It has been a LONG time since I last did one of these, perhaps because I haven’t felt the need. But this one is kind of topical. Nintendo just announced that it will be debuting its new Super Smash Bros game at E3 in a couple of weeks, and I fear that means this awesome game will be forgotten, if it isn’t already.
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I N D E F E N S E O F
–==Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale==–
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The Case Against:
Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale is a shameless rip-off of the Super Smash Bros series. It looks and plays exactly the same; but with a HD graphical sheen to it. Because of this it makes little to no sense that it even exists at all, given that it cannot hope to compete with the sheer presence of Nintendo’s many, many recognisable characters. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon aren’t even in it! What kind of self-respecting Sony mascot fighter doesn’t have those two? Also, the menus look horrible. The game isn’t worth anyone’s time.
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The Defense:
Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale launched last year in October for PS3 and PS Vita and it hasn’t quite sold as well as Sony may have hoped. Sure, it came close to the company’s rather low expectations and in that sense the game didn’t actually do badly per se, but it didn’t exactly do Smash Bros numbers. Of course it was never going to do Smash Bros numbers, but that was because of a whole range of factors ranging from budget to marketing to the cobbled-together nature of SuperBot, the studio that made it. But its very average sales performance had absolutely nothing to do with it being a bad game. Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale is not a bad game. It isn’t even a mediocre game. It’s a really good one, actually.
Here’s why. Continue reading

