Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

[Kriven]

I think all we have so far is: "Owned by Sony and we're thinking about maybe talking to other people but we aren't sure yet."

[TomGuycott]

There was this quote:
"Additionally, players will have access to top third party gaming heroes to use in battle."

I think that makes it a bit more likely that characters that aren't necessarily a Sony exclusive to be playable, but I have NO idea who would want to add their characters to this game, it looks pretty iffy at the moment.

Unless they got From Software to give them characters from Dark Souls. Then I'd instantly buy this game.

[DioShiba]

Unless they got From Software to give them characters from Dark Souls. Then I'd instantly buy this game.

ITT I doubt that this will happen. However a Black knight would be interesting.

Anyways with third party characters announced being in I'm assuming that means crash and spyro will be in (But god help us all if they decide to use spyro's skylander design, ugh)

[TomGuycott]

I was thinking more along the lines of one of the named characters, like Solaire, Ornstein, Logan or Nito. Any one of those and I'd shit myself.

Of course the Black Knights are awesome too and I'd still shit myself if it was one of them.

[megaMasquerain]

Yeah, I'm gonna wait for the price to drop on this one, probably. As much as I'd like to play as Parappa this looks like it's not going to do very well.

[[robo9]]

The game hasn't even came out yet and gameplay videos are rather scarce. For all we know, the game could play amazingly

[Gwen]

From the video Dazz posted, it looks clunky and not very well thought out.

[Iceman404]

Why does everyone assume that because you haven't played a game it isn't shit anyways?

It's just easy determination and examining.

Edit: Heh, or vice versa

[[robo9]]

Some more gameplay footage. It looks a bit less "Smashy" to me, since ringouts evidently only occur from being hit with a special move and there isn't really a health indicator. If anything, the gameplay reminds me more of the Shrek fighting game than Smash Bros,

[TomGuycott]

Conceptually speaking, I DO like the idea of a Little Big Planet stage that starts from scratch and is slowly built up.

Other than that, I'm still not into this.

But apparently I can't stop talking about it.

[Gwen]

I talked to a friend with a PS3 and we came up with some more ideas that would actually make this game pretty cool, at least character-wise.
-The guy from Infamous, why isn't he a character yet? He seems like such a great obvious choice.
- Some people from the Uncharted series
- Ratchet and Clank

I mean, there's three BIG characters for Sony right there. If they're not in, then Sony's not really giving this game a chance. If this ends up getting an alright character setlist, and doesn't play as clunky as it's seeming to, I might get my brother this for his birthday.
EDIT: Also, Coke, it still seems very Smash Bros to me gameplay wise, KO's might be different, but the actual combat seems extremely SMB.

[Koopaul]

I love hearing that guy talk and how desperate he is to convince us this is the new Smash Bros.

[Rosencrantz]

-The guy from Infamous, why isn't he a character yet? He seems like such a great obvious choice.
- Some people from the Uncharted series

Oh, and all six of the characters currently on the roster have been confirmed from the eight-character rumor roster, with the additional two being Nathan Drake and Cole MacGrath.

In other words, they leaked an eight-man roster back when this was still called "Title Fight". Everyone on the list has made it so far except for Cole (guy from Infamous) and Nathan (guy from Uncharted). I've got a lot of faith that we'll be seeing them in action very shortly.

[Gwen]

If so that's good news. I'll be honest, part of why I seem to be so against this is that I'm a Nintendo guy, but I'm trying to stay open minded about it, it just seems like apart from characters, the gameplay just doesn't seem that good. But I'll try and keep an open mind, although I still think that styles clash a bit to much.

[GaryCXJk]

Okay, after a few days of thinking and being slightly hyped, I now have the feeling this won't be the game I'm really excited about. Here are some reasons.

1. The title
Okay, here's the thing. The title is just a thing to call the game, it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the game. Yet the title is also one of the most important things of a game. It basically tells you what this game is about, but more importantly, its style. Super Smash Bros. we all knew would be a fighting game, albeit a silly fighting game (which turned out to be a masterpiece), just basing it off the title alone. Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion was another game where the genre and style were obvious. I mean, the Cartoon Network part gave it away already, but the Punch Time Explosion part also showed that it's a game that isn't too overly serious.

But also take a look at other games. Mortal Kombat for example. The Mortal part in Mortal Kombat already shows that this is serious business and that there will be blood. With Sonic the Hedgehog I imagine a funny talking animal, a hedgehog. Sure I don't really know the genre from the title alone, but I could assume it's a platform game. LittleBigPlanet sounds like a sort of adventure game thing. It's a platform game with creating stuff in mind, but that's not the point. It also sounds cutesy.

Now if we look at PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, we can notice several things. First of all, the title is too long. Second, it's on the PlayStation. Third, it has an all-stars cast. Fourth, it will pit these characters against each other in a battle royale. Fifth, it's going to be a casual game.

Wait, what? Why a casual game?

You see, when you combine the various words together, you will get a certain feeling, in this case the feeling that it will be very casual. This might not be the case, but the title is pretty unfortunate. Imagine if Nintendo called their latest Super Smash Bros. game Super Smash Bros. Wii instead of Brawl. The Wii part automatically gives you the feeling that this game is going to suck, or at least is going to be casual as hell. I mean, we have Wii Sports and Wii Play. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was already a horrible name actually.

Sticking a console name or company name in front of your title isn't going to do wonders for your game. And especially with the combination of "All-Stars".

On top of that, mostly when browsing through titles, people only tend to read the first few words or letters in stores. Sure if you're actively searching for this game you will try to read the entire title, but some people just want to randomly pick a game from the shelves. The first few letters they would read is "PlayStation All-Stars", or perhaps just "PlayStation". That's not a good thing. At least with Super Smash Bros., we get Super Smash. It's a short and efficient title.

The title does make a difference.

2. The art style
Like some, I now have a bad feeling about the art style. Previously, when the game was still called "Title Fight", I was worried that there would be a style clash, due to rumors claiming they would have their original appearances, as in, everything having the art style of their respective games. While they did try to unify the styles for each character in this game, I still don't have a feeling it's actually unified.

Let's forget about Super Smash bros. here, we all know they did a lot of things right, including the unified style. Let's take a look at Punch Time Explosion here. I've played the game. It wasn't very good, but not horrible either. One of the things I really liked about the game though was the fact that, despite every character having their own art style in their respective animations, in this game each character looks similar enough in style that they might as well be from the same series. Hell, even Captain Planet looks pretty damn blended in.

Same goes for a game that IS good. Jump! Superstars and Jump! Ultimate Stars had various manga characters that had widely varrying art styles. I mean, just compare Don Patch and Jotaro. They don't seem to work well together at all. However, the Jump! Stars series did manage to blend each character into one style, while retaining their original styles.

However, a more well-known example would be Marvel vs. Capcom. I mean, just look at the latest edition. If you even just compare Viewtiful Joe to a character like X-23, it works, because of a unified style. M.O.D.O.K. and Jill Valentine duking out doesn't at all seem weird, simply because they made the game so that the art style wouldn't differ too much.

For some reason, I just don't feel it with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. They're trying, they're trying very hard, I can see that, but for some reason it's just not working.

Also, the glowy outline sucks ass. They should leave that out.

3. Stage hazards
One thing I absolutely hated about Super Smash Bros. Brawl was stage hazards. You could be duking it out with friends, until suddenly, POW, a fish pops up and eats you dead. That's why I mostly just play on Temple with my friends, because at least that's somewhat neutral. That, and the stage is just so motherfracken big. Matches tend to last longer that way (even though they play with items on).

With the three stages I've seen, at least two have stage hazards, but I assume the LittleBigPlanet / Buzz stage also has one particularly annoying. You see, one of the stages I absolutely hated was the WarioWare Inc. stage. It just takes out the pacing of the game by forcing you to focus on the microgames. The same happens with the Buzz segment of the aforementioned stage. You have to answer a question while battling it out, which means the pacing will be seriously hampered during these times.

I know developers like to make stages more exciting, by adding stuff like stage hazards. But at least make it somewhat fair.

4. When do I die?
While watching a video of gameplay, I noticed one thing. You die, you don't get knocked off. However, there is no indication when you die. Do you die exclusively by supers? I originally thought so, but it's absolutely unclear what the win conditions are. To me, it just sounds a bit random.

It's like a fighting game without a health bar. You wouldn't know when you are winning or even when you are losing. I mean, perhaps they will change some things, or explain how it all works, but for now, I don't really see how it all works.