PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale PS3 Review

As with any game you play, game play is where the real magic has to be, fortunately Battle Royale doesn’t disappoint. Once you wipe the nostalgia grin of your face of picking your first character and fire up a fight against your friends then the fun really begins. The controllers are delightfully simple yet marvelously dynamic in that each character has the same controller and combos you can input, its the resulting moves that are different. Kratos has several of his signature weapons and moves, as do all the characters in fact.

Nathan Drake can repel across the level on a zip line, throw barrels at your enemies, pull out his grenade launcher or even spawn a chest high wall for you to duck behind, blind fire from, or just simply duck out of the way of an incoming attack. Nariko wields the Heavenly Sword with all the grace of her own video game release, SackBoy still wields his unnerving stupid grin, Hihatchi still upper cuts like a total boss. It’s all how you want it to be and so much more.

The premise of this game is of course simple, you beat the life out of your enemies just like in any other fighting game, but that’s not enough to bring you victory. Battles can go on for a very long time indeed in multi player, especially if you set the score limit as first to 3. The idea is to dish out your attacks to fill your super bar, this can be filled up three times over, giving you three levels of deployment, 1, 2 and 3. hit R2 when your on Level 1 and a small power move will launch, most commonly allowing you to steal someone else’s super charge. Level two will give you a move capable of killing someone, resulting in a single point for your player. Level 3 however are  just insane, break out this bad boy and your treated to a mini cut-scene style transformation and you get to run wild with the big weapons and special moves. One hit with this move and you kill someone, its possible to win an entire game in one use of a level 3 super move.

Kill an oponent and the game doesn’t stop for round two, they just re spawn right back into the action. It doesn’t matter either as there is zero focus on health bars and everything is geared towards hitting those super moves to end the game. Things get even more chaotic too as the game lavishes you with pickups and boosts throughout the match. These range from rocket launchers from Uncharted, Boots of Hermes from God of War, shields, battle armour, Super energy and a whole lot more that are great at keeping the flow of battle a completely chaotic and ridiculously entertaining experience.