PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale — Let’s Get Ready To… You Know…

Callum Petch

On September the 29th of 2012, a wannabe games journalist named Callum Petch made a three-hour trip down to London, England to attend the Eurogamer Expo — the UK’s premier videogame… err… expo. His mission? To preview as many games as humanly possible in one day. These are his stories…

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale has been widely derided prior to release as a Smash-Bros.rip-off with not one original bone in its body.  One shamelessly made, so that Sony can corner a, currently, unfulfilled market for themselves.  Upon playing the thing, I find it hard to disagree with that statement.  But I also found it hard to agree, too.  In fact, I found it hard to come up with much of anything to my thoughts… because I had no f***ing clue what the hell was going on.

The simple gist is pretty much as expected:  four famous (if you define Touhou as “famous”, anyway) Sony characters enter an arena, and beat each other up until the time runs out and a winner is declared.

However, there are no health bars, nor are there any ring-outs.  Instead, to score points, you have to hit people with your Special (achieved by filling up a meter by beating other competitors).  Your Special has three potential levels, each one being more powerful and more likely to actually hit someone than the last, so there’s a risk/reward system in place.  Do you try and get a vital point now with the likely risk of missing wildly; or hold off and risk a loss of time building up your Super to another level; coming with the bonus of it being more likely to actually hit a sod?

In addition, the stages themselves are out to get you.  In the pair of games I got to play, we were matched up in the LittleBigPlanetDreamspace.  This level keeps adding new parts to the stage as you’re going along before, at the half way mark, switching suddenly to a stage designed around Buzz!  It even comes with a PlayStation-related question to answer where not being on the right answer when time runs out results in an unavoidable custard pie to the face — fun stuff that keeps you on your toes.  I also caught a glimpse of a stage themed around God Of War with crowds of Patapon occasionally intruding.

Pata pata pata pon! …sorry

Now, all of this sounds simple and easy to follow when I describe it, right?  Well, that’s because, on paper, it is.  Unfortunately, in an actual game, it is anything but. The first time I played, mayhem erupted as soon as the bell rang. We all ran and jumped around the level randomly, desperately trying to attack one another. I spent most of my time on my arse and most of my attacks took turns between not connecting and not appearing to do any damage.  There’s pretty much no feedback going on there and it seems to be luck-of-the-draw as to whether you get a successful hit or not.

When the bell rang, Sly Cooper (myself as, for some reason, Sir Daniel Fortesque was not available for the demo) had somehow eeked out a win.  I didn’t know how, but there it was.  A positive score and a victory that seemed like it had been pulled out of my arse.  So, I went back later on and tried again, this time as Jak & Daxter, to see if it would go any differently.

The exact same thing happened.  I’m not even kidding.  I even tried to play properly, instead of running around, mashing any one of the three attack buttons randomly.  And the exact same thing happened!  AGAIN!  This time, I stole a win in the last ten seconds thanks to my level two Super, but I still wasn’t entirely sure what had transpired in the previous three to four minutes.

Fortunately, it’s miles better than that Cartoon Network Smash Bros. “rip-off.” Far, far, FAR better.

And yet, I thinkI liked it.  I couldn’t understand anything that was going on and there’s a lot of problems going on in the actual gameplay side (like the camera being pulled out so far so often that it’s frequently impossible to tell where and who you are), but I think I liked it.  Again, I can’t say for sure, as it was pretty much sensory overload, but I think I enjoyed it.  So, that’s a thing.

One last note: the stall we were set up on had two players using DualShock 3 controllers, with two other players using PS Vitas, while all four played the same match.  It works really well, with no noticeable lag between any part of the game, or the controllers.  It’s a fun idea.  We were also informed that when you purchase the PlayStation 3 version, you get a code to download the Vita version at no extra cost.  That’s actually a genuinely fantastic idea that more games should do. It’s also a great incentive to both buy new and get your friends involved.

So, was it good, or was it a dud?  Well, I think it was good. I honestly couldn’t tell you for certain one way or another.