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Kill Strain

Kill Strain Hands-On

PlayStation 4 is about to get its very own mutated arena-based battler, and we've seen it in action.

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Kill Strain is, at its core, a MOBA. But it's a MOBA that has been built from the ground up for consoles, specifically for PS4. What does this mean? Well, firstly, it's fairly accessible. There's still a lot of depth, and if you start digging into the menus you'll quickly find an overwhelming array of options and loadouts. But ignoring all that, and focussing on the core gameplay loop, it seems like San Diego Studio has built a game that finds a happy medium between the traditional complexity of the genre, and something that's more likely to fly with the PlayStation crowd.

Kill Strain also has a unique hook, something that should help it stand out from the other games that have, over the years, looked at bottling the essence of the MOBA and taking it into the console space. Just as most other games in the genre, there are two teams of five. But here's the kicker, Kill Strain has an extra team of two, and this addition changes the dynamic of the game completely.

It might not seem fair to put two against two teams of five, but there's a twist. The two are actually monsters; mutants twisted by the titular "strain" into ferocious beasts. The two teams of five must fight over resources, depositing them in a central, shared drop box that will eventually grant players mechanised battle suits that will give them a real edge in battle. There's already a healthy selection of classes, each with a different balance in terms of health, attack and speed, ready to be further augmented as the player sees fit. Staple classes are in evidence, so expect to see tanks getting stuck into battle and soaking up pressure, engineers dropping turrets, and damage dealers looking to exploit weaknesses in the enemy's forward line.

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But where Kill Strain really differs is the dynamic-changing presence of the third team. The two player squad who play as mutants (everyone picks one merc, one mutant, and roles are handed out randomly) are there to spice up this battle, and they do so in a couple of ways. First they can paint the map in "strain", which grants them all sorts of helpful buffs. By walking up to an unaffected patch of land and pressing Triangle the mutant spreads strain, which in turn grants them the ability to automatically heal, as well as turn invisible to the two teams of mercy (as long as they stay in the strain - if they venture off all bets are off; they don't heal and they're not invisible). Claws pop up out of the ground and stab at players foolish enough to wander too close, and the other teams must blast away at these points to push back the spread.

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The other game-changing trick that a mutant can pull is perhaps our favourite. A downed human enemy can be dragged away and turned into a mutant, which means the third faction changes in size throughout the match, each new addition building their collective strength and allowing them to spread the strain further around the arena and thus make it harder for their human opposition (although it has been built to accommodate 12 players, we were told that the game will also work for 7,9 and 11 players, though quite how the teams will be divided up we're not sure).

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With players swapping teams, our concern was that maybe converted mutants might like to help their old comrades over their previous opposition, but San Diego Studio has solved this potential conflict of interest by ranking matches individually, instead of by team. While this is most certainly a collaborative effort when in the heat of battle, the fact that each player is judged individually instead of as a unit, should ensure that even when players switch sides, they'll always be looking out for themselves first and foremost.

Another interesting dynamic means that if a player is high level and gets taken out and dragged away, they'll then become a high level mutant. Will this cause mutants to target the better players? We think so. This also creates an interesting dynamic that follows the old saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and, from time to time, quarreling mercs will have to put aside their differences and focus on fighting off mutated adversaries. This should lead to plenty of situations whereby players are deciding whether to turn on each other, battle the monster in front of them, or beat a hasty retreat and wait for the opportune moment to return and, hopefully, score an easy kill (or two).

Like any MOBA, players will be able to access a bunch of attacks attached to cooldown timers, and using these at opportune moments will be the key to success. With so many different loadouts there's plenty of room to explore different builds, and the roster already has a healthy look to it. There's only one arena currently available for the game, and while we were told that the plan is to add more, the developers seem more keen on adding new characters to the mix, the idea being that the arenas aren't what drives the gameplay, it's the characters that do that, and adding more will add depth and layer on more longevity. It's hard to argue with that conclusion.

We're fine admitting that we're not avid MOBA players, but we thought that Kill Strain was certainly more accessible than most games in the genre. There appears to be a lot of depth there for those that want it, but the core gameplay loop (that feels like League of Legends with a side helping of Evolve) is simple enough that players will be able to get to grips with it quickly, even if they're not fluent in the language of defence of the ancients. The question is whether it will be accessible enough to attract non-MOBA players, and we're not entirely sure about that, because its undeniably a MOBA at its core and that in itself will be enough to put some off. Much will come down to how this free-to-play offering is packaged up and sold to players.

What we can say with more confidence is that what we played showed promise. There's a lot going on, with three teams scrapping it out over an ever shifting arena, where eventually the third team's numbers will be fleshed out with additional deadly mutants, while mechs blast the hell out of anything that strays too far from safety. It's more complex than your average console title, but less taxing than the standard MOBA. As such it's hard to say whether it'll find the right balance to hook a large enough community to ensure its long term survival. At least the concept and its execution makes it stand out, which at the very least gives it a fighting chance of succeeding where so many console bound MOBAs have failed before it.

Kill Strain

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Kill Strain Hands-On

Kill Strain Hands-On

PREVIEW. Written by Mike Holmes

PlayStation 4 is about to get its very own mutated arena-based battler, and we've seen it in action.



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