More entertaining than you think
PSN: RogueFanKC (I'll add you both tomorrow)
Let me just say this right now as a fan of
Super Smash Bros: leave what you know at the door. This game's mechanics are completely different and not in a bad way. If anything, I'd say that Superbot's creating of
Playstation All Stars is successful because it's different and can stand on its own legs. Plus, I think we can give them a lot of credit for even bringing this game to the light.
The graphics are pretty well done, and the stages are pretty creative, although sometimes they make it difficult to use certain moves (I can't tell you how many times I had Nathan Drake's Level 1 Super miss because of the stupid platforms in the stupid Black rock Stadium stage). I was surprised to see how much fun I had at grabbing and using whatever items popped up.
Quite a few people complained on GameFAQs how having no health percentages and ring-outs would make this gameplay in this not as fun as Smash Bros. The strange part is that if anything, I like it and feel it has it's own benefits. For one thing, it encourages people to get right in the thick of battle; if you stay on the sidelines and want to wait until you can finish someone off, you're not going to win. Secondly, this encourages the players to be more combo oriented, and I like that (it's almost like
Marvel vs. Capcom in a sense of combo-gameplay). I applaud Superbot for creating such wonderful tutorials for each character because they're actually top-notch and really show you how much fun you can have with each character. Sly Cooper is always may favorite, but Nathan Drake, Fat Princess, Jak, and Sir Dan are growing on me (I haven't tried anyone else yet because I want to complete each character's arcade story mode). The fact that each story mode is really stills with narration and voice acting doesn't bother me; we at least get voice acting and the rivalry scenes (I love the scene between Sly and Drake and Fat Princess and Evil Cole).
And there's another reason why I like the KOs by supers only gameplay. Does any Smash fan remember these:
1.) in
Melee, a Fox player in Castle Hyrule Temple stage, he could just shoot the player, cause 1% damage, and then run like heck all around the stage, and the three minutes are spent trying to catch him before he ends up winning by default.
2.) In
Brawl on-line, you play against three other players...and all they do is go up and down, like a rhythmic beat dance. You try attacking and fighting as you're supposed to, the other three gang up on you and eventually knock you out of the stage. It got pretty common to the point that I didn't want to play Brawl on-line for a while.
After playing quite a few rounds, I think I can say that the KOs by supers only doesn't take away anything; it's still pretty fun.
The online is pretty smooth; I've only had one bad match due to disconnecting and losing the signal, but other than that, it's fun. Raiden's pretty popular for a choice (I was shocked to see a level 200+ Raiden on-line; my God, do these people sleep?!), so it's nice to play as Fat Princess and Sly to shake things up. You should have seen the smile on my face when I learned that Sly's explosive barrel reflects projectiles. Load times are relatively short compared to a lot of times I was stuck in the training room for Brawl.
I like the fact that each character is relatively different in moves and combos, and it really shows that Superbot put a lot of time and effort in making each one different and the fact that there's a leveling system and lots of trophies to unlock make this easily over 50+ hours of gaming. And it's not easy; at first, I breezed through Arcade mode on "Hero" (beginner) but when I went to "Legendary", I was surprised how much more challenging it could be. Don't go into the game thinking you can unlock everything in a week.
All in all, this is a great game and one of the few I bought on Day 1. Superbot delivered, will definitely get Kat and Emmett on DLC, and I support this series because with the eventual release of a sequel, you can bet we may get new characters that we're dreaming about (I'm praying we get cloud, Spyro, and Crash next game).
TL;DR version: Smash fans, give this a try for a character and on-line; you just might be surprised to see how fun it can be.
