Copy Cat-Dog
From Brawlhalla to Brawlout, to Bounty Battle, and even Sony’s own PlayStation All-Stars, the Smash Bros. clone isn’t anything new, but it has been a rare thing to see one released with such potential and then just fail in some crucial ways. With such a diverse cast of characters from a brand that has grown up with numerous generations of gamers, you would assume that Nickelodeon would invest heavily into creating a game that does what it can to honor its vast history of characters oozing with personality. Sadly, in the creation of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, all that personality was left at the door.
With such a deep catalog of characters that range from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fairly Odd Parents, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Doug, Rugrats, to Danny Phantom, you would assume that the roster of fighters would range from all over the decades of programming under the Nickelodeon banner, but you’d be largely wrong in that assumption. While the cast is more or less ok, there are obvious omissions and several from the same series that you have to wonder why some choices were made in this way. In fact, much of this cast is eerily familiar in that many of them appeared in Nick Kart Racers 2, pulling from essentially the exact same shows, having the exact same omissions, almost as if licensing Nickelodeon shows comes within a predetermined package.
Of the 20 characters available at launch, we have three characters from TMNT, three from SpongeBob Squarepants, and three from the Avatar series, but not a single character from Fairly Odd Parents, Doug, or even Jimmy Neutron. Sure, we have Rugrats representation with Reptar as punching babies isn't likely something the license holder was interested in making a thing, as well as Helga from Hey Arnold, but strangely not Arnold himself. While there are some clear omissions that are likely to be DLC down the road, 20 is a paltry number when you’re looking to take aim at making a title to compete, at least on Switch, with Smash Bros, especially since Nick Kart Racers 2 shipped with 30.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the fighting can certainly live up to what it’s aiming to do, as the game is largely enjoyable to play, but your mileage on the roster is going to vary greatly on the era of Nickelodeon you grew up on. Each character has their own selection of moves that range from typical punches, kicks, air dashes, and throws, to strikes that spark a bit of inspiration from their respective shows and known abilities. Taunts range from animations you’d expect from certain characters, and even those of certain memes, such as a popular one for SpongeBob Squarepants that certainly made my friend, a fan of SpongeBob burst out laughing when it happened.
From its list of available modes and characters, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl can feel somewhat limited, depending on what you've wanted from the game and of course when compared to other games in the genre. There is a single-player mode, but this is just a series of badly written interactions between two characters where after a few missions you’ll start to read the same exact dialogue boxes over and over again. You’ll unlock artwork as you push through them, but that’s about it. There is no story, no narrative to wrap up, and largely feels included to tick some sort of single-player box. There is local and online multiplayer, featuring stock battles, timed fights, and a sports mode where you use your fighting prowess to hit a ball into your goal, but apart from that, that is pretty much it. Well, there is a jukebox, but we’ll talk more about its music in due time.
Stock battles are your bread and butter when it comes to the mode you’re likely going to invest most of your time into. You can change how many stock lives you have during the fight, the time limit, whether or not there are teams, critical KOs, or friendly fire. These settings can also be set within Timed and Sports as well, with a few alterations to what is available as those modes largely have different rules and playstyles. There is a training mode as well, and while it doesn’t really teach you how to fight, there are some settings such as showing the hit-box fields allowing you to get an idea of how good certain abilities are and their overall range. Oddly, it was during this mode that I discovered that some characters’ forward attacks have some aspect of hitting behind them, which is absolutely bizarre. Each mode also allows you to set the difficulty of your opponents, from mostly standing around to in your face and ready to absolutely trounce you. Matches are limited to just four fighters, and the stages do reflect that in their size, so trying to recapture the big 8 player fights found in Smash isn’t going to happen here. Stages themselves are bright and colorful, taking place in a few key areas representative of their accompanied fighter, but many just seem like palette swaps of existing Smash Bros levels.
Online matches seemed fine in the few that I’ve tried with very minimal lag at least in two-player fights. I notice some pretty big drops during the four-player bouts, but all in all, it certainly ran better than I had expected and in a lot of ways better than Smash has in its entirely. Quick Match and competitive only seemed to search for one on one fights, whereas creating a lobby, or joining one that allowed for more, seemed to be the only way to find four-player battles, however; you have to join the lobby to see what rulesets are present. I do hope that quickplay and competitive see better search options, but only time will tell on that one. The developer has stated they are committed to working on the game, polishing, and adding characters and features, so hopefully, we see some better settings for its online play. While I never really had issues finding matches in competitive and quickplay, I’d only find lobbies occasionally, and they would only have maybe 2 or 3 players at most.
Combat itself, and the varied moves within each character’s arsenal is fairly impressive. The bottom three face buttons are light, heavy, and ranged attacks, while your top button, the Y on the Xbox controller anyway, is your jump. By moving the left analog stick with each button, while running, standing still, or jumping, it will change your attack, giving you a decent breath of combat options. Characters can block incoming attacks, as well as an air dodge, replacing any sort of roll. This air dash allows for quick recoveries as you fall, especially April O’Neil who seems blessed by the gravity gods as I rarely found myself unable to fly up from almost any drop. While you can pick up the other fighters and throw them, each character has the exact same throw animation, which seems a fair bit lazy. Throws can be maneuvered out of by mashing buttons, and frankly, it’s very easy to escape them, a bit too much so. Most of the time, you’re going to be pulling off a variety of combo attacks, which thankfully, character’s more or less don’t share in the same formats, meaning each character is not a skin of another, creating a wide brushstroke of different inputs.
Fights are considerably faster in movement and attack speed than Smash is typically known for. This speed can contribute to overjumping or dashing a bit too far, and it’s also far too easy to lose yourself in the fight, especially as some stages match the same color and brightness of half the cast. As the game lacks any sort of color swaps for characters or even additional looks for them, you sort of have to suck it up, and this also leads to multiples of the same characters only be differentiated by the colored player icon, making for even more confusion as you’re trying to make sense of what attacks are coming your way and also keeping an eye on your player icon at the same time. Honestly, this is something I see being addressed soon as seeing four green Reptar’s bouncing around, you’ll simply get lost in the chaos.
Personally, my biggest issue with the game is one I see echoed everywhere; Audio. While the game is colorful, and its character models are decent enough to convey the character’s charm, the fact that we don’t have any audio for this well-established and beloved cast is the game’s biggest sin. We don’t even have grunts or anything to indicate they’ve been hit, just hollow punching sounds that feel ripped from a free sound database, as does the awful music chosen here, with not a single memorable or even passable track among them. There is no “Happy Happy Joy Joy” or “You idiiiiiiiiot!” spouted from Ren and Stimpy, or clever quips from SpongeBob in the slightest. I’ve seen fan games made with more passion, and hell, they could have even just ripped audio from the shows, given how many of these characters have existed for hundreds of episodes.
It’s hard to say why certain choices were made when it came to its roster and its lack of any audio for voices and licensed music, but these choices fundamentally hurt All-Star Brawl where it counts. While there is a deep game here for those willing to master every fighter, the bulk of its audience I feel is going to move on before we see a substantial roster boost or additional game modes, or god-willing, character-specific voices and recognizable music made available. I don’t feel there is a bad game here, but one that just doesn’t feel polished or fully-featured enough to warrant the hype that built around its announcement. It also seems like a licensed game that the rights holder didn’t want to invest much into as this game reeks of having a substantially small budget. Had the game launched with at least a half dozen more fighters complete with full voice work and licensed music, I’m sure I’d be drastically more on board, especially as Nickelodeon has access to what I would assume is their entire catalog, past and present. But as it stands, this game, unfortunately, lacks any true personality and comes across like a fan modded fighter, destined to be forgotten.
Developer - Ludosity/Fair Play Labs. Publisher - GameMill Entertainment. Released - October 5th, 2021. Available On - Xbox One/Series S/X, PS4/PS5, Windows, Nintendo Switch. Rated - (E 10+) Cartoon Violence, Comic Mischief.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl was purchased by the reviewer.