Review: Playstation All Stars Battle Royale (PS3 and PS Vita)

By Wayne Webb

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale can certainly lay claim to one of the longest and hardest to say names in Video Games. A little like the game itself, it’s a little bit of a handful that feels a little unwieldy and out of place.

By Wayne Webb

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale can certainly lay claim to one of the longest and hardest to say names in Video Games. A little like the game itself, it’s a little bit of a handful that feels a little unwieldy and out of place.

The game is essentially a chance to have a giant brawling fight with a bunch of exclusively PlayStation characters. God of War, Uncharted, Little Big Planet and list of 20 starting characters from similar classic PS only games make up the roster. That is the games main selling point, but also the games biggest downfall. It’s a cool concept but the reality is disjointed. It’s nice to unleash Nathan Drake on Sack Boy using a chain gun, but ultimately the mish mash of styles means that nobody really acts or looks like their usual selves.

There are plenty of signature moves and animations built around the unique characters and they all get a chance to “host” levels of their own. While it’s cool to see Pa Rappa the Rapper in a real world setting going up against an exploding barrel, it’s weird to see Kratos scowling and fighting in a cartoonish bubble world. Some of these characters are great to see again and it does feel like a homage to great video games from Sony’s history.

The problem is that weird disjointed feeling is not alleviated by the simplistic purpose of the game, beat up your opponent and win. It is a little more complex than a simple button masher and you can pull off some nice moves with the grapples, the buttons and the chains that link to special moves. The game on the PS3 seems over engineered, like it’s too simple for the graphical and processing grunt that you can get out of the machine. However on the handheld PSVita it has a life of it’s own and plays much nicer despite being essentially identical. The constant brawling and repetitive nature of the game lends itself to a device that you pick and put down on a whim.

Overall this is not a bad game at all; it just feels a little odd, no matter how long you play it for. Once again though it is a game that really appeals to my kids regardless of my own feelings. They seem less trapped by the cognitive dissonance of cartoons absorbing bullets and explosions that are at odds with the cel-shaded world they exist in.

Pros: Great little fighting game, nice signature moves, plenty of variety, nice to see some classic characters, works well on PS Vita

Cons: Not much depth, some characters feel out of place, repetitive.

3.75 Shacks Out Of 5