How PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Is Different From Super Smash Bros.

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Last night, Sony revealed PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, a crossover fighting game featuring Sony’s portfolio of characters—and unnamed characters from other publishers as well—for the PlayStation 3. At first glance, All Stars looks very similar to Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series of games, but in a recent episode of the PlayStation Blogcast, Sony tried to highlight the differences between the two.

 

Lead combat designer, Paul Edwards, says that, for starters, PlayStation All-Stars doesn’t involve you knocking people off the stage like in Smash Bros. There are no life bars either. Instead, the only way to kill someone is to hit them with a Super attack. Supers can be used at the cost of a Super metre, which is built up by landing normal attacks with the Square, Triangle, and Circle buttons.

 

There are three levels of Super metre, and each subsequent level is more powerful than the one before it. For example, level 1 Supers are usually only capable of killing a single opponent. Level 2 Supers may be able to kill two opponents, and level 3 Supers three opponents. That having been said, advanced players will be able to learn to do more with less, and eventually kill multiple opponents using just a level 1 Super. More novice players, however, might require level 3 supers to achieve the same results.

 

Also, at the start of a match in PlayStation All-Stars, players will be able to move freely around the stage before the match actually kicks off, giving them the ability to position their characters in advance. Positioning, Edwards says, is an important part of the game’s combat system. Additionally, wind conditions also have a bearing on fights. The end goal, of course, is to kill as many opponents as many times as you can. Being killed yourself results in negative points, so trying to stay alive as much as possible is part of the goal, too.

 

Each stage in PlayStation All-Stars is a mash-up of different Sony worlds. For example, the Hades (God of War) stage sees Hades’ world being invaded by Patapon, and you’ll be able to see the two at war with each other in the background. Patapon spears will also occasionally rain onto the stage itself. Other nods to Sony franchises come in the form of items. For example, one of the shield items you can pick up in the game is the shield from the Wipeout series, and the Hedgehog Grenade from the Resistance games is present, too.

 

It would appear PlayStation All-Stars is rather closely tied with God of War in particular. Sony’s Santa Monica studio, which develops the God of War series, were involved with the title in its early stages and helped developer, SuperBot, with ideas. Additionally, Kratos himself is described as being a well-rounded character that SuperBot expect novice players will gravitate toward.


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Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.