Bleeding Edge may be a 4vs4 "brawler" in that ranged attacks are secondary, but don't expect it to play like Ninja Theory's stylish DmC: Devil May Cry. Timing, positioning, and cooldown management are more rewarding than twitch skills and fancy 75-hit combo chains, and without a complex meta and satisfying combat, the "Overwatch but melee" expectations cannot be met.

Like "Overwatch," "Bleeding Edge" includes diverse characters, abilities, counters, and strict roles grouped into damage, tank, and support. I thought I might be feeling hero fatigue at this point, but I really like the storyline surrounding Bleeding Edge's 11 fighters. The themes of self-enhancement and mobility create some insanely cool characters, such as Buttercup, who is basically a human motorcycle biker, and Clef, a 125-year-old professor who has gained immortality by transferring his consciousness to a robotic viper that controls his zombified body. The industrial grunge and absurdity recall "Borderlands," but "Bleeding Edge" thankfully stays with the tragic humor.

Every fighter has a basic attack at close or long range, three special abilities, and Ultimate. Most abilities do not require aiming, so winning big team fights is a matter of focusing damage in the right direction while capturing targets on the map; a byproduct of Bleeding Edge's emphasis on melee combat is the vertical as a way to avoid enemies and pick fights. and movement as a way to avoid enemies and pick fights is compelling. The fighter I play the most, ZeroCool, is a Mercy-like support role with little offensive ability. If the enemy attacks you in groups, he'll turn on his fangs, so you have to stay close by to recover your allies and use his double jump to retreat to higher ground if things get bad. It's fun to get away from a bloodthirsty tank with two machetes in the nick of time, and you can't do that if this were a shooter where you could get headshots from all over the map.

Still, it's a flimsy layer of planning in an otherwise shallow meta. Part of the fun of a hero game is theoretically creating team structures and potential counters that the enemy might not anticipate, and Bleeding Edge's roster doesn't feel like it has that potential. Damage fighters feel more or less like tanks, but with less health. Equipping mods outside of matches can change the playstyle a bit, but the ones I've used so far only give a small boost to abilities.

Currently, Bleeding Edge has only four maps and two modes. While the King of the Hill-type objective mode gives everyone a good reason to bundle up and fight, Power Cell allows teams to run around the map and collect power cells, which are then used to score points. I think they encourage people to split into teams, but my friends and I found it easier to group up and steal the enemy's cells.

When I was playing alone, it was obviously harder to get my teammates on the same page. Everyone would branch off into every corner of the map and get beat up by tanks; the ping system is pretty good and I often used it to keep my troops together, but many people didn't listen or even notice. I wish I could just play the versus mode.

Both modes are made a bit more exciting by the environmental hazards that flank key objective points. If you're not careful, you can get run over by a train, blown up by rockets, or hit by an electric trap. Some character abilities, such as Buttercup's leering chain, can combo with these hazards, throwing the enemy directly into danger.

Bleeding Edge's melee combat is supposed to be its centerpiece, but it's pretty dull; there are faint DmC echoes in Daemon's beautiful sword blows and Makutu's satisfying uppercuts, but the combat system is a series of left The combat system is a series of left clicks as you wait for abilities to run out of cooldown. No different than a basic right-click attack in a MOBA, Bleeding Edge lacks the deep item building and coordination that makes sense in a Dota 2 team fight. There is no reason to split up, so every fight is just two clashing masses of color and particle effects.

And while the look of Bleeding Edge's roster is certainly fun, some of the abilities are so similar to Overwatch's that they are distracting. The most notable culprit is Maktou, a tank character with skills suspiciously similar to Lucio's in Overwatch. This towering, burly man repeats stances that increase speed and heal teammates around him (though the colors are swapped, with yellow for speed and green for health, which is completely different). There is also Gizmo, a damaged hero who summons a pink mech with a machine gun as one of his Ultimates in a similar fashion to D.Va. Not unaware of the long history of MOBAs lifting each other, some of Bleeding Edge's are too too obvious and uncomfortable, and especially disappointing when the characters are otherwise so original and cool.

Without an expansive meta-game and fun combat, Bleeding Edge would quickly become tiresome. Once you learn the ins and outs of each fighter, you'll find the fun fades after a few dozen matches. Playing against friends with a microphone is more engaging, but my group of friends tends to gravitate toward more in-depth games where individual skills have more opportunity to shine.

The PC version ran well, at least for me, but Ninja Theory is currently working on lifting the 60 fps cap. The game recommends playing with a controller, but I had much more fun moving the camera precisely with the mouse.

The bright side of Bleeding Edge's simplicity is accessibility. New players may have trouble playing squishy supports who can't fight back, but those who have experience with hero games will recognize the roles immediately after reading the fighter descriptions. However, it is hard to imagine Bleeding Edge becoming someone's "main" game when there are so many games that are more fun and engaging and already have millions of players. If Bleeding Edge were free-to-play, things might be different, but it's $30 on Steam if you don't subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. Finding a match was easy during launch week, but that could change as the weeks go by.

It's clear that Ninja Theory has plans to stick with Bleeding Edge: the official site already has art of a new fighter (a dolphin in a mechanized tank named Mekko) and additional maps. I'll be keeping an eye on what other wacky character designs "Bleeding Edge" produces, but it will take a major overhaul of the combat to bring me back. Without that, I have no hope for the future of this game.