Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a new fighting game developed by Ludosity and Fair Play Labs, and published by GameMill Entertainment for the PS4, PS5, PC and Xbox consoles.
It is, essentially, a Super Smash Bros clone. It takes the mechanics, level layouts, even button commands of Smash and incorporates them into this new setting. This isn’t the first game to do it, notably PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale attempted the same thing back in 2012. I won’t mark it down for being a clone, as that’s just common in the fighting game genre. You could argue most fighters are clones of Street Fighter 2 anyway, so it wouldn’t be fair.
The inevitable result of making a game so close to another is that comparisons will be made. This unfortunately results on focusing what this game does not have, compared to what Smash does. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has three main modes, a battle mode, an arcade mode, and an online mode. The arcade mode lets the player pick a fighter and battle through random stages, until the end, there’s no boss or special stages. The battle mode is a simple pick the fighters and level, and online is either quick play, lobbies or ranked. That’s it for modes, there’s nothing else.
When it comes to the fighters themselves, I do think they picked a nice selection. There is SpongeBob, Patrick, Sandy, Cat-Dog, Reptar, Angelica, Aang, Korra, and a fair few more. I think they did quite a good job in selecting characters over Nickelodeons history, whilst I didn’t recognise the newer ones, I did the older ones, so I’m sure there’s a character from most people’s childhoods in here somewhere. The stages too, are also quite nice. I think they have done well in retaining the style from each show in the stages, and some of them have quite a good level of detail to them.
Now onto the not so good. Whilst the stages do have a good level of detail, there isn’t always a huge level of interactivity. Some have a little bit, such as a rollercoaster coming through or some carts being pushed, but these are on timed loops and easy to avoid. There is no voice acting either, so if you happen to turn music off, or play on your own, the battles become eerily quiet. There are also no alternate designs or pallete swaps, so if two people pick the same character, they are clones.
The final problem, is that there are no items to speak of. Every battle is just you and your wits. This does actually help make things a little more focused and intense – when playing Smash Bros I actually quite like playing with no items – but it does mean there is much less variety in each battle. It can make the large levels feel rather sparse. In terms of the actual combat, each character has a basic attack, a special attack, and a strong attack. There is also a block and a jump button, and that’s about it. Each characters move sets do represent the characters well I think, so fans of the individual characters will likely be pleased at how they’ve been represented.
Fighting though, is a little clunky. I hate to make constant comparisons, but it’s just not as smooth as Smash. Little things, like not being able to dodge on the ground, to some of the moves just not really working hamper the experience. It could do with a polish, as in its current state, it just feels a little off. There is always the possibility this is my mind just adjusting to the fact that this isn’t Smash Bros, and won’t control exactly like it, but at this point it just does not feel tight.
Ultimately, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a very bare-bones experience. I think the graphics are quite nice, and I like a lot of the design, but the lack of anything apart from the core fighting hurts it. This was most likely done for budgetary reasons, and I think the developers made the right choice focusing on what they could, but this has not been given a budget price. It’s sitting at £31.99 right now on Steam, which is a 20% off deal from £39.99. That is way overpriced for what you get in the package. If this came down to £19.99, and you play with other people rather than in single-player, I could see it being worthwhile. However in it’s current state, I can’t recommend.
You can check out the game on Steam here. It’s worth checking out, as the reviews are quite different to mine.
