Overview
As you may or may not have heard, Sony has decided to come out with it’s own game that meshes its various franchises together for epic battles in arenas from all it’s various franchises. The game is in fact a Playstation version of Super Smash Brothers.
Many comparisons are drawn to Super Smash Brothers for good
reason. The game is in a 3D engine like Smash Brothers but takes place in a 2D
fighting plane, only going up, down, left and right. The controls are
simplistic, move around the environment and battle it out against up to 3 other
players. You have 3 attack buttons, a super attack button, jump button and a
block button. Pressing different directions for your attack buttons will yield
different attacks unique to each character. This all sounds very similar to
Super Smash Brothers and executes very similarly so if you have any idea how to
play Super Smash Brothers then you will have a good idea how to move around and
attack.
The difference comes in how you defeat other players. There
are no “percentages” which determine how far an opponent in flung around the
arena. The goal of the game isn’t to knock people off, but just to defeat them.
However there is no life bar either, so how do you defeat them when it’s not
knocking them off the arena or taking out their life bar? Well the frustrating
thing is, I didn’t know at the time I played. I just kept attacking others and
hoped it would take them out. It was only after I read an article of
impressions on Playstation All Stars that I discovered you could only take
opponents out by using a Super Move.
Super Moves are only usable when you gain levels of super
meter, up to 3 bars. 1 bar yields a super attack, but 2 bars yields a better,
larger one, and 3 let’s you use your ultimate ability. Since these are the only
ways of actually earning a KO on an opponent, then there becomes a great
importance on gaining super meter and saving it up to earn a bunch of KOs at
once. However this also leads to the problem of your normal attacks basically
doing nothing to an opponent and gaining meter being your only reward.
Since I didn’t have that much time with the game (yet) its
hard to say whether this is a good or bad thing. But my initial thoughts have
been that it was not obvious I had to use those and Super attacks are as
obvious to see on screen. There are no flashy effects appearing to designate
someone is using a super attack so it will take some time to get used to what
certain character’s super attacks are.
Character Impressions
The character selection comes from a wide variety of
Playstation titles (not all of them exclusive to Playstation games). There is
Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Kratos from God of war, Heihachi Mishima from
Tekken, Fat Princess from… Fat Princess, Sly Cooper, Helghast from Killzone,
etc. There were about 10 characters available in my demo (can't remember them all) and though I only got
to play as Nathan Drake and Kratos, they played pretty differently and
unleashed moves that bring homage to their games.
I had the most time with Drake and he played as a mix of
melee and range. He had access to a handgun, and machine gun as the default
attack for two attack buttons. His other attack button I was able to use hand
to hand moves, do a drop kick when in
the air and also toss a grenade upwards that explodes after a short amount of
time. I can’t quite remember all of the moves but it reminds me a lot of Solid
Snake’s playstyle in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. It would be weird if Snake
also got in this game and see how the two characters would be different. His Super attacks consisted of a really
powerful explosive (This probably isn’t right, I can’t remember everything from
the play session) for his level 1, and his level 2 consisting of pushing over a
large pillar onto enemies nearby (This is right though). I never got to use his
level 3 so I am not sure.
Kratos on the otherhand plays as viciously as his normal
counterpart. He has access to his Blades up close for one attack button and can
extend them into chains to unleash far reaching blade attacks in another. He
also has access to a bow on his third button, able to rapidly fire arrows which
slowly gain meter when hitting. I only had less than a minute to play him so I
don’t recall any of his supers (Someone was playing and just stopped so I just
continued from where he left the game paused).
Both seemed like fun characters but either I wasn’t pressing
all the buttons in different directions, or there weren’t that many moves to
choose from. I don’t believe it’s possible to “SMASH” the direction pad or
stick like in Smash Brothers, since that gave you access to additional attack
in Smash Bros, here it didn’t seem to work so I wasn’t able to use as many
attacks. I can’t say 100% if this is true or not since I had a total of about 5
minutes to play.
Closing Thoughts
If I get my hands on the game again I am going to try those,
look for more Super attacks and look at the amount of meter gained between the
different attack buttons. I have a good suspicion that attack button 1 is close
range, attack button 2 is mid range attacks and attack button 3 is long range,
and that button 1 gives you the most meter while button 3 gives you the least.
I will try and confirm this.
Nevertheless the game was still fun and its more interesting
looking at it in hindsight then I did while playing the game. I need to dig in
the mechanics to see more on how it works and the importance of building up
meter and such. That’s it for now though, hope you enjoyed the impressions.
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