Playstation Allstars Battle Royale (www.the-usher.com)

"Go out fighting, Go out young, a flash of lightning hits the sun"

The heroes from Playstation’s past clash together for a celebration of everything playstation.

Crossover fighters are some of the most enjoyable games of any generation. Marvel vs Capcom, Smash Bros; even Street Fighter X tekken has its moments, there is something very special about seeing characters from different franchises come together for one game, especially if the game itself is good. Sony are responsible for many peoples childhoods and there line up of games and characters hold a special place in gamers hearts, when they announced that they would be making a crossover fighter featuring the Playstation brand, it should have been a match made in heaven. It wasn’t, It really wasn’t.

Problems can be seen by just looking at the roster, which currently stands at 20 with 4 more as DLC, first thing is that in this day and age 24 characters in a crossover fighting game is unfortunately unacceptable. Marvel vs Capcom 2, a game that is over ten years old has 56 characters in its roster, so why was it so hard for all-stars?

Second thing is that character selection makes no sense, why is there a good and evil Cole? Wouldn’t it have been cool to have one Cole who shifts between good and evil during the fight depending on your play style? Where are Abe, Crash, Spyro, and Lara Croft? Why is it Ninja Theory Dante and not old Dante? Why in the name of all that is holy is Zeus in this? The main appeal of a crossover fighter is its roster, but unfortunately they have pretty much failed in this regard. It’s not all bad however; the inclusion classic characters such as Parappa the Rapper, Jak and Daxter and Kratos will bring enjoyment to the game, plus characters you would never expect such as The Big Daddy from Bioshock make great additions, Raiden is a choice that is both great and irritating at the same time, whilst Raiden is a great character to be a fighting game, it’s a little odd that he was picked in favour of Snake, who is more loved than Raiden and is the character many people go to when they think Metal Gear. Maybe it’s because he was previously in Super Smash Bros? Its doubtful considering Kratos has been in two fighting games previous to this one, the biggest answer is marketing.

At least 50% of this roster only made it because they have upcoming games in the pipeline, or because they have games that have been recently released, there appearance is only here so people will like them and then go buy the game they appear in, none of this is more obvious than Ninja Theory Dante, there is nothing particularly wrong with his appearance in the game but this game is meant to be a celebration of Playstation, so why has a character who’s first game wouldn’t be out for another two months made it into the roster over a character that has been an important part of the Playstation 2 era? So then people can see ho good Ninja Theory Dante is and get excited for his game, Playstation All Stars is not a game it’s an advertisement, which is unacceptable.

So how is the actual game play? Hit and miss. The characters themselves play fine; they all feel faithful to there source material and for the most part work as fighting game characters, Raiden, Radec, Dante and Nathan Drake were particular highlights, but the way fights play out is just silly. The game plays very similar to Smash Bros, with four characters battling on a large 2D platformer like stage. The only way to kill other opponents is to hit them with a super attack which is assigned to the R2 button; every character has three supers from level 1s that are weakest to Level 3s that are strongest, first thing wrong with this is that since you can only be killed by supers characters don’t have health bars, which means there is almost no punishment for being hit or comboed, you just have to build up your meter till you get a super, because of this defence isn’t that big of a deal because as long as you dodge the super you will be fine, which is very stressful if you were the one using the super as everything you did previous to it was pointless, another problem is that the default match type doesn’t have a score board on screen during a match, so its very difficult to keep track who’s winning which means you don’t know who you should focus your attacks on because of this you usually just blindly attack anyone, it ruins any tension or tactics from the game, which is horrible for a fighting game.

The presentation, apart from the amazing intro, is non existent, the game doesn’t even try to catch your attention, the music is boring, apart from a small few the stages are samey, the graphics are poor, the character intros and endings for arcade are atrocious, and content wise there is really nothing to do apart from arcade (with the easiest final boss in a fighting game) and multiplayer (which is mixed when it comes to balancing) Though for a modern day fighter it does ok with customisation, every character has one alt, and a choice of different taunts intros and outros, which you don’t usually get in fighters and allows you to personalise your character a little.

In conclusion there is nothing that will interest you in this game, the games issues completely destroy the novelty of Playstation characters fighting, its one of the worst fighting games available on the console and will be quickly forgotten, its saddening because the concept of a Playstation fighter is interesting, but unfortunately the final product is just poor, don’t buy it.

Review by Ellis Atkinson & Jarrod Beauchamp

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