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PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Preview for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Preview for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Still Rough Around the Edges

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was one of the games that the fighting game community was really looking forward to at E3 this year. Billed as a sort of hardcore friendly Smash Bros., PS All-Stars was supposedly going to redefine the party fighter genre. It was going to be appealing to the casual fanbase for all the reasons that Smash Bros. is while still making a game come down to skill above everything else. There was a lot of buzz surrounding the title, but only so much information that could be gathered simply by watching gameplay videos. Luckily, E3 gave me my first chance to go hands-on with the title.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Screenshot

First of all, I hate to say it, but I need to criticize the Sony booth creators for their decision regarding the monitors they used for the demo. Fighting game developers should know that button lag absolutely kills the fighting game experience, and these monitors were so laggy it was hard to tell when a button input actually registered. As a result, I couldn’t actually tell what speed the game was supposed to run at, or how quickly battle was supposed to take place. Instead, the game boiled down to mashing half the time, and I have a feeling that’s how the game is supposed to play.

You see, you don’t actually deal damage by attacking your foes, you just build up a super meter. Obviously, longer combos build up super meter quicker, but light attacks are so short ranged that they are practically worthless. Instead, it seems safe to simply spam heavy attacks the entire game, occasionally blocking if the opponent has one which is better than yours. To throw, you flick the right stick, and this was incredibly awkward, but since blocking is pretty much a guaranteed defense, throws are necessary against anyone who decides to turtle up. However, throwing actually takes meter away from the thrower, and this is such a drastic penalty that most players at E3 didn’t even bother.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Screenshot

The only way you can score kills is by using super attacks and some supers are simply much better than others. In the previous build, Parappa’s skateboard level 2 was much better than anything else in the game. This time around, Big Daddy from Bioshock (one of the two new characters) was the star of the show. Using his level 2 made him faster and made any attack count as a kill. Simply spamming his forward + triangle shoulder ram and using this super when it became available routinely made me the winner of any match I played to the tune of 16 kills or more.

Characters can use special moves with the O button, but for the most part it just isn’t worth it. Every special move in the game, even those that are part of dedicated special move characters, are either too slow or too situational to be worth using. In fact, only Parappa’s specials felt like they had any use whatsoever. His down special allows him to just place a boom box that gives him meter for free, and I would very frequently run away to a corner and build meter up to level 2 before skateboarding all over my opponent’s faces.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Screenshot

PS All-Stars was supposed to remove the crappy elements of multi-player Smash Bros, but instead it just augments them. Sure, you can’t get robbed of kills and the stage can’t actually cause you to die, but the process of running away until you are able to stab someone in the back is alive and well, even more so because there is no threat of death outside of getting hit by a super. When you use one of your supers it turns into a run-away game where everyone simply stays away from the dangerous character.

In fact, the very nature of the game makes the time oriented nature of the game’s matches frustrating. If the game ticks down to 30 or so seconds and your meter is out, there’s no way you’ll be able to build another one to score a kill. So if you are already losing at that point, there’s no reason to keep playing. If you are winning, on the other hand, it behooves you to bury yourself into a corner and do nothing.

This frantic mashy gameplay only breaks down further when fewer human players are involved. If you play with computer controlled opponents, then the game becomes a race to exploit the crappy A.I. Simply hammer on the attack that gives you the most meter knowing that the computer won’t ever block it, and then unleash your most powerful super as soon as it is available.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Screenshot

We weren’t able to play the game in one on one mode, but I have a feeling that these issues would only be magnified in that mode. Players would attack each other skillfully and relentlessly until the first kill was scored. After that, all the player in the lead has to do is run away. The opponent can’t build more meter if he doesn’t attack and if he doesn’t build more meter, he can’t ever score another kill and even up the match.

That’s not to say that the game doesn’t have potential, though. Characters control well and their moves accurately represent the games they come from. Most of the characters were fun to play and the stages were an absolute blast. When the mashing was over, I was able to figure out some rudimentary combos (not that it mattered because I would routinely get stabbed in the back while performing them.) Overall, the base is very good, it’s just that the rule structure acts against it.

That being said, there is still a lot of development time left before PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale hits shelves, and hopefully a lot of these issues will be fixed by then. An addition of a stock mode would be nice, and an increase to meter gain would be nice as well. I honestly don’t think that PS All-Stars is down for the count yet, it just needs a lot of work. I never lost a match of PS All-Stars, and that’s because I played the game as in as lame a way as I possibly could. I’m not proud of it, and I hope that Superbot fixes it so that I deservedly lose some time in the future.

Game Features:

  • Play with third party characters like Big Daddy.
  • Utilize iconic special and super moves.
  • Battle against your friends or an opponent.
  • Compete in mashed up stages where worlds collide.

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