Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale review

by SaikyoBro on Jan 22nd, 2013

This is a really interesting fighting game. A lot of the first impressions were nothing but “SSB clone!” and things like that, but as more and more about the game came out it became evident that wasn’t the case. There are similarities to be sure, but can this game hold a candle to Nintendo’s series?

The premise is similar to SSB in that there are characters from all kinds of different playstation associated characters fighting in playstation associated arenas with playstation associated items. The similarities end there, seriously. While the game probably owes its existence to Smash Bros, it takes the basic ideas and totally builds on them and switches them up. The game knows what SBB does right and what it does wrong, and corrects many of the mistakes SSB has made. Unfortunately, the new formula brings in a lot of mistakes of its own. There are still some similarities to SBB, but very few. You have free control of your character, you use shoulder buttons to block and combine them with movement to dodge, and combine directional inputs and attacks to get different moves. After that it becomes totally different.  The killing works in a different way. You’ve either heard of it by now or can go look it up because I won’t be going into too much detail, but it’s basically this: your attacks build up meter, which you use to do super attacks. Super attacks are how you kill in this game, nothing else. No ring outs, no life bar, just building up meter and unleashing it.

I’ve seen a lot of people say “but that just means whoever has the best super wins!”, but that isn’t so. Not everyone needs the same amount of meter to do a super. While PaRappa can get a level 1 super in just one or two quick combos for his mediocre somersault kick, Raiden and Dante need to get a lot of attacks in to get their supers, which activate more quickly and have better range. Because they need more meter to get a super, they move faster than PaRappa and can hit from a farther distance, but PaRappa hits harder, gaining more meter for each attack. But it doesn’t stop at that; you can build up your meter even further for a more powerful level 2 super, or even go farther than that for an amazing level 3. Another thing people say is “if you only kill with supers, doesn’t that get boring?” Again, not true at all. While each character only has 3 supers, you can find a use for almost all of them at some point. For example, for Parappa’s level 2, he jumps on his skateboard and rides around for a few seconds, usually able to get 3 kills in a free for all. But on stages like Dreamscape, which are humongous and have many platforms, you might only get 2, or maybe even 1 if you’re playing people good at dodging. His level 3 instantly kills all 3 opponents, so you might want to go for that instead.

See what I mean? Just because of the stage your strategy completely changes. It goes farther than that though: if you’re playing just a single opponent, you might want to only go for level 1s since you earn them the most easily, but since they can be hard to land you might want to save up for a more precise level 2. Or if you think you can get more than 1 kill in the duration of a transformation level 3 like Kratos’s, you’re also welcome to go for that. And again, your strategy completely changes in 2v2. That’s what I love most about this game; all the variables. What stage, how many opponents, the matchups between your character and theirs, they all change immensely with every fight. In Smash Bros, it’s…not really like that. In 1v1 regardless of character and stage it often comes down to rolling around to dodge and doing a smash attack when there’s an opening. There’s certainly more strategy than that, but it’s what it comes down to a lot regardless of stage for many players. In free for all things might be a bit different but you usually are able to keep a consistent strategy down with your character that you stick with on any stage (unless it’s a drastically unique one like Hanenbow) or how many players or who you’re against. I’m no competitive brawl player but that’s how a lot of people end up playing the ssb games.

Offline in psasbr, you have several options. Arcade, tutorial, trial, training. Arcade is what you’d expect, run though defeating enemies, fight your rival, fight final boss, ending. The intros and endings are just still images with voice overs, but a lot of them are impressive nonetheless if you’re a fan of the series. Sackboy’s cutscenes have him doing what he would do in LBP (complete with hilarious Stephen Fry narration), PaRappa features the same artstyle as his games with all his friends involved, they’re fun to watch if you know what’s going on. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you know nothing about Medievil or Killzone, you’ll probably just be confused by Sir Dan or Radec’s cutscenes and end up wanting to skip them.

Trials and tutorials aren’t much either: think of the events from melee and brawl, but in addition to the general events, 20 something character specific ones for the whole cast. Wow. That’s a lot. Unfortunately, most of the trials are similar for the entire cast so it’s doubtful you’ll complete many of them besides the ones that were made for your main characters. There are tutorials for individual characters as well as for the game itself, but they don’t go into much depth and oftentimes end up teaching you combos that are beyond impractical in a real match. There aren’t the plethora of modes that SSB has, but this game’s at least have some purpose. But to be honest, there are sure to be easier ways to figure out the game than the boring, repetitive trials. Despite the inclusion of tutorials and the game’s goal of being competitive, it’s much easier to get good at than SSB IMO. You don’t need to lean l-dashing or wave-canceling or anything like that, just know when to do what attack and what attacks chain into each other. Of course it takes a while to master but you understand what you’re doing almost perfectly after a couple days.

Sound and graphics are one of the highlights of the game for me. The sound effects are often really satisfying and brutal, and the voice acting is top-notch, with Dred Foxx making PaRappa sound just like you remember him and Nolan North making Drake sound just as you’d expect him to. The lines are perfect too, with PaRappa randomly spouting lines from his raps and Drake making the sarcastic comments you’d expect from the character. And the music? Top-notch. The remixes are absolutely AMAZING and filled with nostalgia. and the original music is really nice and fits well. The game looks gorgeous. It doesn’t have a consistent artstyle like SSBB but I think that adds to the charm. Seeing a super detailed Big Daddy take on the 2D PaRappa, the cel-shaded Sly Cooper, and the adorable Sackboy just reminds you how awesome it is all these games are together in one spot and they all look just like they do in their source material. The stages are gorgeous too, with seeing the mash-ups bringing the same awesome feeling seeing all the contrasting characters does.

But like SSB and any other fighter, the meat of the game is in the multiplayer. It doesn’t have all the wacky modes like giant or stamina or anything Brawl has, but it’s still plenty customizable. Stock, time, free for all, the rate of meter gain, and my favorite, the ability to turn stage hazards on or off. Awesome. Online play is…pretty bad. There are some annoying bugs and there’s a LOT of rollback (people randomly teleporting across the screen.) If one player has a bad connection, expect to see him teleporting all over the screen, doing moves out of nowhere, and being hit by him in the middle of him being hit. But the game does give you a lot of options, and it’s a solid experience if everyone has decent internet. Not as good as recent Capcom fighters (which isn’t all that great in the first place), but leagues above Brawl for sure. While there are no unlockable characters or stages, it’s not really necessary when there are only 20 characters and 14 stages. And there’s still a looooooot to unlock. Minions, belts, costumes, icons, backgrounds, titles, intros, outros, taunts, and even victory music.

Maybe not anything as substantial as SSB’s characters stages and trophies, but it’ll certainly take a while to complete 100%.  Despite the comparisons to SSB they’re virtually useless as the games definitely have plenty similarities but the gameplay itself is so different it isn’t worth mentioning. The game tries to blend SSB and competitive gameplay, and in many cases it succeeds, but it’s not perfect. There are some drawbacks like a roster that’s a liiiitle too small and there’s a need of a few more offline modes, but the potential is there and if there’s a sequel that addresses all these problems (most of them being pretty obvious fixes) then I think we could finally see a fighter potentially take game of the year.

At the end of the day, is the game better than Brawl? Yeah. The solid gameplay, much more varied roster, and gameplay that comes THIS close to hitting the nail on the head of mixing competitive with fun give it an edge over it in almost every aspect. Hell, having playable online alone makes it the better game. There are still a lot of places the game falls flat but there’s so much potential in the game itself and the awesome roster that a sequel that fixes these things would seriously have to be one of the best fighters ever made. But having played the game a while, there are some things I didn’t notice at first making themselves clear. The offline doesn’t give you much to do, the online is playable, but often laggy, and the balance between characters is ok, but it’s clear that Kratos, Raiden, and Sly are on top and that Nariko, Big Daddy, and Heihachi barely stand a chance in most modes. The game has great potential and is a lot of fun, but they haven’t quite perfected it.

7.5/10

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