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Ryan's Gaming Thoughts (Current Topic: Sonic Runners: The 2.0 Downgrade)


Ryannumber1gamer

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I was thinking about making this thread for a long time. I wasn't sure about it but one game finally made me decide to make it. 

 

What's the point of the thread? Basically, I'm going to look over various games and gaming topics, and give my own opinion on them, and it can basically be anything. From discussing where a game went wrong and failed in areas, to Top 10s and more. I'm going to discuss it here. I wasn't sure where this thread belonged so for the time being, I'll put it into the Games board due to it's gaming discussion and if the mods feel it should be in the Miscellaneous Works area, they can feel free to move it there. 

 

That said, for my opener. There's one topic I want to discuss. A fighter than had potential but was dragged down with issues. That's right. It's...

 

PlayStationAllStars.jpg

 

Playstation All-Stars: What Went Wrong?

 

Playstation All-Stars was a game announced and released in 2012, it was a unique take of the Smash Bros formula where 20 Playstation characters would go up against each other in a bunch of maps. I say it was a unique take because unlike other mascot fighters, All-Stars used a unique system of All-Star Moves that worked as KOs.

 

But to get down to exactly what went wrong with the game, we should go over the basics, and what the game did right.

 

No matter what is said, I felt that All-Stars' super system was done in a really good system at first, a risk vs reward system if you will. The way the system was supposed to work that by spending time to build up more AP (Every attack builds up AP, and when you build up enough, you can pull off a super move). A level 1 super is the cheapest but was also the hardest to land, and was easily cancelled, therefore, while it was cheap, it was very risky. 

 

A Level 2 was more expensive and could only be cancelled if killed by another super. Due to it's higher cost and therefore requiring more time to build up to, it had the potential to get more kills and without as much risk.

 

A Level 3 was the most expensive super, being impossible to cancel, and have very high potential for a lot of kills and while it was very expensive, if you could pull it off, you could easily make a comeback.

 

Another thing All-Stars did to try stand out was to mix the Brawler formula with a more fighter based movesets. Each fighter got a variety of different moves that when pressed with a different button and movement (Up, Left, Right, and Down) would pull off a different move. 

 

Both of these two systems made the game very unique from other brawlers like TMNT Smash Up, which basically copy and pasted the Smash formula. One of the things I often see from Smash Bros fanboys is that ''ALL-STARS IS NOTHING BUT A CLONE'' when it's very very far from the truth, it was in fact, very unique from the Smash gameplay.

 

Jak-Daxter-Playstation-All-Stars-Battle-

''Time for a comeback, Eh Dax?''

 

So what went wrong? At first, honestly, nothing. I've been playing All-Stars since the beginning, I played it at the Beta and from the game launch so trust me when I say I have a load of knowledge about this game. At first, the game was pretty damn fun. Characters were easy to handle and for the most part, most of the game issues hadn't cropped up yet. But patches began to take care of characters. But unfortunately, the games issues went downhill quickly from here. The major issues were five different things, which I'm going to look at one at a time.

 

Kratos_thumb.jpg

 

''I AM THE CHARACTER OF SPAM''

 

Issue 1: Unbalanced Characters (Overpowered & Underpowered), and Useless Patches

 

This was one of the biggest issues from the game's beginning. Characters like Kratos and Raiden were unbelievably overpowered, while others like Jak & Spike were underpowered. Kratos for example had attacks that were far too easily spammed, and had a massive AP gain which meant getting 2 Level 3 Supers in one match which lasted for three minutes was easily achievable because of the spammy nature of his moves and the huge AP gain from them.

 

Raiden on the other hand, had spammy moves as well, but he also had another problem, his supers were crazily overpowered. Level 2 supers are meant to be able to get three kills at most. Raiden's Level 2 can easily get four kills and even able to get more kills than some level 3 Supers, along with having a stun move that makes it even easier to get kills. 

 

But Sony Santa Monica (Who are the creators of God of War and who helped Superbot Entertainment with the game, along with taking over development after Sony got rid of Superbot) were not good at doing balance patches at all. At present, Kratos is still unbelievably overpowered, as is Raiden, and they even managed to succeed in making other characters overpowered as well!

 

This is especially terrible because after about 10 small patches and 2 mega patches, these unbalanced characters were still broken or unusable due to how weak they are. That was one of the major issues with the game and it still is. This also extended to the DLC characters. Kat especially was banned from tourneys due to how broken and OP she became at one point.

 

 

allstarsdlc.jpg

 

Issue 2: No Support Less Than A Year In.

 

Another thing All-Stars was meant to have was continued DLC support after it's released and at first, this seemed to be the case. A few months later, Kat from Gravity Rush and Emmett from Starhawk were released as DLC, and as a sign of good will, were released free for one month. While they needed some work, they were a sign of continued support and as everyone wondered who could be the next characters to be included, it was finally announced...only to be disappointing and more or less a cash cow.

 

Playstation_All-Stars_Battle_Royale_-_Is

 

This one is going to need context. Basically, this was clearly a Cash Cow decision was this DLC was released near the launch of Dead Space 3 and God of War Ascension, I.E: The characters were chosen to advertise those games. On top of that, it was previously said that only one character from each franchise would get in (The exception being Cole because of the Good!Evil stories in inFamous), and Issac not having anything to do with Playstation so it was pretty much just to advertise those two games.

 

Furthering that is the fact that God of War Ascension came with a code to get the two characters for free.

 

Other than characters, two stages were also released, some costumes were released, and some minions (Chibi versions of characters from the franchises who cheer you on in game). That was it. Nothing else. But there is still some more to discuss. You see, there was two more characters, and one more stage to come, and this was quite famous in fact.

 

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You see, there was to be another DLC, including fan favourite characters Dart from the PS1 game Legend of Dragoon and Abe from Oddworld, along with a Gravity Rush stage, but these were all cancelled for an unknown reason, despite fan petitions and more to try get the DLC released. All it resulted from was empty words from Sony Santa Monica, and the promise of a final patch to be released soon.

 

What happened was the patch got delayed until months later, and when that patch happened (it was one of the mega patches), it failed to balance a lot of the characters.

 

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Issue 3: GLITCHES

 

This was one of the things All-Stars was known for was the glitches and exploits in the game. From a glitch that gave Raiden an infinite level 2, to another glitch that basically broke the game entirely, making it impossible to start single player, and resulted in errors when you tried to go into multiplayer, this game was plagued with glitches and currently still is. with things like infinite loading screens, level 3's failing to activate, your character getting randomly switched with another, and more. 

 

35160.jpg

 

Issue 4: Unblockable Combos/Touch of Deaths

 

This issue in particular was one of two issues that was All-Stars' final nails in the coffin. Basically, the massive problem here is that Superbot didn't include a method to break combos in the game, which means that if you get trapped into a combo, you are stuck in it, with being able to do nothing. On top of this, there is several moves that can grab hold of a player, stuns them, and brings them to the attacker, forcing them into a combo, meaning the same combo can kept being used over and over again until a Level 2 or 3 is achieved. But even worse, is the Touch of Death, a combo which basically can be done with 0 AP, stuns the player, gives the attacker enough AP for a Level 1, and then finally forces them into a confirmed Level 1 kill.

 

As you can imagine, due to the nature of these combos, it means that players can be kept within combos and are basically forced to sit there without being able to play while the attacker repeats the same unblockable combo over and over again, and can even KO the player before they even get a chance to attack!.

 

playstation_allstars_battle_royal_25_605

 

Issue 5: Kill Confirms

 

This was the final nail in All-Stars. The reason why this happened is because this basically broke the super system I explained earlier. You see, by exploiting the game's combo system, by using a move which sets up a combo, you can use a kill confirm, where you kill someone when they are stunned and unable to block because the combo system was exploited. Which this basically means is the Risk Vs Reward system is completely broken.

 

Why go for a Level 2 when you could just use a cheap level 1, and 100% confirm your kill? Why go for Level 3 when you could get a bunch of Level 1's for that price and use a cheap kill confirm?

 

This was the final nail in All-Stars' coffin. This is what finished the game off. By breaking this system and exploiting the combo system into such a cheap kill move, that was what turned a fun balanced game into a cheap, broken mess of a fighter.

 

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Ryan's Final Thoughts:

 

Playstation All-Stars was a great, unique fighter. I loved this game when I first played it. I loved this new super system, I loved seeing characters like Jak getting a much awaited return, All-Stars was responsible for getting me into new series like PaRappa and Ape Escape. As Smash fanboys claimed this was nothing more than a clone, I watched the gameplay and eagerly awaited for this game to come out, I saw the new risk vs reward system, and I was just so excited to play this, and the game delivered. It really did. 

 

But that's where the flaws of the game just ruined it. With enough skill, you can beat people trying to spam with characters like Kratos, you could still have fun despite no further DLC updates, but the broken combo system, the cheap kill confirms, and the absolutely annoying glitches all just brought this game down. It's a massive shame, because All-Stars could have been something great, but with the issues, along with other things such as poor netcode, among other things, it's sad what happened, even if Sony and Sony Santa Monica at least put the time in to get these issues fixed up, the game could really be something great, but in it's current state, it's honestly nothing more than wasted potential

 

However, I do think this game deserves a second chance, with a developer who's willing to put the time and effort into getting these issues fixed up. If they do that, we could really have a great brawler game. That's why I do hope we might see a Enhanced Edition on PS4, or even a sequel, cleaning up these glaring issues and making this into the brilliant fighter we had at launch.

 

So, with that. That's my full thoughts on what went wrong with Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, coming from the perspective of a person who has played this game from the beginning. Please tell me your thoughts and give me so feedback!  

Edited by Ryannumber1Santa
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I still stand on my explanation: Sony itself did not have full faith in this project while it should have. Sure, it was in the hands of a newborn studio, but it had competent people of the fighting game genre to back it up and despite the complains, it grew a fanbase in time.

That's why Superbot had a rather small budget and a time constrain; that's why they cash cowed third part companies that had bare relevance to Sony (2K with Bioshock anyone?). It was clearly shown when the game was getting good sales and Superbot said DLC support could continue as long as the game had a fanbase... only to be uncerimoniously cut off and gave to Santa Monica, who clearly did not gave a rat's ass about the game, being busy masturbating itself over God of War: Ascension's pointless multiplayer. And so, the game practically died with that.

It's a shame though, because the concept of a crossover between Sony and/or other main PlayStation exclusive IPs is something a lot of people wanted from a long time, including me. PASBR was far from perfect, but it was something that came very close to be that dream coming true.

And it was killed by the lack of faith of people who should had. How ironic.

 

I really hope this kind of project would be taken back and done right in the future, no matter what.

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I'd say the main thing that went wrong with All Stars is that it was Sony Smash Brothers so long as your definition of "Sony" extends no earlier than "games after the PS2 was announced that it was convenient for us to represent"; compared to Nintendo's formula of "if we once had pretty much anything to do with it in the past, shit's literally on like Donkey Kong." It's hard to bank on childhood nostalgia for "the generic bad guy from that game everyone spent most of the PS3's life mocking" and "Nintendo got Snake, so here's the guy everyone has always been hated for not being Snake."

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Being fair on Raiden, why it sucked that we didn't get Snake, Raiden's MGR version was still a pretty damn cool character, especially after MGS 4 managed to win over some people by protraying Raiden as a cool cyborg ninja.

 

I do think it could have used more PS1 reps, and it's a big reason why I wish Abe and Dart was in the game.

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Well, the roster is an issue, I agreed with you about that. But that isn't the only issue. The game had a massive fanbase up until at least next year and still currently does. I know because I was apart of the All-Stars forums after enjoying the game so much, but leaving after the game lost it's appeal to me due to the issues I've stated.

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I feel it's a fun little fighter, but I'm not the competitive sort, as I've learned. That said, I imagine for competitive fighting, it's terrible. But just for fun, it's good enough, but it doesn't compare to Smash.

 

But man, do I agree there should have been more in there. I don't mind what we got, but more would have been nice. I would have loved to see THE MURRY playabe, for one.

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Wondering now, if superbot wasn't willing or able to make the balance changes, and that's why they lost their game? Not sure how you'd even go about fixing the hit confirm supers, save making them all come out slowly enough or be blocked from being triggered right after a hit.

this game was more screwed over by its concept, how much overlap is there really between these franchises and their bases? A lot of these characters are also kind of terrible. Oh look, it's sack boy, remember them pretending like he was an appealing character? How about the bad guy from Killzone? No not that bad guy, the other one. What do you mean you don't remember him?

And it was obvious that in Sony's heads, this game was a promotional tool, and it clearly wasn't working as intended (a more realistic reason for superbot being dropped). Remember Big Daddy, who debuted on out competitor's platforms the better part of a year before he showed up on ours?

And then you also have there "here's this character from this game, no, we're not making another one." Parappa, Daniel, Jak, all those guys.

And then the characters a lot of people kinda didn't want: DmC Dante, Raiden (who was turned into a cyborg ninja and somehow got worse at actually winning fights), and two versions of then new Cole.

It might not have been resonable, but man would this game have been better off with Senator Armstrong instead of Raiden.

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PSASBR was a disappointment from the beginning. I loved how they were not even trying to disguise how this was a Super Smash Bros. clone. It looked exactly like it except with different characters.

Also, this sounds typical coming from me or most people in this place, but Crash Bandicoot really did deserve a spot in this game more than any other third-party character. Out of the requested characters, HE was the most glaring omission from the roster. There's a lot of reasons for this:

- He was basically the PlayStation's mascot for years.

- His appearance in this game could've made Activision wake up and realize they're wasting a very popular character.

- He is actually is a brawler (or has become in recent years, at least).

- We could've had an all-Naughty Dog brawl! (plus teaming him up with PaRappa)

SSBB's third-party characters would be a logical inclusion as well (moreso Snake than Sonic, but the latter would be fun to have in battles against Sony's platformer heroes). And I keep thinking Lara Croft and Cloud too.

Other than that, yeah. It could've been a better brawler if they patched a few things, got characters who have a lasting impact more than six years (I mean, Fat Princess? Are you serious?) and such but all that potential went down the shitter. If Sony intends to try another brawler in the future, they should give what the fans want and get a developer with experience instead of a fledgling.

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I'm still gutted that Dart was so close. Legend of Dragoon may have aged terribly, but that game will always have a special place in my heart, and that image of that WIP model was the only sign of life in that series since the first game.

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I've been thinking about getting this for years now, but I always stop myself at the last minute. Why? Because this is the laziest, cheapest looking fighting game I've ever seen and it does NOT deserve the "All Stars" title. I know they didn't have a big enough budget and that it was a small time studio working on this, but it looks so unappealing. The UI is ugly as hell, the graphics are meh, the music from what I've heard is nothing special and even the gameplay isn't my cuppa tea. I'm trying my hardest here to not compare it to Smash Bros, but it's impossible!

 

Smash Bros oozes nostalgia, charm and manages to make every character look like they fit in the same world. In All Stars however, every character sticks out like a sore thumb because the art style is so bland. Nate looks fine standing next to Cole, but they don't look so good next to Parappa and Spike. Then there's the roster which honestly, besides Sir Daniel, Jak and a few others is mostly full of forgettable PS2/PS3 characters. Also how the hell is Big Daddy an All Star? Or DmC Dante? Or fucking Isaac Clarke?! I know, they didn't have a big enough budget for characters like Cloud or Crash but come on! At least get a third party character that has a history with Playstation like Lara Croft!

 

Playstation All Stars (I really don't wanna call it that) Battle Royale looks unbelievably lacklustre to me and even though it's cheap to get now on places like Amazon, I keep changing my mind about getting it. I guess I'll try it one day for curiosity's sake, but that's it. It wouldn't be a game I'll go back to often I bet, and knowing the game didn't even sell that great when it came out I doubt there will ever be a sequel. =[

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Also, this sounds typical coming from me or most people in this place, but Crash Bandicoot really did deserve a spot in this game more than any other third-party character. Out of the requested characters, HE was the most glaring omission from the roster. There's a lot of reasons for this:

- He was basically the PlayStation's mascot for years.

- His appearance in this game could've made Activision wake up and realize they're wasting a very popular character.

- He is actually is a brawler (or has become in recent years, at least).

- We could've had an all-Naughty Dog brawl! (plus teaming him up with PaRappa)

 

Actually, Superbot tried to get Crash and Spyro into All-Stars. If I remember right, it was leaked back last year on the All-Stars forums that they attempted to get Crash and Spyro in but Activision were asking for too much money plus they tried to claim it was because All-Stars was multiplatform and Activision wanted ''Crash to be the mascot of mulitplatform platformers''. So basically, Crash & Spyro didn't get in because Activision were being fuckers.

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"'Crash to be the mascot of mulitplatform platformers''.

Hue. They sure are doing a great job with that.

Also @Phos, people did actually like sackboy as a character, and found him charming/notable? Don't get why he was a bad pick given the massive success of its franchise.

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This game failed because it didn't had Crash and Spyro. End of story.

 

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Actually, Superbot tried to get Crash and Spyro into All-Stars. If I remember right, it was leaked back last year on the All-Stars forums that they attempted to get Crash and Spyro in but Activision were asking for too much money plus they tried to claim it was because All-Stars was multiplatform and Activision wanted ''Crash to be the mascot of mulitplatform platformers''. So basically, Crash & Spyro didn't get in because Activision were being fuckers.

"Mascot of mulitplatform platformers"?

Yea, I stopped reading after that. How did the other third party characters get in then?

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"Mascot of mulitplatform platformers"?

Yea, I stopped reading after that. How did the other third party characters get in then?

 

Activision is the one who said ''mascot of multiplatform platformers''. Not Superbot

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And look where he is now.

 

Yes. But it isn't Superbot's fault. Activision are the idiots to blame for Crash and Spyro not being in the game.

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If, at least Crash Bandicoot, was in this game from the very beggining, I truly believe, that it would've been more sucessful. I have zero doubt. The game would've got 10 times more highlights and support, not only fan support, but Sony's too. It would've helped in sales as well, with the appropriate marketing. With that, SuperBot would've got much more praise, and would most likely not get kicked out by Sony and Santa Monica, they would still be around supporting the game and CORRECTLY fixing all the issues you've noted above, Ryan.

 

Again, I'm highly sure, and without a single spot of doubt, that Crash's inclusion with his classic design at least, would have helped this game in every possible aspect. Tho, the only way I could prove my theory, is if a Crash reborn project ala Shen3 got a kickstarter campaign. It would reach millions even faster than it, and prove that he is indeed, a very powerful key.

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But that's the problem Jango. As I've already said, Sony, or Superbot didn't have a choice in the matter. Crash's rights are with Activision and not Sony. Superbot tried to get Crash in but Activision wouldn't allow it. 

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In a nutshell, all you said:

 

It's Activision's fault.

 

Well, it kind of is. There isn't much Sony or Superbot can do when Activision currently have Crash's rights and won't allow Crash in the game. They can't just put Crash in without Activision's permission.

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Wonder if Activision would put CoD Guy in a sequel since they have that deal with Sony for awhile now lol.

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Really sucks they couldn't get Crash and Spyro, I think it would've redeemed the game's quality a bit for sure.

 

I sorta knew the reason why, but I not that Activision said Crash was a mascot of multiplatform platformers. What a load of rubbish. How can he be a mascot if he hasn't had a new game for seven years? =/

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