Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

Anyone else here play this game? It's like Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. but with a Super-oriented gameplay style rather than Smash's ringout gameplay. Sounds a bit weird at first, I agree, but I really enjoy it.

I want to get into it more but am appalled by its terrible community of trolls, teabaggers, and rage-quitters, and was hoping to find people from the forum's great community who also play this game.

My PSN is MazinKaiser21, if you want to add me. I mostly play as Parappa and trying to improve as Kat. If we get enough people playing this game, I think it'd be really neat to hold a forum tourney.

I gave it a lot of thoughts.... decided to skip it... <<;

would it be too much to ask about a personal feedback about the game? might get it if it ends up really promising, others might as well...

Parappa, Kat and Dante are a good start to convince me, but it's not enouogh xD

I'd be glad to give some of my thoughts about the game

I will admit that I only got the game initially to hold me over until Super Smash Bros. 4, which I still believe to be the superior Mascot Crossover Fighting game.

I was a bit skeptical of the Super-system at first. You build up a meter by hitting others, and when you have enough, you unleash a Super attack that defeats your opponents and is the only way to score points. However, after playing it during its online beta, I've found that this system is actually very, very fun. It rewards players who use smart strategies to make the most of their limited ways to score points. Do you go for the very risky but easy to acquire lower-level Supers, or hold on to your meter to build up to a stronger Super that guarantees you more kills, but at the risk of the other player either killing you with more of their Supers or stealing your meter?

In Smash, people could camp in one corner of the stage, let the others damage each other, and then sneak in and steal some kills. In All-Stars, though, you can't win unless you actually take part in the fighting.

The items are great, too. Each item is unique in their uses, but unlike Smash won't ultimately decide the match. You can get an upper hand on your opponents, but at the end of the day they're only there to help you get to a Super.

The stages are really cool. The hazards are clever, as they're all about invasion/crossovers. For example, the Ratchet and Clank stage will have the Hydra from God of War appear in the background, attacking players until, near the end, Captain Qwark tames it and rides off with it.

It's also got some good support for DLC. Earlier this month Kat (from Gravity Rush) and Emmet (from Starhawk) came out, and just earlier today they announced another pair of DLC characters: Isaac Clarke (from Dead Space) and Zeus (from God of War). Other developers have also expressed interest in getting their characters into the game in the future (notably, Lara Croft (from the new Tomb Raider), Abe (from Abe's Odyssey), Teddie (from Persona 4), and Laharl/Etna (from Disgaea)).

In addition to new characters, DLC includes new Stages (currently, we've got a Heavenly Sword/Wipeout stage, and a MediEvil/The Unfinished Swan stage coming in the future) and costumes (Kat got her Spy suit from her games, Nathan Drake has his wetsuit from Uncharted 1, etc.). The game does a great job with giving fans a lot of materials from the characters' games.

Finally, the online is fantastic. There will be a few glitches (some of them especially hilarious), but for the most part your online matches will be very, very smooth with little to no input lag.

Pros:

• Great online mode
  
• Characters are extremely varied. You cannot play someone like Kat the same way you play someone like Ratchet and expect to be equally successful.
  
• Stages are very fun
  
• Items are unique but not game-breaking
  
• Super-gameplay offers a different style of play from Smash that's weird at first but extremely satisfying once you start getting the hang of the game
  
• Constant patches and new DLC.
  
• Currently very, very cheap. I think it's around $40 in stores, and $17 on the PS Store with PS+
  

Cons:

• The online community, on the other hand, is extremely horrid. Lots of teabaggers, rage-quitters, and trolls.
  
• Some characters have a distinct advantage over others. Notably, Raiden, Sly Cooper, and Nathan Drake are above the other characters in terms of strength and options in battle. The game isn't as tier-heavy as MvC2, though.
  
• While glitches are often fixed by patches, those patches often introduce new glitches, which people use online to try and boost their win record. This is more of an extension of the first con, really.
  

That's my overall review of the game. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. I'd really like to see other people here play this game so that we can have some great matches!

hahaha tell me about MvsC 2 and 3 jeesh the unbalance is what made those games so popular (Hate Sentinel.... I hate sentinel ugh <<)

well, unfortunately pretty much all games have to face with a bad community on the PSN thesedays if you want to know my opinion... nothing we can do about it, just shows that there are a lot of douches or idiots out there ~3~;;;

Question regarding the combo/style variation spread between the characters though; is it more the King of Fighters kind of variation heavy (like literally having unique combo moves with special button inputs for specific characters) or more in the way of same button combination but different (always quarter circle or backward and forward made this one so boring with time)?

Haha hearing about the continuity of DLC characters makes me really happy. If they realy announce Disgaea characters, this would totally make me buy the game xD;;; as one of my personal reason till now were like, meh not enough characters especially characters I liked xD...

Thanks for your review, it definitely makes me considering buying this game now. X);;; Still not 100% convinced but will give it a few months of thoughts same as MvsC3 untik I finally gave in... xD;

My apologies for the delayed response.

True, most online communities are garbage anyway, but All-Stars I feel has a particularly bad one. When Kat and Emmett were free, people were still complaining! How do you complain about free stuff?!

The variation is more like your second example. All moves are done by holding(or not holding) a direction and pressing one of the attack buttons, so there's no Shoryuken or Hadouken motions in this game. But each character has a very distinct playstyle. For example, Kratos needs to get in and do as much damage as possible, so his moveset either has him close the gap or use his range advantage with his swords. Colonel Radec, on the other hand, needs to say away from the action and use his long-ranged guns. Sly's playstyle relies on trickery, and so his moveset has him going invisible, teleporting, and laying traps that stun or mess with controls. Dante is all about chaining his Rebellion moves to his Ebony & Ivory moves to his Arbiter & Osiris moves in a long chain to maximize his damage output, and Kat is about controlling the air with her various gravity moves and kicks. The fun is trying to figure out where their strengths lie and finding a way to handle matchups that don't favor that character.

I'm honestly very surprised that their continuing to support the game with DLC, despite its low sales. Hopefully they bring in characters that people have been asking for (Crash, Spyro, and Cloud being the most wanted characters) so that a lot of people buy the game and this series doesn't die.

No problem If you do decide to get the game, let me know and we can have a couple 1v1 sparring matches.

While I can't give a lengthy response, I have to say, overall, I'm much happier with this game than I was with Smash Bros. The stages are all excellent, and every single character still feels like they've stepped right out of their home game - something that wasn't always there/possible with Smash Bros. But the sheer amount of love that went into this game? I just can't get enough of it.

The gameplay, while hard to get used to at first, is also a lot of fun, for the same reasons that MazinKaiser stated - and what's more, there's an element of strategy to it too. You can fight and fight to build up to your Level 3 special (which is what I find more people tend to do), or work up for the faster, but not as guaranteed, Level 1 ones.

Honestly, it's a solid, fantastic game, and I think the only game that I've still been hooked on even after I got the Platinum. The only real drawback is that they couldn't get some HGUE Sony characters here, and I'm really sorry Sony stepped away from the studio because of it. It's hardly their fault that people didn't buy the game en masse like they wanted - the whole draw of this game is fanservice, and let's face it. No matter how much love went into it, a lot of people just wouldn't buy it because they felt they weren't being appealed to, but there's nothing that could have been done about that if the characters couldn't be gotten.

Still, I understand there's hope for Crash and Spyro yet, so if they're relevant to you, stay tuned.

In any case, I'd say if you have a Sony system, it's a must play. I love it.

Very exciting day for PSABR players today. A new balance patch comes out today along with Zeus, Isaac, and the MediEvil/Unfinished Swan!

RisingKuuga: I heard about the Twitter campaign to get Crash and Spyro into the game. Valiant effort, but I haven't heard much about it recently. Is it dying already?

My roommates bought it and we haven't played smash since. I think it's just enough like smash to keep it familiar and make you want to play but different enough to feel fresh and fun. The specials add a level of strategy, albeit minimal, to your gameplay that make you think a little bit more than just a straight up brawling style of playing.

It's fun.

If you like smash and have a ps3 I'd definitely recommend it. That being said we seem to have more fun with it as a couch multiplayer than with the online.

MazinKaiser21 wrote:

Very exciting day for PSABR players today. A new balance patch comes out today along with Zeus, Isaac, and the MediEvil/Unfinished Swan!

RisingKuuga: I heard about the Twitter campaign to get Crash and Spyro into the game. Valiant effort, but I haven't heard much about it recently. Is it dying already?

Honestly, I dunno. I doubt it ever will die permanently, and people are always after Sony to let people play Crash and Spyro on their Vitas, so something will probably happen eventually... I hope.