Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (Series)

[Moonface]

I don't think this game can generate enough publicity that can translate into sold copies to warrant the cost of paying all those VA's to voice their characters. If VA ever happens it'll be after launch as a patch when sales numbers show it to be worth doing. Putting it in now is too big of a risk if it doesn't boost sales and causes the game to be a loss.

[Moonface]

Ren & Stimpy are Coming to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
Ren & Stimpy are the latest characters to be announced for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl!



The pair will fight as a duo just as Catdog does, and during fights Ren rides on Stimpy’s shoulders which makes them slower than other characters, but they often attack in multiple directions together. Ren deals lower initial damage and Stimpy deals higher, but delayed damage, so due to this and their slow and heavy stature, you'll want to move in on your opponent, but they also have good range with a bouncing log projectile and a very fast Down Strong that is especially fun to use as a spike for a match ender, since it’ll ring-out you both.

There has also been a number of gameplay videos being released over the past week featuring other characters from the games roster, and here's the list if you want to check any of them out:

• Sandy Cheeks Gameplay Overview
  
• Catdog vs. Lucy Gameplay
  
• Spongebob vs. Leonardo vs. April vs. Patrick Gameplay
  
• April vs. Nigel Gameplay
  
• General Gameplay Breakdown
  

[ShiraNoMai]

Bro that gameplay breakdown. This game looks HELLA lit, god damn. The ability to strafe. No punish for guard (other than pushback), WAVEDASHING LITERALLY CONFIRMED. I absolutely cannot wait to see this competitively played. I'll of course wanna try it myself but the potential I can see at tournaments is so damn high, I'm hype as fuck

[Moonface]

Aang and Korra have both been officially confirmed as part of the character roster and both have gameplay breakdown videos:




Reptar also got a gameplay breakdown video today too:



I haven't watched any of them yet but I do really appreciate how we get to learn everything about a character at the same time it gets announced without causing characters already revealed to have to wait in line for their own showcase videos.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yooo this game really is Melee on steroids. Check a small clip of some high-intensity gameplay from Smash players:

[Nightingale]

Dudeeeee... this may just be the first IP-based game that's actually made me EAGER to try it out.

Looks incredibly solid (other than Korra's hilarious derpy face) and it will give SSB a run for its money.

[Moonface]

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Announced
Developers Ludosity and Fair Play Labs have announced Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, which looks to be addressing a lot of the issues that were present in the original game released back in 2021.



The trailer shows off an improved visual design, a campaign mode, and new characters such as Squidward and Jimmy Neutron.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is currently in development for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).

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The original game never did enough to grab my interest to buy it, but this trailer is making the sequel look really promising. I hope this does well since it's clear the developers actually care about the game and had their hands tied hard on the last one.

[Dragon Lord]

"Hey guys, we know we fucked up the first game, so instead of fixing it and making it the game we should have from the start, we're going to make ya'll pay to buy this second game instead!"

Okay, maybe that's being pessimistic about this game, but that's just the feeling that I get. The visuals still look pretty meh to me, and the trailer still gives off major "we have Smash Bros. at home" vibes. Who knows, maybe my gut feeling is completely wrong and this game will prove to be a success, but I have a feeling that the first one was just a huge stinker that there's not going to be much fan faith going into this one, and I could see it having a pretty lack luster release until word of mouth gets around to how good it is (or how completely god awful it still is and it just straight up bombs like the first game).

Either way, should be fun to watch and see how it all plays out.

[Moonface]

My impression of the first game was that a lot of the criticisms towards it were due to budget restraints, such as the lack of voice acting or more game modes and characters. I'm guessing the developers used the interest and sales of the first game to get given a bigger budget to make the game they wanted to do the first time around, and that it's better to make a new game than patch the current one since a new game is going to get way more attention and marketing.

That said, I think there's a high risk that people don't buy this game right away because of the things the last one lacked, and anyone who did buy that game will probably feel burned by it given that a sequel is already coming out. I've seen a lot of comments saying they'll wait for a sale rather than get the game at full price.

It sucks because this seems like a case where the developers had a vision but got screwed by their publisher and Nickelodeon giving them the bare minimum to work with. Not having voice acting at launch on the original was enough in and of itself to be a death sentence for the game regardless of how good everything else was, and by the time it got added people had just stopped caring at that point.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, like I mentioned in my post, I think player interest is going to start incredibly slow due to lack of faith from the bad taste the first one left in people's mouths. Could be wrong and this could end up doing very well, but I think it'll either be a very late bloomer or go no where at all.

I also feel like they're just trying way too hard to copy Smash Bros (which is why I made the "Smash Bros. at home" meme), instead of trying to be creative and appeal in their own unique way. Even the character reveals are done in the same style as Smash Bros. reveals were done. If your goal is to enter the genre and try to challenge the current king of it, you should really do something to make your game seem more interesting. Especially coming from a company with franchises as big as Nick.

In the end we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe trying to copy Smash Bros. as much as possible will actually work and they'll gain a decent sized player base off of it (unless Nintendo completely steals their wind by announcing the Switch 2 with a new Smash Bros. game as a launch title KEKW).

[Moonface]

The campaign mode might help make the sequel more appealing up front, since that's something Smash hasn't really put a good story into since Subspace so this game could get an advantage over it on that front, especially for players who want more offline content that isn't just a different fighting mode. Speaking of modes in general, Nintendo Life got this little snippet from the developers talking about the game modes a little bit more:

Single player campaign: Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 will launch with a unique campaign featuring roguelike elements. Put your skills to the test as you fight to stop Danny Phantom archvillain Vlad Plasmius from taking over the Nickelodeon universe!

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 introduces all-new minigames to play alone or with friends. Compete for global leaderboard high scores in Pinch the Blimps, Whack-a-Bot, and Irken Armada Bootcamp Survival.

I'm not well versed on Nickelodeon properties overall to comment on a Danny Phantom character being the main antagonist of the campaign, but I suspect it makes perfect sense to anyone who knows better than I do. The minigames obviously won't make or break the game alone but more modes that seem to lean more towards a party game aesthetic will be something Smash doesn't really do; if I recall correctly most minigames in Smash are single player high score style affairs that are fun for all of five minutes and then never get touched again really.

I also saw this image detailing pricing, and putting the game at $50 might help it, but the content in the higher priced editions might hurt that price point if what's locked away feels like a slap in the face:




As for the gameplay being very similar to Smash, I feel like it's tough to make an arena brawler like this without having a lot of overlaps with Smash. There's no way of eliminating opponents that Smash hasn't done besides the approach PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale took, but given how that game never took off I'm not surprised no one else wants to give that style of elimination a go over something that's expected to appeal to people more.

I do wonder how many outright Smash clones will start showing up if Smash Ultimate does indeed turn out to be the last Smash entry (which it should be if you ask me). The day Smash is no longer putting new games on the scene I can see a lot of publishers jumping on the genre trying to grab onto a market that would be starved for new content.

[Moonface]

So I haven't kept a super close eye on NASB2, and didn't know it was coming out soon until I saw a review roundup for it. Seems to generally be better than the first game, sitting around the 8's in general. Lower scores seem to be from outlets that exclusively reviewed the Switch version which is apparently a total mess, but Open Critic doesn't have a filter option for platform so those scores are skewing the overall average: https://opencritic.com/game/15730/nickel...ar-brawl-2

I don't know what the Recommended rating is based on and it seems oddly low compared to the average review rating, but I also rarely visit these sorts of sites. I'm only really linking it because it's an easy way to show the review roundup compared to what I initially saw. Same as I'm posting this because I know some of us were curious how the sequel was going to turn out.