A Royale Of All-Sorts | PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Review

There will be many of you that will look upon PlayStation All-Stars as a typical Smash Brothers clone. In some ways I can say you may be correct, but in other ways I will say that PlayStation All-Stars has a more in depth layer of fighting combat that you will miss out on for your aragonese towards it. PlayStation All-Stars is a great fighting game, and that comes from a person who never really enjoyed the genre since DOA on the PS2. Whether you are fighting 2v2, 4v4, or free-for-all the game is always enjoyable and never throws in cheap punches or deaths. You feel like a badass when you knock a player out because you had to build up enough power to pull it off. When you build up and miss you feel “crap better, try harder” because the clock or the stock lives will matter at the end of the match.

Gamplay:

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The gameplay is solid and does not take very long getting used to. It is a straight up fighting game that adds in all the best elements from the characters that you have come to know and love from their game franchises. You have the list of moves such as combos, grappling throws (which are effective against a blocking enemy), and a wide variety of aerial and ground attacks for every character. This is not a last minute put together title and it shows. A lot of love and respect, along with some very well known people in the fighting game community such as Street Fighter legend Seth Killian, came on board to help sculpt the game into what it is today.

There is the classic Arcade mode that gives a brief look into how the characters all came to be in the game. This is really here to help you gain knowledge on all the characters and find your idle fighter. I can say from the get go the character that I was most drawn to was Spike. Seeing all his items from the original Ape Escape title for PS1 brought back great memories and desire to boot up that PS1 classic.

Graphics:

The game looks awesome. Every character and stage has had a lot of work put into them. Watching Cole firing his electric vortex supers, whick look as great as  they ever did in Infamous, is amazing. All the designs hold great respect towards the characters. They all look like they were plucked out and made to fit into the PlayStation All-Stars universe.  Even with the stage cross-overs, such as Patapon mixed with Metal Gear, feel like they run together perfectly. Seeing Metal Gear Rex tearing through the level of Patapon with his laser beam and becoming confused and dazed just adds elements of surprise and joy.

Presentation:

PlayStation All-Stars offers an easy to follow tutorial for each character if you wish to work on, or even refresh your knowledge on what makes that character the most useful for you in the game. This is helpful and gets you going, but apart from that there is not too much else for you to do. Yes, you can play through the story, which I was very disappointed to see that they only used still images at the beginning and end for each character and only displayed one CGI cutscence for when you battle a rival character, and even those are short and underwhelming. 

The story mode is just another tool to get you used to the characters and help you figure out which one to take online and fight with. There are trials that have you completing specific tasks that help unlock character attire, but these are not enjoyable enough to make you play each characters’ trial.

The game is essentially all about Tournament and challenging your PSN friends online. Whether it’s 2v2, 4v4, or team battle the game does come to life when you are fighting other players online in ranked matches. I found this to be very enjoyable at multiple stages. In fact, knowing that the game can drastically change at any moment due to someone building up their level 3 special had me on edge when the closing seconds started to tick away.

Ps3 and Vita Cross-Play:

When you hear cross-buy with Ps3 and Vita you say to yourself “nice, Sony is getting it”. When you hear cross play-functionality you may think “OK let’s see if this really could work and if it doesn’t, oh well”. I’m glad report that cross-play works perfectly well. I spent most of the time playing the game on my Vita so I was well used to playing on massive battle stages and not finding it hard to see my character or know what’s going on during matches.

There is no real advantage with one over the other. Playing the PS3 version you would need to get used to not touching the back touch to pick up weapons, but I found changing around R1 for Super and R2 to pick up items or weapons a lot easier.

In the beginning I did find that online did take an awful long time to find matches and sometimes it would just lose connection. Superbot have addressed and released a patch that improves match making times and reduces risk of losing connection with other player’s.

In conclusion:

This is Superbot’s very first game. It’s to say the guys did a great job combining all these beloved PlayStation characters and bringing back a lot of memories we had with them. The only disappointing points are the Story mode and trials, but we hope they take this not as a slight against the game, but as something we feel deserves more part to play in the game.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Fun, action packed gameplay
• Characters look great

Cons

• Story is underwhelming
• Online play takes a while to find matches