Many people were excited for Ludosity and Fair Play Labs’ new game, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. Released a little over 2 weeks ago, the expectations were high for this one.
First, let’s get into the basics of the game.
Published by GameMill Entertainment, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a crossover fighting game that allows players to battle as popular characters such as Spongebob, CatDog and Danny Phantom.
With the likes of these characters, it’s almost impossible to not draw deep parallels to another highly popular game — Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros.
Many other games such as Brawlhalla and Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion have tried to replicate Nintendo’s winning fighting game formula, but none have come close to being as popular as the original.
While creating a similar fighting game, Ludosity also decided to add their own spin to it. As far as changes go, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl introduces an array of new mechanics; the biggest being ‘grabbing’.
Yes, Super Smash Bros has a similar function…so what makes Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl different?
Not only will players be able to grab and throw their opponents in mid-air, they can also turn around in the air and play rock-paper-scissors to set up any further attacks.
We won’t deny that grabbing is a top notch feature, a ‘must have’ in a fighting game, but alas, another mechanism we were anticipating is wavedashing.
For those unfamiliar with the term, wavedashing is a movement technique many Smash Bros know all too well. The movement technique is performed by air dodging diagonally to the ground.
Picking up where Super Smash Bros left off after Melee, Ludosity decided to incorporate this technique into Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. Believe it when we say the fans went nuts.
So far so good, right? Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl seems to be everything a Smash fan wants to see in the game.
Not so much.
According to SteamSpy, the game doesn’t seem to be drawing in as big of an audience as initially expected.
We won’t say there’s anything wrong with the game, just more so the fact that it hasn’t lived up to Smash fans’ expectations. Think about it: the game, firstly, does not have voice acting (unless you download an external mod pack).
Is it really okay for Bikini Bottom’s favourite fry cook to be mute as he cooks up a storm when fighting against his best starfish friend? Yeah, we didn’t think so.
Additionally, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl’s graphics lack colour compared to Super Smash Bros. Any stage apart from Jellyfish Fields just looks dull, dwelling between the lines of purple and blue hues.
Super Smash Bros, on the other hand, has colours fitting for each stage, such as the typical Battlefield stage.
Despite initially attracting Nintendo’s fanbase so well, we all think that Ludosity has a lot of cleaning up to do if they want Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl to drop its ‘flavour of the month’ status and increase in popularity over time.
