Gearbox Software’s new shooter Battleborn is out today, just in case you’ve been living under a rock.  While the game does have a single player campaign, it also has an extensive multiplayer PvP component. As with many shooters, its going to take us some time to see how the servers hold up, how the progression system works in the long term, and just how fun the game is for extended periods of time. So, in case you were wondering where the final score is, don’t worry. We’ll be updating our review in progress over the coming days with more impressions and videos. But for now, here’s a clip from Digmbot’s launch day stream to tide you over. And don’t forget to jump down past the video when you get done for some more impressions of this new IP.

Battleborn is a hard game to define. Like Overwatch, it’s a hero shooter. Characters have unique weapons and abilities, and you level up throughout the match. However, it also shares some MOBA DNA. As you level up, you choose augments to your basic abilities. You might want to increase the AOE damage of the archer Thorn’s blight pool for example. Or, you may choose to have her gain increased movement speed whenever she touches her own blight. The choice is yours, and it allows you to customize your Battleborn to your chosen playstyle or respond to the in game situation by specializing to deal with certain opponents.

The game does have a single player campaign, which can be played solo, with friends or in public groups. Only a handful of missions are available at launch, with the rest coming out later on. With 25 characters to unlock via mission completion, challenges and more, theres no shortage of content. The game also comes with three modes. Incursion sees you escorting your minions down a lane and building gun turrets, accelerator turrets and more as you try to push into the enemy base and destroy their sentry robots. Meltdown on the other hand tasks you with driving minions into giant furnaces to score points. And Capture, perhaps the dullest of the modes, is a standard capture and hold three points affair.

What sets Battleborn apart is the sense of humor and the way that experience is handled in match. The furnaces in Meltdown think they are gods. As minions are engulfed, they will scream out things like “By fire be reborn aaaas…..HUBCAPS!” Characters have tons of witty one liners. And even the sentry bots that guard the enemy base have their own personalities- I’ll never forget the first time one killed me and then flipped me off during the death cam replay.

Then there’s the way the game handles levelling and experience. In most shooters or MOBAs, you get experience from kills or from taking down significant objectives. While this still holds true in Battleborn you also have other options available. If you want to spend shards (the game’s currency earned from kills as well as object on the map) to build and level up defensive and offensive turrets, the game will reward you with XP. This means that a support focused character can play the map and continue to level up. In addition, gear is taken into battle in the form of loadouts. There is no item shop. Instead, you must spend shards to activate your gear. The better the gear, the more shards it costs to activate. And, showing it’s Borderlands DNA, the most epic of loot in Battleborn often comes with some significant disadvantages to offset the insane buffs it can provide. All this means that the game allows players to determine how they level up, when they activate gear (if at all) to obtain power spikes, and keeps the action flowing at a pace that never feels frustrating. Getting slaughtered in straight up fights? Sit back, support the team by building healing turrets and get some levels. Kicking ass and taking names? Spend those sweet shards to up your crit chance as you activate that sweet pair of gloves you unlocked in a loot pack after that last campaign mission.

As you can probably tell, theres a lot of interesting ideas in Battleborn. The characters are memorable, the levels are well laid out and the gameplay loop is satisfying and allows you to be flexible in your playstyle. We’ll be bringing you more over the coming days, so stay tuned!

Want the system specs for Battleborn? Click HERE for PredictedCyborg’s preview of what you need to run it.

Still need more gameplay? Check out Lone and Digm playing the open beta HERE.

Today press releases and announcements on social media confirmed the date of release for one of Bethesda’s upcoming games that was accidentally spoiled in potentially the funniest way possible – Dishonored 2.

The release date has now been set as Friday, November 11th and will be released for the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and the PC on that date worldwide. There will also be a gameplay premier shown off at Bethesda’s showcase at E3 on June 12th.

This is of course the sequel to the first Dishonored game, which saw you playing as an assassin with supernatural powers. The big draw this time of course is that not only can you play as the previous protagonist, royal protector, Corvo Attano, but also Empress Emily Kaldwin. The choice in methods is also still present, meaning you can decide to proceed slowly and take out opponents silently, or enter aiming to cause mass chaos.

For more information, you can browse over to the game’s site at www.dishonored.com

This is one of two reveals today, after the announcement of Dawn of War 3 a few hours earlier.

After posting up a silent 30 second video GIF upon their Twitter yesterday, Relic Entertainment and Sega have released the announcement trailer of the new Dawn of War game – Dawn of War 3.

This is of course a Warhammer 40,000 game, and its being developed with assets taken from Games Workshop’s popular miniatures game series. The trailer went live at 3pm BST/7am PDT and depicts several scenes of intense combat as the voiceover repeats what sounds like a soldier’s battle oath about being a light in the darkness and eventually facing death without a regret.

Of interest is the fact that there are Titans depicted within this trailer, hinting that they’ll be in this game unlike Dawn of War 2. Lone tells me that they’re the Eldar Wraith Lords and Imperial Knights Titans specifically.

If you’ve not already had a chance to check it out, here it is:

Information about the game will probably be revealed a little later, but going to the website for the Dawn of War franchise reveals that “in Dawn of War III you will have no choice but to face your foes when a catastrophic weapon is found on the mysterious world of Acheron.”

For those unaware, LMAOBOX was a program designed to let players cheat at Valve’s popular shooter game Team Fortress, including among other things automatic aim and the removal of weapon recoil. Somehow for years it’s by passed Steam’s VAC banning system, but now the use of it has caught up with a lot of users both current and previous – a wave of bans have just gone out despite the website for LMAOBOX claiming it was VAC-proof.

The full list can be found here, and includes a ‘roster list’ of professional players who have been caught. Yikes.

The author of LMAOBOX apparently stated that they were about to quit the project and would make the source code public, although some dispute the validity of that and say that the proved public (and fake) code was riddled with malware. Others say that the bans weren’t as far reaching as Valve made out, only catching those who used it in the last two weeks as opposed to the last two years.

However, since cheaters tend to be the scourge of any multiplayer gaming community, I doubt many people are crying at the loss of the number of cheats who’ve been caught out.

With the debacle that has so-far been the release of Oculus’ second Rift headset and pre-order shipping dates being pushed back as far as June and July in some cases, it’s interesting to find out that Oculus are shipping a small number of these headsets to stores for purchase already.

Teaming up with Best Buy, Oculus will be putting on demonstrations at 48 locations as part of the Intel Experience from May 7th. Additional stores will also be added later on down the line, and you can experience Dreamdeck (basically a bunch of VR tech demos) and Crytek’s The Climb. In the near future, they’ll be adding Farlands, a free game for the Rift to the roster too. To help manage it, Oculus Live allows you to schedule a Rift demo up to a month in advance.

However, as mentioned at the beginning there will also be some headsets available for purchase: “A small number of Rifts will be available for purchase at select Best Buy stores starting May 7 and online from Microsoft and Amazon, starting May 6 at 9am PST. Quantities will be extremely limited while we catch up on Rift pre-orders.” If you manage to buy one at retail having pre-ordered a headset, you’ll be able to update your order status afterwards, cancelling the pre-order but essentially keeping the benefits.

So maybe there’s a little hope for those who feel they can’t wait much longer for their pre-orders.