PlayStation All Stars beta impressions

When PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale was first announced I had said that I was hoping that it was more like Marvel vs Capcom, now that I have played some of the beta, I still retain that belief. This is a blatant rip off of the Super Smash Brothers games with very little that makes it unique from that Nintendo franchise. The beta, released for PS+ members and a public released next week, is well made, and from the few matches I played didn't see any hick ups. I just don't think that the game itself is very exciting. In Smash, it's a controlled chaos where you knew where you were at the whole time, in Battle you can't really see what you are doing. This is mostly caused by the camera being as far from the battle itself. It does get close when the players are together, but not as close as Smash. To make matters worse, when you and another person pick the same character your user name is not hovering above that character you had picked. This makes the fights more about finding yourself than actually fighting the other players.

It plays much like Smash, but in Smash you had combos you can do, but for Battle it has a three button layout and the difference between the characters are just to minimal to notice. I was planning on writing about each character in the demo; Kratos, Fat Princess, Sly Cooper, PaRapper the Rapper, Sweet Tooth, and Colonel Radec, but they don't really have anything different between the. Kratos will uses his blades as you would expect to, and Radec will use weapons as you expect to. The problem with using Sweet Tooth and Radec is that they use weapons like guns and rockets. They don't go that far, but I can see it being abused. There are power ups that relates to the map, like in the God of War map Kratos weapons from the games falls from the sky and anybody can pick it up. In one match, I played as PaRapper the Rapper and I picked up the Boots of Hermes and it does what it should. While the attacks wasn't fast, he was. It can get you to the other side of the map faster, but not much else. There are other weapons and boosts to pick up.

It's all not like Smash though. The more unique stuff is the highlight of the beta. The are two maps you can play from. Metropolis from Ratchet and Clank, and Hades from God of War. During the match the map would change. In Metropolis, it would change from Ratchet and Clank to the three Hydra stage from God of War. The music would start as Ratchet and it would seamlessly change to the God of War theme with out a misstep. It's pretty cool that they did that. While this is a beta, I just hope that the maps isn't fixed. I would love to see it change to Ratchet and Clank to Uncharted, or Uncharted to PaRapper the Rapper without a missing a beat to the music. Another thing is that the maps have death traps that relates to the map itself. Hades will attack you during the God of War map. It won't kill you out right, but it will make you in a daze.

In the long run, I can't see this being a big hit that Sony hopes to be. What made the Smash brothers such a huge success was the interaction with other players on one screen. This can be applied to Battle. It may be great fun with other players, but for online it will be severely lacking. It's got some good ideas, but it won't replace Smash Brothers in terms of gameplay and interactivity.