A new contender enters the melee genre with Playstation All Stars Battle Royal, but does it put up a fight?
The presentation of Playstation All Stars Battle Royale is not all bad. The environments are an amalgamation of your favorite Playstation games, which are genuinely fun to play in. Seeing familiar environments merge are one of the highlights of gameplay. Playstation All Stars Battle Royale suffers from a unique camera issue that never truly comes into focus. The game is at it’s best visually during one on one match ups which allows the players to appreciate both the character models and the environments. When more players are added to melee, the action becomes hectic and difficult to follow. Unless you are a character with a distinct profile like Big Daddy or Fat Princess, you become loss in the action.
The environments are stunning and can become your worst enemy.
The action in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale is fast, brutal, and exactly what you would expect from a franchise melee mash-up, which is part of the problem. None of the players seem fluid and there is a balancing issue that will frustrate gamers. Parappa the Rapper seems too fast to actually compete with the likes of Fat Princess or Big Daddy. The game does play similarly to Nintendo’s Smash Bros. series with a heavier emphasis on combos. Random items appear in the world that can deliver instant kills which is how you win a match. Matches are timed and the player with the most kills at the end of the round wins. There are varying match types that should keep fighting fans busy. There are Tournament and Versus Modes, which support both cooperative and online play. The game also supports a Solo Play mode, which contains the game’s single player campaign.
