Looking Forward: Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

After hearing about it again recently on The Super Joystiq Podcast, and it being so similar to a series near and dear to my heart, I’ve decided to write a post about Sony’s new party fighting game “Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale.”  Obviously since I have not yet struck gold and gotten a legitimate position in the pantheon of games journalists, this article is going to be written purely on gameplay videos, previews and my own uncreative nonsense so keep that in mind upon further reading.

If this is the first you are hearing of this game, and you aren’t my mother or non-gamer friends who read this to support me, I would be extremely surprised. Since E3 there has been a lot of hype surrounding Battle Royal a.k.a. Sony’s answer to Super Smash Bros. I really don’t like generalizing about new games, especially when they are filling a necessary niche, but that’s really all the game is.  Speaking frankly, the game is Smash Bros with classic and new age Playstation characters. I don’t want to sit here and do a compare and contrast paper about the two games, but really its damn near impossible not to.  Go watch the Giantbomb Quick Look about it, and they even admit that it just IS Smash with some slightly tweaked mechanics. The game looks like fun, and the platform has many exclusive characters with powerful namesakes, so really there is no reason they shouldn’t make this game. But, I just don’t think it is going to be the hyped up masterpiece that the internet is trying to make it out to be.

Mechanics
At a glance, you could look at a normal match of this game and think it was a timed match of Smash Bros. But.. If you look deeper and more closely you will notice that actually what is being played is a game of Smash Bros that isn’t as good.  The basic mechanics are the same: you have 2-4 players, on a stage with various elements from different games, beating the crap out of each other with varying types and strengths of attacks until time runs out and a winner is declared. There are variations between specifics on scoring, attacks and items but the goal is the same. Everyone has attacks unique to their character of various ranges and strengths, but instead of having hit points that go down or a percentage of taken damage that goes up, you simply have no death conditions outside of specific special abilities. Your basic attacks and “Damage” you do to other players in the form of filling up a special bar by your name up to three levels. Each level grants an increasingly more powerful special attack, something akin to a special attack, a smash attack and a final smash in Brawl, and these are the ONLY attacks in the game capable of killing another player.  While I applaud the idea of not just flat out copying what Smash Bros. has done, something about this mechanic just doesn’t sit well with me. In a very competitive game of smash, every single hit you take matters and a minor difference in percentage can make or break an entire life. Here, while getting hit contributes to an enemy’s special bar, it appears to have no effect on you.  So you can take as much damage as you want without consequence as long as you don’t get hit by a special. And the specials themselves are bothersome in their own right. When each character only has a total of 3 abilities that can kill other players, balance is key. When there are only a limited number of abilities that score points, if any character has a slightly superior combination of abilities and specials, the community will not hesitate to all use the same character because for example, that character’s level  three special is guaranteed 4+ kills, and no one else’s special is capable of  doing that, there is no reason not to play that character. This is doubly so in the as yet to be shown stock mode wherein the players are given a limited number of lives. A special that automatically kills everyone on the screen or allows for more than one kill per individual person is a balancing nightmare where someone could eliminate an entire player with more than one life by killing them multiple times with the same ability. (see Sly Cooper’s level 3 smash that can easily obtain 4 kills in one use)Which brings the point of the characters themselves, and that whole interesting mismatch..

Characters
When it comes to a history of characters to choose from, the Playstation may not have the iconic character options that someone like Nintendo does, but it does have a great quantity of well loved and suited characters. Playstation still has a rich history running back to the mid 90s in addition to its modern exclusives, and it shows in the character choices so far announced for the game. Since seeing the first images and watching people play the game there has just been something that seemed off to me about it. I know it really doesnt make any more sense for Sonic to be fighting Mario than for Sweet Tooth to be fighting Sly Cooper, but something about the clashing asthetic and history of characters like this just does not sit well with me. The Nintendo universe, while not all inclusive, has such similar styles and such a long past that the idea of characters from different titles fighting each-other just makes sense for some reason. I mean a large portion of the characters are from the mario series, and the rest of the characters fit in really well even though they come from elsewhere. But when I see a screen where Parappa is Jump-Kick-Choping the legendary god-killer Kratos while The Thievius Raccoonus is roll-dodging away from a hail of Colonel Radec's gunfire I just leave the experience with a bad taste in my mouth. Some of these characters have extensive stories of their own so deep that the idea of them engaging in a fruitless battle over nothing seems not only silly, but also in my humble opinion devalues the characters on some level. Most of Nintendo's characters are silent protagonists, with limited backstory and you can summarize a large portion of their storylines to "defeat bosses, save princesses." While as games as a whole this would normally be something I would say works to their detriment, it really makes the idea of them punching eachother in the face repeatedly seem more believeable.

Conclusion
As a whole, the game looks like it could be good casual party fun, and you have achieved Playstation Fan-Boy status I cannot tell you to not buy this game. But, honestly all that writing this is doing to me is making me want to grab some friends, grab some beers, dig out the Gamecube controllers, boot up Smash Bros. Melee and just have a blast! And if I can already do that with 3 games I already own, on 3 systems I already own, why would I want to buy it again, which characters I dont like as much? The answer: I dont.