DEAD RISING 4

The Dead Rising series had already suffered a bit of a dip with its third instalment, but Dead Rising 4 turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for what had at one point seemed like a major Capcom franchise. Unfortunately, it seemed like the game just never got what it was about the series that fans liked. From the questionable changes made to Frank West’s character to the ridiculously over-the-top tone that tried too hard to be funny, from poor design decisions (like the removal of timers) to disappointing boss fights, there was too much about the game that just didn’t work out.

As spotted by Press-Start, it seems one particular easter egg in the action-adventure title makes Kratos’ appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royal canon. The Super Smash Bros.-inspired platform crossover fighter released for PS3 and PS Vita in 2012, and starred characters from a number of PlayStation (and third party) franchises. Kratos, of course, was part of that roster.

Interestingly enough, in Ragnarok, Kratos and Mimir can spark up a conversation during gameplay, where Mimir asks him about a tournament he once took part in where he fought “beasts, scoundrels, princesses, the undead, automatons and history’s greatest musician”. Kratos refuses to speak about the contest, though the reference there is pretty clear- especially to PaRappa the Rapper as the musician in question.

Narrative director Matt Sophos has also confirmed to Press-Start that this is indeed a reference to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. 

God of War Ragnarok has got off to a stellar start, receiving widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike, and enjoying impressive sales. You can read our review of the game through here.

Sony also had a small army of excellent developers on their team, and by that same time, the PlayStation 3 had already started to turn its sales around and was actually giving the Xbox 360 some real competition. Plus, with there being so many iterations of Super Smash that seemingly got better and better with each subsequent game, it was an easy format to copy and more than likely looked like a slam dunk on paper. So, what could go wrong? What the hell happened to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale?

With all of the good will that Sony had built up by 2009 with Uncharted, Sly Cooper, Little Big Planet, inFamous, God of War and various other franchises, some sort of mash-up game was a very logical idea. The kart racing schtick had been done to death by Sega, Nintendo, and a plethora of franchises, though. Even LittleBigPlanet had its own racing game within its own universe. If Sony wanted to put together a mash-up game, it would need to be some sort of fighting game, and what better model to copy than the most successful mash-up game of all time? Super Smash Bros. definitely already had a groundwork laid out. Developer SuperBot Entertainment would just need to take that, and fill in the blanks with Sony’s characters. With this, however, came the games first major problem. Several of PlayStation’s most iconic characters were tied up at other companies.

Most notably Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon being locked away behind the walls of Activision. It would be crazy to think that Sony didn’t try to get the rights back, at least on a temporary basis, but alas they would not appear in the game to the dismay of, well, everyone who played it. While this might have been a roadblock that any reasonable person could sympathize with, the average gamer doesn’t want to hear about licensing difficulties- they just want to play a good game that accomplishes what it sets out to do. And unfortunately for PlayStation All-Stars, these omissions would not go unnoticed, and would set the game up for a slightly disappointing first impression. Having a PlayStation mash-up game without Crash or Spyro is literally like having a Nintendo one without Mario and Yoshi. Imagine that for a second!

Nevertheless, to make up for the absence of a couple no-brainer characters, Sony did what they could to bring a few slightly more obscure classics out of retirement like PaRappa the Rapper, and Sir Daniel Fortesque. On top of that, to pad out the roster a bit more, some third-party characters (like Heihachi from Tekken) were thrown in. On top of that, the various stages and items would reference even more classic PlayStation gems like Wipeout, Resistance, and Hot Shots Golf.

The loose story of the game would also feature perhaps one of PlayStation’s most obscure characters; Polygon Man, who was briefly the mascot for the original PlayStation before getting booted out in favor of Crash and other characters. This real-life dismissal of Polygon Man created a rather funny and creative reason for him to have a chip on his shoulder and want to start trouble within the PlayStation universe. Those who were old enough to get the reference were likely to get a good laugh out of it.

Setting up the game’s world, characters, and backdrops is probably where SuperBot did their best work. With all of these pieces in place as well as they could be, the game was poised to be a rather fun romp and a successful clone of an already extremely popular format. All that was left was the gameplay itself, and this is where SuperBot deviated from the script and perhaps made most of the game’s most fatal errors. In 2012, the game was finally launched, and having a game where Kratos could fight the Fat Princess and Sweet Tooth could fight Sackboy was, by itself, an awesome premise for PlayStation fans, but ultimately the way they would fight would not be quite as fun as many had hoped it would be. The feel and controls of the game were familiar to Smash Bros. in terms of style, but getting a kill on an opponent was totally different.

While normal attacks and combos were all certainly there and fun to do, they wouldn’t ever amount to much. This was not only annoying but also would drive players in the online community to only use characters that could charge up with super bar quicker, and only use moves that facilitated that style.

Additionally, the game itself just didn’t have that much content when compared to the franchise it was so obviously imitating. Outside of an arcade story-mode for each character that almost gave the player nothing unique to see outside of a couple of cutscenes, there wasn’t much reason to explore the offline gameplay once it was generally understood. It also didn’t help that having characters from silly games and characters from serious games just didn’t look quite right for PlayStation All-Stars. Not to say that a mash-up with such wildly different art styles couldn’t be done, but perhaps the party brawler genre wasn’t the right choice for that. Perhaps a more traditional, and slightly more mature fighting game modeled after Tekken or Street Fighter would have provided more of a suitable platform for an ominous Helghast Colonel to shoot Nathan Drake in the face.

To add insult to injury, the game wasn’t supported very well after launch. Eventually Kat from Gravity Rush and Emmett from Starhawk would be added to the roster via DLC, but that wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the lack of content and gameplay roadblocks that plagued the experience.

To say that PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale had nothing going for it would be ridiculous. It’s full of PlayStation nostalgia, thoughtful references, and a fairly decent roster all things considered. The majority of its problems boil down to two basic fundamental mistakes: One, the game wasn’t executed as it should have been. It largely stuck too closely to Smash Bros. script when it should have deviated, and deviated when it should have stuck to the script, and the other main issue is that, aside from everything else, the hardcore PlayStation audience is not the same as the hardcore Nintendo audience.

You can’t just take a Nintendo game and plug in PlayStation characters and expect it to land the same way. While there is certainly some cross pollination between the two platforms, PlayStation’s hardcore audience is generally a little older and has a bit more of an inclination to play games with more mature and complex themes than the typical Nintendo gamer. There’s nothing wrong with either, but the fact that they are undeniably different made the very conception of Battle Royale a mistake from the get-go and set the game up to struggle and end with the whimper that it did when the servers were shut down in January of 2019. Perhaps with the huge success of the PlayStation 4 we could see Sony give the idea of a mash-up game another try, but it would have to be after a long, hard look at its audience and what they are likely to want out of it.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

PLAYSTATION CLASSIC

Let’s kick thing off with the most recent example. While Microsoft has been making strides with backwards compatibility, other leaders in the hardware market ave instead chosen to release classic versions of older consoles. Nintendo kicked off this trend with the NES Classic and the SNES Classic, mini, portable-sized versions of the pieces of hardware that came pre-installed with a library of some of their best games. Quite recently, Sony announced its own take on the concept- except it wasn’t really their own take. From the name to the general core ideas to even the images that were used to promote its announcement, the PlayStation Classic is a hilariously obvious replica of what Nintendo has been doing for a few years now.

Fans of some of the less popular games on PlayStation 3 are probably going to be saddened to hear that they are going to be taken offline in less than a month. Sony today confirmed that that PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, the crossover fighting game that the company released with Superbot in an attempt to emulate Super Smash Bros., will be going offline on October 25.

Sadly, it’s not the only PS3 game going offline on that day— David Jaffe’s failed attempt at a Twisted Metal reboot on the PS3 is also having its servers taken down on that day, as will Warhawk, which saw its significantly less popular spiritual successor Starhawk go offline recently as well.

It is important to note that you can still buy and play these games, even after October 25– all this means is that you won’t be able to play them online. Now, for a game like Warhawk, that is admittedly an issue, but for something like PlayStation All Stars, it should be fine, since there’s a substantial single and local multiplayer component to it.

May Sony’s multiplayer servers for their PS4 games last longer.

Sony is still supporting PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Superbot Entertainment’s crossover fighting game for the PS3. It has released a new “ultimate balance update” which brings more than 100 new gameplay tweaks to the characters, items and to the overall gameplay. Hit up the full list here.

Over on the forums, Sony stated that, “We cannot thank you enough for your patience and continued roaring passion throughout the community, and especially our message boards right here. Over the past months we’ve read every word, clicked every thread, assessed the game balance inside out, to ensure as best as possible, this balance update would not only bring a superior new challenge to the game, but also feel heavily impacted by your voice.

“Thank YOU and our ‘hats off’ to Super Bot Entertainment for creating an incredible fighting game for PlayStation fans world-wide.”

Are you still playing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale? Let us know what you think of these changes in the comments below.

SCE Santa Monica tweeted the same when asked if there were any plans for new DLC/patches for the game. They replied that “Our studio is still very much committed to #PSAllStars, at this time, that is all we can update with for the moment”.

The last big update for All Stars was last month with Zeus from God of War and Isaac Clarke from Dead Space being added as additional characters. There’s since been no updates on any new characters.

Shortly after the game failed to really ignite the market or drive sales for the PS3, Superbot Entertainment announced that it would be splitting from Sony. The split was mutual, and everything was all smiles and hugs throughout.

“Our development and support on All-Stars is nearly wrapped, but due to lag time for localization and testing, etc., the last of our work won’t see its release for several more weeks. From then on out, further support will be handled by Sony’s Santa Monica Studio.

“We’ve got All-Stars you haven’t seen yet. Further details coming in March.”

As a crossover fighting game featuring most of Playstation’s elite celebrities, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale turned out to be quite sobering in its sales and critical reception. The split was nothing ugly, however, as both parties seemed pretty easy-going about the whole matter.

Check out our review of the game, which we awarded a 6.5 out of 10 for the PS Vita version.

Source: The Escapist

Minions are basically like super-deformed Playstation characters who will taunt enemies after successful multi-kills. So far, there will be 18 minions releasing next week along with the two new characters. This includes the Jak and Daxter: Ashelin Minion, Starhawk: Logan Minion, Killzone: Visari Minion and many more.

Superbot has also confirmed a DLC level from the Fearless chapter of Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword, which oddly morphs into a WipEout track during heated battles.

There’s currently no word whether the stage and Minions will also be for free like the DLC characters.

Source: Siliconera

The game sold 65,740 copies this week, followed by Fantasy Life (20,606 copies for the 3DS) and DmC: Devil May Cry (15,157 copies for PS3). A new entry in the top 5 comes with Superbot’s PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, available for the PS3, with 11,758 copies sold.

Meanwhile in the hardware charts, the Nintendo 3DS XL leads with 51,654 copies sold, an increase over last week’s 48,226 copies. This was followed by the 3DS at 26,028 copies and the Playstation 3 at 18,106 copies.

Thanks to the release JRPGs like Tales of Xillia 2 along with a new Devil May Cry, it’s no wonder that Sony’s console still features in the top 3, especially ahead of the Wii U (12,959 copies) and its own PS Vita (9,596 copies).

Source: GIBiz