Bloodline Champions Beta Preview: You Vs Them

With the popularity of “Heroes of Newerth,” the release of “League of Legends,” and Korean-made “Avalon Heroes,” it’s quite clear that the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre is getting some commercial attention. What was once exclusive to a few custom maps on “Starcraft” and “Warcraft 3″ has become an ideal investment for a few companies. Enter “Bloodline Champions,” the debut title from the newly formed Bumblebee Studios. Crafted by Swedish University students, “BLC” plans on laying its footprint down in the MOBA genre by offering a unique take in not only the game design but how it controls. I’ve been involved in the beta for the past few weeks, and, to say the least, I would definitely recommend this to any veteran PC gamer whose hand is glued to the WASD portion of the keyboard.

At first glance, any screenshot or video from “BLC,” you’ll probably think that it is a clone of the “Heroes of Newerth” or “League of Legends.” They all have a top down view. They all force you to control just one character, each of which have unique abilities. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, as “BLC” focuses more on player vs player combat instead of concepts like lane control and experience levels. It is an arena style game where you pick your character and annihilate your opponents in three different game modes.

Surprisingly, this game may even appeal to anyone who plays shooters, because the controls are very similar, despite the top down camera view. You move your character in a WASD fashion while you aim your abilities with the mouse. Instead of selecting an ability and “equipping” it, you simply hold the hotkey and it will fire the desired ability automatically. The way the hotkeys are setup are virtually identical to first person shooter, and fans hailing from “Quake Live” or “Unreal Tournament” will feel right at home. WASD moves your character, Mouse 1 is your basic attack, Mouse 2 is your stronger attack, and the Space Bar is your “charge” ability that moves your character either towards or away from the enemy. The keys Q, E, and R for your basic ability and the F key is used for your Ultimate ability. All damage and healing in this game use static numbers with no “criticals” or damage ranges. Getting hit in the back results in a 20% increase of damage, meaning this game has a bigger emphasis on skill rather than luck.

Besides the controls, another unique take on the MOBA formula is the lack of mana. Even though your character can perform all these unique spells and skills in combat, mana doesn’t play a part on whether or not they can use them. Instead, the game simply uses Cooldowns to control the abilities. Cast a spell, wait a few seconds, do it again. What results is that the healers will keep healing, the damage per second (DPS) characters will still do damage, and so forth. While it sounds dumbed down, it isn’t, because many of the abilities in this game require you aim at the target and missed shots mean missed opportunities to favor your team. Ultimate abilities further reward this by only being activated after specific number of healing/damage is done. The ultimate only builds when you actually hit something though, rewarding players who are not only accurate but aggressive as well. These ultimate abilities can often turn the tide of a match.

There are three game modes in the current beta version of “BLC”; Arena, Capture the Flag, and Conquest. Arena is your vanilla team survival mode. It can be anywhere from 2vs2 to 5vs5 and the object is to eliminate your opponent. There is no respawning, so once you die, you sit out until the next round. Fortunately, rounds usually won’t last over a minute, so if you die (which you will), you won’t spend a half hour just waiting. Capture the Flag is exactly the name implies, with a power up spawning in the middle of the map which range from increased damage to movement speed. Conquest is a rather unique take on control points that we’ve seen in past games. There are infinite respawns, and three control points. A team only stops spawning when one side has captured all the points. The standout feature in this mode is that when you do secure a point, it spawns a power up that only your team has access to. This powerup increases your damage, movement speed, incoming healing, and reduces incoming damage. This powerup gives the incentive to go for control points instead of wandering around trying to collect kills.

The current beta version has 16 characters, four in each of the categories. The categories are Tank, Healer, Range Damage, and Melee Damage. Unlike other MMOs, Tanks aren’t just guys who take a lot of damage and can easily be ignored in PvP. In “BLC,” tanks are the best crowd controllers in the game, shutting down vital characters from the other team. Healers are exactly the name implies, as their job to make sure their teammates don’t die as quickly as they should. Range Damage and Melee Damage are pretty much in the same league together with their job being to deal as much damage as possible to the enemy. While all of this sounds simplistic, each character in “Bloodline Champions” is extremely versatile due to the seven abilities each one has. For example, the Ravener is a Melee Damage character, but she has several abilities that can stun opponents for crowd control and single ability to shield herself or allies as a form of protection similar to healer. So it certainly doesn’t put you into a position where you feel extremely limited to your “class” and this shines at higher levels of play.

Despite the early testing phases, the game is surprisingly stable. I’m from the East Coast and the servers are mostly in Sweden. With 150 ping to their servers, I’m still able to play the game and still land most of my shots with ease. The client barely crashes and the graphics are well done. The game’s artistic direction is very unorthodox, so it’s a nice change of pace to see a focus on tribal instead of the typical bald space marines or rainbow colored elves we see polluting the industry. The characters look great, the animations are smooth, and the spell effects are noticeable but not distracting. A great attribute of the abilities effects is they are color coded, so you’ll know exactly what spells belong to your friends and which ones belong to the enemy.

With all this being said, it’s quite clear that I enjoyed my experience in the “Bloodline Champions” beta. As a veteran of PC gaming, it’s nice to see a game that rewards skill and accurate coordination instead of grinding or microtransactions that we see in many so-called “competitive” games of today. “BLC” is tailored towards the PC gamer that strives to not only be good at their game of choice, but to master it. It will be very interesting to see how the competitive community will respond to this, considering it already has a solid foundation so early in the beta.

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