Platforms: Playstation 3, PlayStation Vita
Release Date: 22/11/2012
Genre(s): Fighting, Action
Publisher(s): Sony Entertainment
Developer: SCE Santa Monica Studio, SuperBot Entertainment, Bluepoint Games (PS Vita)
ESRB: PEGI 12+
All Stars Battle Royale is an arcade style fighting game with all your favorite characters from your favorite video games. From Nathan Drake of Uncharted to Big Daddy of Bioshock, Battle Royale surely does have a unique selling proposition. Hell, you even get to play as Dante from Devil May Cry, Raiden (Metal Gear) and Kratos (God of War. Mind you, these are just a handful of characters, and there are more to choose from. Just the thought of being Big Daddy in an arcade style fight would make a mere Bioshock fan buy the game. But how exactly does it work?
Fire up the game, select your character, and you’ll find out. Apparently Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet can easily defeat Big Daddy, who, as a matter of fact, is 10 times the size of Sackboy and is heavily equipped to really feel Sackboy’s punches. Try some other characters, and you’ll really notice the ‘actual fighting’ in the game is more of a gimmick than a gaming experience of skill, technique, and speed. But we swallow our woes, taking to it that Battle Royale doesn’t really take itself too seriously; let’s just enjoy what is created, eh? And so we progress…
Up to 4 players can battle each other, where players damage other players to receive blue orbs that build up a super meter with 3 levels of super moves. Depending on how full your supermeter is, you use your skills to defeat the opponent. Some level three super kills require you to hunt down every opponent with special moves, while others don’t require you to do anything at all. Once you use a super move, you can sit back and enjoy watching your character perform it, but once you’ve done it 10 times, watching those moves over and over again gets tedious.
There’s no health bar in Battle Royale. Everything revolves around the super meter, which limits the fights in a big way because the super meter is the only way you can kill. And you win based on how many kills you get within a time limit or who gets a specific number of kills first. And this can be very monotonous with the limited moves every character has. All Stars Battle Royale is a fighting game for dummies. My grandma can probably learn all the moves for all the players within 30 minutes of gameplay time. In our case, we could take a character for the fourth time in a row because there’s nothing more to it. This game is what you might call an attempt at “60 Seconds to Fame.” A really attractive cover page, but empty on the inside. a hollow shell. a dry coconut What’s worse, there is no sense of achievement since there are barely any unlockables.
The level design in some levels is neat, but the same is balanced with some levels that are totally shite. In multiplayer mode, which is a disgrace to online competitive gaming in the first place, arena design really hampers the experience as it is difficult to track your character.
Button-mashing will work on low difficulties but definitely requires practice for high levels. Still, this game is not challenging enough for the mildly experienced. And the gameplay is nothing new and feels like playing something you’ve played before but with different characters.
The main menu looks horrible. It almost feels like the developers put no more than 10 minutes into designing it. The other 10 minutes were spent making the game. The character selection screen looks bland and has no life. The character designs are good, but let’s not give SCE Studios credit for that as they’re not original. Level 3 super moves look amazing and very exciting. but only when you see them the first three times.
Choose single player mode, select Nathan Drake, and as you fight through different levels, you end up fighting in a plane from Uncharted 3 with the Uncharted theme, aka Nate’s Theme track, playing in the background, which does take you back to when you were playing the sequence on Uncharted. The music in Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale blends perfectly with the characters and levels. Voice acting during gameplay and story mode cutscenes have decent humour.
The prime reason anyone would buy this game is because of the number of interesting characters you get to play with from big franchises like inFAMOUS, Heavenly Sword, God of War, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, and some upcoming releases like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Bioshock: Infinite, and DmC: Devil May Cry with the new Dante.
When you start playing this game, the first few hours are exciting because the characters and level art style will involve you. But as you progress through the game, you realize there’s hardly anything in it. Nothing but costumes, icons, taunts, and intro-outro moves to unlock, which doesn’t really make sense. Some characters feel stiff with excruciatingly slow limbs, making it easy to evade moves, while the other half is too powerful and agile. The game is so unbalanced that we believe it was a specification from the publishers, and maybe the developers’ bonuses depended on it.
Overall, this game will entertain the lazy or casual gamers. Pro gamers will be disappointed for sure because it lacks challenge. All-Stars Battle Royale is a perfect example of how games of the current generation are being dumbed down for instant gratification.
WHAT’S ILL
- Characters from your favorite Playstation franchises
- Good visuals and levels
- Character animations are slick
WHAT’S NOT
- Not much to do in the game
- No health bar
- Repetitive
- Horrific imbalance
RATING
- Gameplay Progression: 3/10
- Graphics: 7/10
- Sound: 7/10
- Unique Selling Proposition: 7/10
- iLLFactor: 4/10
Final Score: 5.0/10 – FLUNKED, YET ALIVE
