PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale Review

Similarly, the arenas in the game are all themed after a certain game. They are fairly simple structurally, as is often the case for the genre. Instead, as the match goes on, they transform and shift, changing not only the background imagery but potentially the arena itself. One moment you could be playing in the happy LocoRoco inspired setting, but suddenly the background falls away and you’ve got a huge Metal Gear in the background. Some stages also feature dangers created by the environment as the battle goes on, that all players should try to doge. It’s a cool idea but once you’ve seen the static stage transformation, it loses value on subsequent playthroughs. Finally, there are also random item spawns that give you extra attack power if you pick them up and can produce AP once you hit enemies. Many of these settings can be tweaked for matches against friends.

As expected, PS All-Stars has a heavy multiplayer focus. Multiplayer modes include time-based matches, last man standing, and kill-limit matches. The competition is actually divided into monthly seasons, so everyone can have a chance to appear on the online leaderboards at some point. As expected, players can also jump in and play with a friend locally or take the battle as 2v2 online. Through numerous matches played online, the connection and servers seem stable and gameplay is very smooth – something that’s often crucial for a fighting game. We did run into some connectivity issues just getting into a lobby, but once the battle is underway there are no problems.

To the game’s credit, there are also a wealth of offline competition, though it mostly comes down to grinding every character to practice their attacks. You can complete a storyline mode with every character, but these are nothing but a set of pre-fixed battles against random opponents with varying win conditions. In a somewhat dubious move, the arenas don’t change from character to character, so you’ll be playing in the same setting every time you wish to complete a character’s campaign. Outside of that, you’ve also got challenge modes and training modes for various characters and skill sets, so there’s no shortage of practice to be had. The ability to customize your characters visually and earn some badge and profile customizations adds a bit of bonus for using the same characters in matches.

PS All-Stars’ menus are a bit on the basic side, potentially a throwback to the old days of the arcade. The menu music breaks up awkwardly when you’re changing between some screens, but otherwise there are no problems. During battle, the camera sometimes behaves awkwardly as it tries to keep everyone on-screen and thus adjusts zoom often; it can be pretty difficult to keep track of where you are at times. Just like their attacks and abilities, the visuals and audio for every character is wonderfully done with smooth animations and most original voice actors present. There appears to be very few music tracks in the whole game, which can be annoying.

So overall, PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale does what it aimed to do – bring an exclusive brawler to Sony’s current flagship consoles. The character selection may be questionable, likely due to copyright issues, but those personas that made it into the game have been fully realized and made unique. Sure there are balance issues, but that’s hardly a problem if you’re just looking for some fun multiplayer with friends. There is some value here even for those who wish to practice offline before making the jump to competitive modes. Time will tell if the game manages to achieve a cult status amongst PlayStation fans and create a mainstay fanbase like the Nintendo games did.