Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Reviews
We’ve seen a lot of Smash clones come and go over the years, very few with any staying power. All-Star Brawl feels like another flash in the pan, very much like opening the biggest box under the Christmas tree only to find a pair of socks inside.
The weird thing about Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is that, despite being janky, low-budget, and lacking in content, it’s a lot of fun. It all boils down to its ludicrous concept and the fact that at the end of the day, it’s functional. It’s a power trip for anyone who grew up watching cartoons in the late 90s to early 2000s. Its online multiplayer also works surprisingly well, even better than Smash, to be honest.
Regardless, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl serves as an example of how surgical marketing can be, feeding competitive players with specific bullet points while trying to cast a wide net with its popular IP. Playing it may certainly make you smile, and moments of hype can follow. But in the end, it’s an extended meme at best and a monument to capitalistic cynicism at worst.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl feels incomplete in a lot of ways. It needed more modes, better sound design to provide some personality, a better selection of stages. If the developers take the time to fill the game out further, it could even end up being something pretty special. For now, this is still far better than a Nickelodeon fighting game has any right to be. The most important part of a fighting game is the feel, and the team at Ludosity nailed that. When I was tearing through foes with Reptar online, I had a hard time caring about what was missing. Players coming in with the right expectations will have a ton of fun, just don’t expect a game that is more than it is.
Overall, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a fun fighting game with iconic characters and easy to learn but challenging to master mechanics. They nailed the feel of a good fighting game, but the game still feels like it has a ways to go before it reaches the level of an iconic franchise like Smash. The potential is absolutely there, and after we see a few DLC launches who knows where it will stand, but for now it’s hard to imagine myself inviting friends over to play All-Star Brawl when Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is still around.
As someone who grew up with all of these characters, it’s beautiful to see them re-contextualized in a game that shows them the love and care they deserve. While it lacks content and a key component of Nickelodeon’s formula in the absence of voice acting, it is a fun, inviting fighting game. If you’re someone who holds Nickelodeon and it’s character’s close in any way at all, or if you’re just a fan of the Super Smash Bros. style fighters and need a break from them specifically, I would pick this one up.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl reminds me of the popular maxim, fast, cheap, or good? Pick two. Just with different options and only one choice. It’s clear Ludosity did the best they could, honestly, there is no denying good gameplay would beat out voices, a bad story, or a number of other things, it just doesn’t make for a great experience.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a love letter to those of us who grew up watching the famous television channel and its most iconic series. It has a good roster of well-balanced fighters and is quite fun to play. Its main problems are the limited number of game modes, the absence of certain emblematic characters of the company and a handling that would need to be patched to solve certain bugs.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has the potential to be great, it just doesn’t quite reach that level. What’s there is pretty good, but the lack of polish and small amount of content makes All-Star Brawl fall short of the excellent party fighter that it could be. Hopefully, the devs continue to support the game and polish it as time goes on, as it could be a diamond in the rough given a bit more time in the oven.
Those looking for a fun experience will likely find it here, but it may be short lived if you aren’t into the game competitively.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl doesn’t bring anything new to the table, instead offering a certainly competent if not hugely exciting brawler with a confusing roster of characters cynically chopped up seemingly for future monetisation and very little to actually fight for in terms of unlockables for the fans. The fundamentals are here, and the Sports modes are terrific fun, but there isn’t much else to get too excited about when the content included is this lacking.
Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl might even be an interesting alternative to people who like competitive platform fighters, but as a videogame it's clearly a waste of potential. Luckily, Ludosity has a good history and seems to be listening to fans feedback in order to make constant updates to make the game better. However, at the time of this review, the title still offers a shallow experience for any players who aren't interested in the competitive scene.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
There's a lot to like here, even if there's plenty of room for improvement. It's far from esports ready, but it does feel like a solid first step for a great new franchise.
For a fighting game, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is superb for its genre. Its gameplay and combat are fun in all the correct ways. Nickelodeon fans will most certainly enjoy playing as their favorite characters growing up, including Spongebob, Aang, CatDog, and Danny Phantom, among others. However, you can only play the game for so long before you run out of content to play around with. I’m sure there’s more in store for this title down the line, but for now, your experience is limited to 20 characters and only about four game modes.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a project that exudes everywhere the passion of its developers for extremely competitive platform fighters, especially those from Super Smash Bros., and the ambition to create their own work that reflects this feeling and makes it evident to the eyes from an audience with a similar taste. The game works perfectly well for hardcore gamers, who are looking to competitively improve themselves in high-tech, fast-paced battles, but it's not recommended for those who just want chaotic and uncompromising smackdown fun.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
The fighting title of Nickelodeon characters bursts with force, offering a title that adapts to any user and that respects the essence of each of the series to which it makes reference.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Sadly it is very tough to suggest anyone picks Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl in the state it is in currently. It is very bare-bones in content, unbalanced, and feels soulless and cheap. Apparently, the developers are looking to further add to the game post-release but this model makes it feel like an overpriced Early Access run. The basics just aren’t here for the game, and I can’t help but feel that between the memes and rollback inclusions, they just doubled down on meme culture to sell copies of the game and hoped the fighting game community would stick with it.
All Star Brawl runs and plays absolutely fine, and probably has just about enough to keep itself interesting for the younger gamers with its extras. As long as you don’t expect something on the scale of Smash, in terms of content and replayability, this is a really well made and built fighter that will definitely offer lots of laughs and plenty of fun.
With its in-depth but still accessible combat system and a great look when it comes to its visual worlds and character depiction, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl needs nevertheless to improve its technical performance given its propensity to fluidity issues. Performance issues notwithstanding, this is a great package of fan service and those with a taste for Nickelodeon animation series will be delighted with this effort.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a fun premise that is performed mildly, missing out on the complexity of its inspiration and resulting in a shorter replay value.