Nickelodeon All Stars Brawl should make these changes to succeed

(Image credit: Ludosity)

Nickelodeon All-Star Ball is a Smash Bros-esque fighting game full of iconic characters from Nickelodeon history, featuring cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Rugrats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Invader Zim and more than. It's a phenomenon that combines many elements of our childhood and throws them into the gauntlet to crush the crap out of each other.

Moreover, rumors suggest Ludosity is working on a slew of DLC characters for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. This leak claims Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants volition exist joining the roster, with many others potentially on the way, including Garfield. While this may sound heady for those who grew upwardly watching these shows, the game's foundation needs serious tuning before downloadable content is purchasable.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is enjoyable considering fighting as your favorite cartoon character sparks joy. The game'due south bizarre movesets, janky animations and unbalanced characters result in hilarious battles, but Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is missing the features necessary for it to thrive.

Items add personality

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl'south most surprising omission is items. While Super Blast Bros is sometimes played without items to focus on skill-based battles, their presence adds personality to casual lucifer-ups; they practise a groovy task elevating the chaos and creating ridiculous scenarios. Summoning unique Pokemon, whacking others with the Home-Run Bat, and spearing your foes using a Bullet Nib is tons of fun.

Focusing on skill-based battles isn't necessary for Nickelodeon All-Star Ball. It's horribly unbalanced, with many characters possessing spammable moves in their arsenal that are almost impossible to deal with. Something like Reptar's down flame assail sprays over a wide expanse and deals an absurd amount of damage. Korra's side nuance attack covers the entirety of many stages, and if you're hitting with it at a high percentage, yous're almost guaranteed to dice.

Hitboxes are inaccurate, as there have been a couple of times where I managed to hit someone with an set on even though it was conspicuously nowhere near them. In YouTuber videogamedunkey'southward video about the game, you can see Danny Phantom knock another character off the stage even though they were at 0%.

These cleaved mechanics and a lack of balance make Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl office best as a party game. It'due south fun to play with friends, but I tin't imagine it'll thrive competitively. Every bit a result, the omission of items is a massive oversight. These have the potential to make hilarious callbacks to beloved Nickelodeon backdrop while also spicing up the moment-to-moment combat.

No items besides means ultimate moves are not present in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. In Super Smash Bros, destroying a Nail Ball gives your character access to their Final Smash, which is essentially their ultimate. There's no alternative for this in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which is surprising since PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, another Smash clone, ties your ultimate move to a meter that increases by attacking other fighters. If the game won't have items, in that location should be a way to feature ultimate moves of some kind as they're a great manner to requite each grapheme a unique personality.

Skinless brawlers

If players select the aforementioned brawler before a match, those characters volition look identical during the fight. Super Smash Bros solved this issue by forcing two of the aforementioned character into alternate color palettes. This helps avoid confusion, but fifty-fifty and so, it was already difficult to discern your identify on screen due to the high levels of anarchy and zoomed out photographic camera.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Skinless Fighters — (Image credit: Ludosity)

Because Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl doesn't take alternating color palettes, the game is even more confusing. It'due south specially difficult to manage this anarchy since the gainsay is faster paced. Getting knocked off the screen is easier since the expiry borders are tighter, and motility speed (along with the speed at which you fall) is greater. Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl is somehow even more chaotic than Smash, which makes the lack of grapheme skins detrimental.

Beyond skins serving a beneficial mechanical purpose, the existence of alternate colour palettes and costumes let for the game to bear a more endearing personality. Information technology would exist awesome to fight as a shorter-hair Korra, boasting her more serious boxer-esque artful. And even if it doesn't make sense for some characters to accept an alternating costume, they should at least get a wide choice of singled-out colour palettes.

Underwhelming audible experience

Nickelodeon All-Star Ball'due south lackluster audio could be a upshot of licensing problems and a low budget, only these problems are worth noting. First and foremost, none of the playable characters take vox lines or dialogue. In fact, they don't even grunt or gasp. Hiring every popular voice actor from their original Nickelodeon shows would be an expensive endeavor, so this isn't surprising coming from an indie-studio like Ludosity.

Fans have noted that the team could but reuse voice lines and noises from each character'southward respective show. Still, considering Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is not directly published by Nickelodeon, Ludosity likely lacks the liberty people recollect they might enjoy. GameMill Entertainment has published enough of other tie-ins for movies and shows, including Steven Universe, Frozen, Big Hero Vi and even Cobra Kai. This publisher is not directly associated with Nickelodeon, which means they exercise not have ownership of these properties.

This is more clear with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl'due south music selection, as every track is wholly original. Iconic tunes from your favorite Nickelodeon shows practise not return, and although this is unfortunate, it wouldn't be then bad if the game's soundtrack wasn't and then amateurish. I awful rail in item reuses the aforementioned iii notes in a basic electronic trip the light fantastic melody. Many other tracks attempt to emulate the feeling of the associated show, merely always sounds besides simplified to provide a sense of familiarity. Instead it's uncanny, easy to tell what it'southward trying to sound like, even so information technology ends up sounding cipher like it.

Channeling the feeling of Nickelodeon isn't effective with merely visuals. Is SpongeBob iconic without Tom Kenny screaming "I'm ready?" And of course, an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan will ever associate the evidence with its astounding soundtrack. The lack of these elements isn't necessarily the developer's fault, but information technology's a huge office of why the game fails to encapsulate the ethos of Nickelodeon.

Outlook

Nickelodeon All-Star Ball is a mess. It'south defective the content to be worth its $50 price of entry, and although it tin can be fun to play, the mechanics are poor. Notwithstanding, this issue would be acceptable if the feel felt whole. The lack of items, character skins, voice lines, and iconic music make information technology hard to get immersed in playing my favorite Nickelodeon characters.

While I might not play it oftentimes, I'one thousand sure I'll revisit Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl on the occasion to have some messy fun with friends. With fourth dimension, I hope Ludosity can craft this into a richer experience.