Platinum #233
Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl [PS5]
Leave Everything to Me!
Collect all the trophies.
What a turd. I mean, it's not without some fun (with very specific characters). I found Michelangelo, Garfield and Reptar to be fun to play. Though it still feels like a chore to play even them. Something just feels off about the gameplay itself, and not having jump to 'up' is stupid. Not even an option. Only on a button is awkward as hell. Even online people were making the same types of mistakes with directional inputs. I think it's literally just the game at times. I mean in matches without tons of lag of course, which were not a lot at least. Even if it took forever to a) find players b.) find players who wouldn't leave/disconnect immediately when found.
Most of the fun was just grinding out the 50 boring online matchmaking. Since I didn't care. lol, I still put up a fight if that's what people seemed to want, didn't want to hand out any perfect wins for free ;p. Only one immediately dropped off the levels which we did together for about 3 matches which took me to 50 coincidentally while I was grinding it out today. I wonder if it did for him as well since he left after that... or he's just a trophy farmer Angel sent by RNGesus to give me a nice ride out of this boring ass game.
If this was free to play, or like $20 without DLC, I wouldn't feel the need to be as harsh. But it just comes off as the biggest cash grab ever. It feels more like a knock off game that stole assets from something else and shoved them all together to release on mobile than a legitimate game. The characters don't mesh too well together. It's better than PS All-Stars in that regard at least. But to me the only good looking characters are like those two I've never heard of from some newer show and Catdog. The art of Powdered Toast man looks good but the model looks trash, because of how his face is lit. It's honestly a little creepy. Zim looks okay, but I feel like the animations aren't too great for him or anyone really. Aang and Toph look like garbage. Spongebob looks creep with his eyes ingame. Nobody is worse than Ren and Stimpy though, they look straight out of a PS2 game. I mean, the entire game looks like a remastered PS2 game... but, they just look like they werent' even remastered.
The roster is bizarre. No actual Rugrats. I would imagine they didn't want to beat up babies or too young of children (no idea how old Helga and them are 10ish?, I know Aang is that age and Toph is around the same iirc). That's the only reason I could think they didn't choose Donnie for Wild Thornberries who is the one I'd think has the most logical reason to be in a fighting game given he grew up wild and has fought many wild animals in the series. (and poachers) I guess they chose Nigel because he's a meme? I don't know, I don't get it. They could've had a girl from her own show but I guess that would make too much sense. Plenty of animal friends she could've used to attack or even call in Donnie or Darwin. But that would require animating a bunch of animals for attacks and that's hard.
Two of four Ninja Turtles. I don't get it, and I don't get why they chose non-Nickelodeon versions to use. I mean I do for nostalgia I guess, but they didn't utilize the fact that they all have the same body to make more characters for less money. Sure, you still have to do new animations and moves and balancing, but the model itself is just a color and weapon change. Oh and a letter. Four total TMNT characters and not the turtles... April when she was just a reporter. If they had chosen the CG show they had like... 2013? ish, they could've had it make sense why she fought. And it would make a bit more sense to only have 2 of 4 turtles since they had different [albeit not as different as Rise] designs.
Hey Arnold is repped by... Helga. What. I get you probably wanted more girls, but why go this route? I was imagining how if Arnold was in how he could've had his super jump be the pigeon man show up and carry him upward. That would've been neat. Helga just has generic dash jump that is reused between multiple characters. I don't get it.
Aaaaaah!! Real Monsters Oblina... girl again I have to assume, because why wouldn't you go with Ickis? He's the most iconic design to me. I don't know. I would've liked all three of the main characters tbh. But they had $5 and some chicken wings to make this I guess.
Spongebob gets three, which I guess is inevitable. Whatever it's fine. Avatar I don't get either. I guess we didn't get Katara because Korra. I'd rather have Katara... and Zuko. At least one of each type of bender. I'd like Sokka too, but they were already out of wings by the time they got to Avatar TLA at that point. Running on fumes.
Danny Phantom is a good one. Jenny should've been in the main game. She even looks good in the art style of Catdog and two kids from modern show. Which everyone else should look more like...
Whatever, roster aside the modes are as barebones as you can get to call it a 'game'. Arcade is boring and tedious to go through. Especially because the stupid text dialog intros. The voice acting didn't help because they all sound like crap other than like Spongebob and Patrick who I guess give it their all in the 2 minutes it took to record for the game and everyone else half assed it. Some are actually the actors too which shocked me I assumed 100% other than Spongebob were just cheap sound alikes... some still are of course, but geez. I digress back to modes. Um... online, which is dead as hell and spotty. Sports which is garbage, there's like 4-5 of them and they're almost identical in every way other than the ball visual and how it acts when you hit or pick it up. Terrible mode. It's so bad it makes me mad that they wasted time on it instead of anything else. And... just free play I guess, which is what it is.
What else... lots of stages are just not fun. The game just is not fun. PS All-Stars for all it's faults at least put more effort in, and that still felt budget and cheaply made... but it had far more content than this stupid game. I felt like that Cartoon Network game Battle... something XL (I got the plat but am too lazy to relook up the name lol). felt far more like a completed game and I got that for like $2-3 before it was de-listed on PS3.
The only real positive I suppose is if you're looking for some of your favorite characters for some Milestone achievements, here you go. Some nice, if bland, icons of those characters. So that's something I guess. GOt it for PS+ and got it from Humble Monthly on PC and still feel ripped off by it. :/