I remember hearing the announcement of PS All Stars back in 2012. What I mainly remember about the game before it's release was it being chastised for being a Smash Bros clone at all, how Sony was "ripping off" Nintendo and how Playstation IPs were never popular enough to sell a fighter and all that jazz. I sort of played the game for a little bit back in high school but I never really thought much about it. Over the years, the game did slowly start to garner a vocal cult following who really enjoyed it. The recent release of Astro Bot felt like it was echoing this very game. On top of finding a used PS3 copy for super cheap as well as being a celebration of Playstation before the Last of Us and Sony's 1st party games getting big with the PS4, I decided to give the game a proper chance. It also has that, "Marvel before the MCU" feel which gives PS All Stars even more mystique. I'm also way more experienced with the IPs in this game now than in 2012.
I'll preface this review by saying that I find Smash Bros very boring and every time I play those games, I can't for the life of me get into them. I'm used to fighting games being about health bar deleption and being the last man standing. Every time I play Super Smash, I'm confused or find those games have way too much going on.Much to my surprise, PS All Stars is brimming with personality. This in large part could might be due to me being a life long fan of the brand but there is so much here that I don't recall Smash having. Like having fully voice acted cutscenes or dynamic and over the top stages. The latter especially have some crazy things going on during a match like having a Chimeran Widowmaker, the Iron Maiden from Twisted Metal 2012 and the Hydra from God of War coming out from the background and attacking the characters.
What sealed the deal for me was playing as the various characters with their movesets and abilities doing an incredible job at representing the characters' respective franchises. It's very easy to tell Superbot loved and did their homework with the various series that these characters are from. To name some examples Kratos has his attacks with the Blades of Chaos and Cestus from God of War 3 as well as the Spear and Shield from Ghost of Sparta. Jak has all of his moves and weapons from his inital run of games like spin dash, uppercut, hoverboard, as well as blaster rifle and the various weapons from Jak 3. Ratchet has his combuster and rocket launcher as well as wrench for melee. Daniel Fortesque has his axe throw, shield bash, and hammer. Evil Cole his electric grenade, amp, shockwave and grappling hook. Firebird Strike is better here than it was in Infamous 2 itself.
The third party characters like Ninja Theory Dante and Raiden all have their moves that would pop in the respective games a couple months later which is interesting foreshadowing.
Needles Kane and Radec feel realized despite not being playable in their respective franchises. Sly was the worst to play as but had the best arcade mode story.
This transitions to the negatives. The arcade mode while novel doesn't really amount to much than characters going to some dimension fighting another character and then having it end like some dream. Sly is the best since him looking for pages for the Thievious Racconous is something he would and could fit inbetween Sly 1 and 2.
However the biggest negative and of course what destroyed the game especially from a competitive side is the "health system" or should I say lack there of. In PS All Stars, the fighters are pretty much immortal until a super move is activated. It goes up to Level 3. The massive problem with this system is, that you don't even need to go up to level 3. A level 1 super is already enough to insta kill another fighter. Unless if you are dealing with Ratchet and to some degree Fortesque's level 1 super, they will always be enough to rack a decent kill count so this system is now just a weak gimmick. This might be fine in single player if you want to get as high of a kill count as possible but in multiplayer, which is what the Smash Bros titles made their name off of can be very problematic.
There are solutions to this I'm surprised the devs never thought of. Why does a game that has a block button not let you block super attacks? Fighting games have always done this. Have Level 3 supers be unblockable but very hard to acheive. Maybe even have supers be parried too giving players who don't have one lined up a fighting chance. You can also have two level 1 supers activated at the same time and whoever wins a frantic button tapping mini game gets the kill. Level 1 supers can be blocked, Level 2 supers can be parried, and only Level 3 can give the player the abilty to do insta kills but they have to be really good. You can also counter act Level 3 attacks with Level 1 and 2 supers being able to nullify the former.
Overall, I did enjoy the game but the subject matter and fan service carried it.
No comments:
Post a Comment