Nidhoggr isn’t bobbing his head while playing his guitar, he’s swinging his ax and breathing fire.

When you look at Nidhoggr’s design, you’ll notice that he has a metal neck and jaw and a set of slender metal legs. I imagine this is why he is able to spew out a deadly blaze of fire at his enemies and why he’s also able to powerslide into the perfect flanking position. 

The character designs in Bleeding Edge have a totally different feel to Overwatch. Plus, the backstories have a much darker and ominous history for some of the characters. Dare I say that Bleeding Edge is a much Grittier team-based battle arena than Overwatch’s style.

2. You Play in Third-Person

One HUGE difference that you will notice from Bleeding Edge is that you play in third-person. One plus from choosing to go with third-person is that you’ll get to see a full 360 view of your character and the things going on around them. This opens you up to strategize a lot more, but also makes it more difficult for you to sneak up on enemies, which is why I think the developers added a stealth ability to Daemon.

Another plus to playing in third-person is that you’ll get a full view of your skins. This can open up a lot of different elements to the game. Hopefully, they do something interesting with this and do something similar to Smite. For those unfamiliar with Smite, with each higher tier skin you get with your character, your attacks change based on the skin. For instance, if you have a character who has a skin option that favors Halloween, your attacks could end up having smoke and fire to go along with the skin. There are a lot of interesting things that can go along with this.

3. Bleeding Edge Has Character Mods

Mods are something that Bleeding Edge adds to the game to alter your character abilities. From what I’ve seen, the mods that you have access to early on have nothing but positive effects. For instance, when playing with Daemon, you can equip mods that allow him to stay invisible indefinitely or ones that give him 10hp with each swing of his sword. At first glance, the mods can seem a bit overpowered, and you are right to assume that since they grant so many awesome abilities.

4. More Mobility For All Characters

Bleeding edge offers players more ways to traverse the arena. When your character is away from combat, you are able to pull out a hoverboard that makes navigating the world a lot smoother. Each character has access to their own version of the hoverboard so no one is singled out when it comes to how fast they can move around out of combat.

In Bleeding Edge each character has a stamina bar. The stamina bar is used during combat to dodge attacks and after your stamina runs out, you won’t be able to dodge again until it recharges. The dodge feature adds another dynamic to the playstyle since it’s an ability that all characters have. Couple dodging with the third-person view and you can find yourself in some very intense battles.  

5. No Sign of Loot Boxes

Of course, there wouldn’t be any signs of loot boxes in beta, but devs have a habit of sneaking these annoying little content blockers into their products. One thing that kept me from fully investing my time into Overwatch was the fact that there were so many little boxes keeping me from getting the items I wanted. I would have rather enjoyed being able to earn coins based on my performance which could be used to purchase rare items. 

During the Bleeding Edge beta, players are given coins for completing matches so things look promising right now in terms of ridding away loot boxes from this game. However, who knows what Ninja Theory will do after the game launches. Tastefully adding loot boxes into this game could potentially make Bleeding Edge more welcoming to players who would rather earn their items rather than paying for them.

Bleeding Edge is set to be released on March 24 and the Pre-orders for it are available now. Based on what you’ve seen so far, how do you think Bleeding Edge will hold up against Overwatch and other games in the same genre?

Be sure to comment below and check out our latest podcast episode about Bleeding Edge as we give our impressions on what we played so far.

Thanks for reading. Stay Gritty, Gamers!