Reviews// PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale

I’ve been thrown in at the deep end a little bit when it comes to PlayStation All-stars Battle Royale, and I’ll explain why; my console of choice has always been the Xbox 360, and as the game title suggests, we’re going to be pitting ‘All-Stars’ from different PS3 titles against each other. Now I imagine some of you are already thinking ‘Hey, wait... hasn’t this game already been released? Oh, I’m thinking of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Well, yep. It’s the same idea.

There’s a fair variety of playable characters ranging from a Big Daddy (Bioshock) to Heihachi Mishima (Tekken). All of which have their own fighting style and different ways to pummel their opponent (or opponents, as I’ll soon explain).

To start with, you’ll be given the option to choose which character you fight as, then you’ll see a short cutscene explaining their motive for embarking on the journey that’s ahead.
Now that may sound as though you’re heading on a remarkable adventure through different terrain in a desperate attempt to defeat an evil overlord and rescue your princess, right? Well, that isn’t the case at all.

My first choice of character was Sly Cooper. Someone has stolen some pages from some sort of book that he had locked away in a safe, and he wants them back. Now this is a beat ‘em up game, so obviously you aren’t going to stay true to Sly’s roots and go about stealthily jumping from building to building. Nope. You’re going to beat the shit out of anyone who gets in your way. For my first battle, I was thrown into the arena ‘Dojo’ which is a stage based on PaRappa the Rapper, apparently. My first opponent was that aforementioned Big Daddy.

I quickly came to realise that this isn’t like any usual beat ‘em up game. There’s no health bar, no standard three round fights, no voice over guy to shout ‘KO’ at you. The scoring goes on how many times you manage to ‘kill’ your opponent. Some fights are based on ‘as many kills as possible within the time limit’ and others give you a set objective such as ‘be the first to three kills’.

As each fight progresses, you notice that the stage starts to change and incorporate aspects from a different character's background. For example, on Dojo you start the fight in a small house. As the fight proceeds, the walls fly out of scene and in the background you can see a Helghast Troop Carrier from the Killzone universe.

On some of these stages, the background isn’t just a nice twist on a familiar arena. As my battle on Dojo got more heated, I noticed what appeared to be a target painted right on my character. Yep, you guessed it. The troop carrier decided to spice up the fight by firing an array of rockets towards the battlefield.