Despite the initial fun factor, John Walshe isn’t completely wowed by Sony’s four-player beat-em-up.
OMG: I get to play as Kratos, from God Of War, and slap Bioshock’s Big Daddy upside the head with a fish. What could be better?
A 2D platforming beat-em-up in the style of Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale initially seems like a dream come true. There’s a wealth of familiar characters, some of them from Sony original titles, including Parappa The Rapper, Nathan Drake and Sackboy, and others from third party games, like Dante and Raiden, all taking each other on in a fight to the annihilation.
The levels are well-designed, featuring elements from some classic games like Buzz, God Of War and Killzone, with some genuine surprises and innovations thrown in. The sheer number of ways to assault your rivals, with three different attack buttons, as well as bonus weapons to pick up and special moves, might lead you to think this is a pure button-masher, but the truth is that you’ll need to work on both strategy and timing if you’re going to succeed.
You build up attack points by landing successful hits on your rivals, and then unleash up to three levels of special moves to wipe out the other combatants, with the third level bringing all manner of hellfire and damnation down upon them. This is the key to winning the fights, as there is no health bar to speak of: instead, you win each Battle Royale by gaining more ‘kills’ than the other three fighters within a given time-frame. While it’s easy enough on the lower skill levels, the learning curve when you get busy with the harder difficulty settings is pretty steep, and you’ll really have to work on mastering each character’s fighting styles if you’re going to take them all the way to the inevitable big boss fight.
Like most fighting games, multiplayer mode is where the real attraction lies: there’s only so much enjoyment one can get by knocking out computer-controlled opponents, whereas the chance to destroy three of your mates in ever-more-devious ways never really gets old.
This all sounds like fun, and it is, at least initially. The problem is that once you’ve beaten the game a couple of times with different characters, the replay value depletes rapidly, and when you’re shelling out your hard-earned shekels, you deserve a game that will keep its appeal for longer than Battle Royale. Unfortunately, even the online options, including ranked battles, don’t add hugely to the replayability. The result is a game that would be great fun at a budget price but just doesn’t add up to good value when you’re paying full whack.
Platform: PS3, PS Vita
Publisher: SCEE
Age Rating: 12
Score: 2.5/5
John Walshe
