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What should and could have been: PSASBR

It seemed like Superbot just kept promising more and more until the roster leak, which was disappointing to just about everyone, and then Superbot and Sony just suddenly quit trying, and no announcements came.

I think despite the hate the game got from the reveal to launch, it could have been special. They could have shelled out the money for Crash and Spyro. Maybe even Cloud and Lara Croft if they wanted to pay Square too. Those three would have sold the game for people I think. The game could have been filled with so much more Playstation history, instead of primarily PS3 games including ones not out yet. The final roster is so....unfinished. This game could have been a great PS3 swan song if it had more time, and more content.

And yeah the UI and cover art is abysmal, and it's seriously crazy to me that the game shipped with it. Who HONESTLY thought that putting Fat Princess on the cover instead of Radec, Cole, Jak and Daxter? I remember Superbot saying too they'd work on the UI due to fan complaint...leading to launch where it looked exactly the same.
 
It seemed like Superbot just kept promising more and more until the roster leak, which was disappointing to just about everyone, and then Superbot and Sony just suddenly quit trying, and no announcements came.

I think despite the hate the game got from the reveal to launch, it could have been special. They could have shelled out the money for Crash and Spyro. Maybe even Cloud and Lara Croft if they wanted to pay Square too. Those three would have sold the game for people I think. The game could have been filled with so much more Playstation history, instead of primarily PS3 games including ones not out yet. The final roster is so....unfinished. This game could have been a great PS3 swan song if it had more time, and more content.

And yeah the UI and cover art is abysmal, and it's seriously crazy to me that the game shipped with it. Who HONESTLY thought that putting Fat Princess on the cover instead of Radec, Cole, Jak and Daxter? I remember Superbot saying too they'd work on the UI due to fan complaint...leading to launch where it looked exactly the same.

Sad that Oddworld couldn't get Abe in the game as planned.

Then there's...Legend of Dragoon.... ; A;
 
So the "leaked" discussion with ex-Activision employee who apparently knows the reason why Crash was not in All Stars is not considered legit? Just asking.
 
This redo still doesnt quite "get it" When you mish mash a bunch of characters from different IP's you have to settle on an art style, not just mash them together with a "default" art direction and hope it works (that fat princess portrait is beyond horrible)

Smash 64, albeit being known as kind of an ugly game even back in the game, had one thing going for it: VISUAL CONSISTENCY. The characters and set were all made to work well with one another, and using the "toy" aesthetic was the right call.

SSBCast.jpg
 
Omigosh, Ellen's on that roster. What could have been indeed. T_T However...

This redo still doesnt quite "get it" When you mish mash a bunch of characters from different IP's you have to settle on an art style, not just mash them together with a "default" art direction and hope it works (that fat princess portrait is beyond horrible)

Smash 64, albeit being known as kind of an ugly game even back in the game, had one thing going for it: VISUAL CONSISTENCY. The characters and set were all made to work well with one another, and using the "toy" aesthetic was the right call.

This makes sense and was a partial reason for me not getting into PSARBR.
 
This redo still doesnt quite "get it" When you mish mash a bunch of characters from different IP's you have to settle on an art style, not just mash them together with a "default" art direction and hope it works (that fat princess portrait is beyond horrible)

Smash 64, albeit being known as kind of an ugly game even back in the game, had one thing going for it: VISUAL CONSISTENCY. The characters and set were all made to work well with one another, and using the "toy" aesthetic was the right call.

SSBCast.jpg

Sorry but you're wrong there. How can it be an homage to the characters if it changes how they look?
 
They chose the wrong characters. Fat princess was a fucking joke. A lot of Playstations biggest games are Japanese yet there were a distinct lack of characters from such series: FF, KH, RE, now your probably saying they are all third party but thats the essence of Playstation and what made it so big. PS1 and 2 established those franchises to what they are today.

Furthermore the Ui was disgusting, and art style was a mess.
 
Sorry but you're wrong there. How can it be an homage to the characters if it changes how they look?

Sorry, but Im not. This game DID change how all the characters look, thats something that you cannot avoid and its obvious when you see Fat Princess or some of the other cartoony characters.

Smash did it with its characters and this game did it as well. The only difference is that Sony All Stars did it very badly because they picked a style that makes human characters look OK and cartoony characters look like shit, never mind the glaring issue with color values and not being able to easily differentiate the fighters from the background (which is why they had to add a stroke around the characters ...sigh

On a 4 player fighting game, you have to design the art direction in a way that the characters can be very recognizable from a faraway zoom level, because that tends to happen very often. One way to fix that is to make sure the silhouettes are very exaggerated, or that the characters dont have realistic proportions so that you can tell who they are right away. Smash Bros realized this right away and made sure that was the case, SASBR did not.
 
Fixed because inFamous is moderately popular. Some would argue that Cole's now an essential Sony character. Just not two of them.

What? I dont even think Infamous sold all that well which would explain how quickly both became free games on PSN and I was able to get the LE for Infamous 2 for $20 literally 2 months after launch. The fact that the next Infamous game is basically starting over from scratch rather than being infamous 3 should tell you that the series isn't the hit that Sony wants it to be.
 
I liked the game's concept and I love Sony's characters (honestly), but for me this game begins and ends with the inclusion of Crash Bandicoot. Don't even talk to me about this game, a potential sequel, what this game could have been in an alternate history, or any other nonsense unless the discussion starts with Crash.
 
They chose the wrong characters. Fat princess was a fucking joke. A lot of Playstations biggest games are Japanese yet there were a distinct lack of characters from such series: FF, KH, RE, now your probably saying they are all third party but thats the essence of Playstation and what made it so big. PS1 and 2 established those franchises to what they are today..

Probably.

It feels as if Sony is afraid of embracing their Japanese identity for this game, further amplified by the inclusion of third-party western characters that doesn't originate from Playstation in the first place.
 
Instead of the game being a celebration of 20 years of Playstation, it was an ad for upcoming PS3/4 games

Yeah, this.

I kind of feel insulted with how the whole thing was handled. It kind of awkwardly cherry picked Playstation history, and left me feeling like Sony could care less that I happen to have played most of their 1st party games.

And really they don't care, that's the biggest difference.

They chose the wrong characters. Fat princess was a fucking joke. A lot of Playstations biggest games are Japanese yet there were a distinct lack of characters from such series: FF, KH, RE, now your probably saying they are all third party but thats the essence of Playstation and what made it so big. PS1 and 2 established those franchises to what they are today.

Furthermore the Ui was disgusting, and art style was a mess.

Fat Princess is totally fine. She's not "an all-star", but I really wish the cast was more obscure throwbacks, like Spike, Toro and Dan. Should have downplayed the emphasis on her being some face of Playstation and just let her be the quirky morbidly obese princess (and kept her original art style)

Plus the game was a sausagefest. The roster totally needed whoever it could get that wasn't an "action dude"
 
Instead of the game being a celebration of 20 years of Playstation, it was an ad for upcoming PS3/4 games

That's what happens when the marketing department doesn't understand who the target audience is in addition to having too much influence over development.
 
Another big issue I have is the name. Super Smash Bros is an INCREDIBLY clever name, chosen by people who obviously care about the brand and the history. It sounds good to anyone and it sounds especially good to a Nintendo fan.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale however, holy fuck. That alone, just like Smash Bros. tells you everything you need to know about the game, that they basically dont give a single fuck about the brand, theyre just trying to shove the IP into your face over and over and over until you "get it" A game that was cooked up in a marketing meeting. By marketing, for marketing.

It doesnt roll of the tongue, its not clever or amusing in any way shape or form, it thinks that the more buzzwords you have in a title the better it will perform, it basically exemplifies everything I hate about "suits" running the game industry. Fuck, its almost a good name because its consistent with the game itself. mandated by marketing with a soul-less artstyle and not one original thought in its corpse.
 
I really hope Sony gives the game a sequel. If it was given a proper budget and time, it could be a great game. As it is right now, is a game that plays somewhat similar, but is so unbalanced that it can never be taken as a competitive fighting game. SSB is great because it can be both a fun party game and a serious competitive game.

I sort of think they just just straight up copy the SSB gameplay and have % based health and stage knock offs for deaths. It feels like they took a different route to be different, just for the sake of being different. With the current scheme you can avoid every single hit against you, but still die from a level 3 if a player just hits the other 2 players.
 
Another big issue I have is the name. Super Smash Bros is an INCREDIBLY clever name, chosen by people who obviously care about the brand and the history. It sounds good to anyone and it sounds especially good to a Nintendo fan.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale however, holy fuck. That alone, just like Smash Bros. tells you everything you need to know about the game, that they basically dont give a single fuck about the brand, theyre just trying to shove the IP into your face over and over and over until you "get it" A game that was cooked up in a marketing meeting. By marketing, for marketing.

It doesnt roll of the tongue, its not clever or amusing in any way shape or form, it thinks that the more buzzwords you have in a title the better it will perform, it basically exemplifies everything I hate about "suits" running the game industry. Fuck, its almost a good name because its consistent with the game itself. mandated by marketing with a soul-less artstyle and not one original thought in its corpse.
Lol
Im out
 
Eh, the game is totally unnecessary and just not good when held up against Super Smash Bros. If you don't have access to a Nintendo platform, it's still not even that great. The scoring system is completely asinine and makes for very imbalanced play.
 
I really hope Sony gives the game a sequel. If it was given a proper budget and time, it could be a great game. As it is right now, is a game that plays somewhat similar, but is so unbalanced that it can never be taken as a competitive fighting game. SSB is great because it can be both a fun party game and a serious competitive game.

I sort of think they just just straight up copy the SSB gameplay and have % based health and stage knock offs for deaths.
It feels like they took a different route to be different, just for the sake of being different. With the current scheme you can avoid every single hit against you, but still die from a level 3 if a player just hits the other 2 players.
They didn't have to do that, but they needed to find a way to keep movement important. They completely neutered the movement and platforming aspect of the game, which made it feel spammy and hollow.

For example, Towerfall isn't a complete SSB rip off but it sure does play a whole lot better than PSASBR.
 
I've made various posts voicing my opinions
I dont like the name doesnt deserve anymore of a response than that

Be respectful of other posters. If your way of doing that is responding with respect to them, that's fine. If that's a problem because you disagree so strongly that you don't respect them, don't respond at all.
 
This is kinda BS considering the characters that were available were incredibly true to their IPs, although Smash is like a dam museum compared to most games, which is the expectation for games like these

I uh... what?

Jak and Daxter, Kratos, Parappa, Ratchet and Clank, Sir Daniel Fortesque, Sly Cooper, Spike, Sweet Tooth and Heihachi would like a word.



Umm, Do you not realize how many Playstation characters are missing from this game? Do you? The developer made no absolutely no effort in giving us the roster that we deserved. No way in hell anyone can defend this.

I didnt want a smash bros rip off. Don't speak for everyone

Ok, I can understand this. But still its what I and a lot more people wanted.
If you are a console manufacturer I think that you are entitled to a Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Bros clone/type game.
 
I agree that Fat Princess being in the game is fine. She only sticks out like a sore thumb when you place her together with "cross-marketing action guy #2", without covering the legacy IP bases first. There not being even a single RPG character from any of Sony's games in the core roster says a lot about what the game's true intentions were.

Another big issue I have is the name. Super Smash Bros is an INCREDIBLY clever name, chosen by people who obviously care about the brand and the history. It sounds good to anyone and it sounds especially good to a Nintendo fan.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale however, holy fuck. That alone, just like Smash Bros. tells you everything you need to know about the game, that they basically dont give a single fuck about the brand, theyre just trying to shove the IP into your face over and over and over until you "get it" A game that was cooked up in a marketing meeting. By marketing, for marketing.

It doesnt roll of the tongue, its not clever or amusing in any way shape or form, it thinks that the more buzzwords you have in a title the better it will perform, it basically exemplifies everything I hate about "suits" running the game industry. Fuck, its almost a good name because its consistent with the game itself. mandated by marketing with a soul-less artstyle and not one original thought in its corpse.

Even shortening it to "PlayStation All-Star Battle" would have conveyed the same message and been less of a mouthful, even if it sounds a bit generic. Anything would be better than fuckin' PSASBR.
 
This redo still doesnt quite "get it" When you mish mash a bunch of characters from different IP's you have to settle on an art style, not just mash them together with a "default" art direction and hope it works (that fat princess portrait is beyond horrible)

Smash 64, albeit being known as kind of an ugly game even back in the game, had one thing going for it: VISUAL CONSISTENCY. The characters and set were all made to work well with one another, and using the "toy" aesthetic was the right call.

SSBCast.jpg

Completely agree with this, it seemed that they just took the characters out of their game and slapped together in this, resulting in the game not having a consistent art style, also the character selection, I'm not a big sony fan but I'm sure they missed characters that are a lot more meaningful to the playstation brand than raiden or new dante
 
I like it *shrugs

*sigh*

Me too... me too...

It has lots of flaws, but it was enjoyable. It was easy to see from early on that this game was not given a mighty budget, and understanding more angles of the production, I wasn't disappointed. I figured that this was their first swing, and I'd like to think that they'd be given a second, but the overwhelming wave of negativity and extreme conflict of interests (I don't think anyone could say that there exists a single and distinct idea regarding this game that the majority of folks would like to see) bums me out.
 
Lacking roster(compared to what it could have been) and the game being governed by the whole "super attack to score" made me lose interest real fast. And the cross buy function didn't work for me either...
 
Be respectful of other posters. If your way of doing that is responding with respect to them, that's fine. If that's a problem because you disagree so strongly that you don't respect them, don't respond at all.
Post was meant to signify disbelief not disrespect
In a thread where its discussed about what couldve happened in psas theres a horrid fat princess model with the face of death itself, a bland map that reminds me an awful lot of that earthbound map in smash, a rip off smash ui and finally a dislike forthe name? I was expecting talks about what couldve happened if superbot was given funds that a full game gets and if they were able to secure signature characters like cloud and crash. Didnt meant to come off disrespectful to anyone
 
What? I dont even think Infamous sold all that well which would explain how quickly both became free games on PSN and I was able to get the LE for Infamous 2 for $20 literally 2 months after launch. The fact that the next Infamous game is basically starting over from scratch rather than being infamous 3 should tell you that the series isn't the hit that Sony wants it to be.

I wouldn't say the game's starting from scratch, I mean it's still clearly an Infamous game. It looks (and seemingly plays) the same as it's predecessors.

Also, I don't think a game being free on PSN means that it didn't sell well; and if the series "isn't the hit Sony wants it to be" why take a chance and make more? Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to cut your losses as they did with Starhawk & Playstation Allstars?
 
You know, warts and all, I loved this game back when it came out - it was pure addiction. I'm a lot colder to it now though. I pretty much stopped playing when they nerfed my favourite character Toro with the last patch. He was already mid-to-low tier anyway, but I could get by with him and put up a decent fight. After that patch though I was more frustrated than having fun with every match online. Character balance is a huge problem with the game now. And the more I think back on the roster they eventually opted for, the more pissed off I get. So many poor choices.

What sucks even more is that there's already a potentially ace slew of new additions to be included for a sequel that'll never happen. You've got Iota/Atoi, Kutaro, Delsin Rowe, that chick from Velocity (little known, but perfect for this type of game), Galahad, *cough*Knack*cough*. Get rid of all the shitty third-party characters from the first game, get rid of Evil Cole, add a bunch of first-party guys who didn't make it first time like Dart, Wander and Alundra - BAM! You've got yourself a sweet roster.

afaik, it sold like shit.

According to Yosh, it sold a million copies. So it was a sales disappointment for Sony, but it didn't sell like shit.

Has Seth Killian ever addressed the massive PSASBR let-down post-mortem? Is he still with Superbot, even?

He works for SSM, not Superbot.
 
I played a ton of the game. Kat was too good 1v1 though. I wish there were more taunts like issac's finger pew pew pew. I'd like a PSA 2 :(
 
Game needed a better knockback system (fixed knockback is boring). And more content. MUCH more content. It somehow managed to only be slightly ahead of SSB 64 in terms of different game modes. While unlockables like new outro's/intros etc. were alright they couldn't have used a less interesting way to unlock them. It was bad on its own and downright atrocious when compared to SSB Brawl's Unlockables wall.

But the one thing that I disliked the most: Every character and stage were unlocked from the beginning. I HATE that. It takes away 99% of the reason to even play SP (Stages, characters >>>>>>> Outro/Intro) :/

Tl;dr: The biggest flaw is the game being slightly ahead of SSB64 in terms of content.
 
Credit where credit's due, they did an excellent job with Kat. They nailed her move set.

Yeah it played like Kat, but man she comboed off of anything and 1v1 with no one to break up her combo string, she gain AP like nothing. Easy to set up her supers too. So deadly.
 
Gameplay was great.

Super system was not. Basically everything else was not great, it's crap indeed, especially the UI is worse than a iOS shovelware game, no exaggeration.

Such a wasted opportunity because, believe it or not, the controls and the way characters move and play is absolutely fantastic.
 
I wonder if the results of this game means Sony has abandoned all hopes of making a sequel. Or better yet a reboot without the awful design ideas.
 
a dislike forthe name?
It is a pretty bad name, though. Definitely conveys the "no effort" feeling a lot of people seem to have about it.

But the one thing that I disliked the most: Every character and stage were unlocked from the beginning. I HATE that. It takes away 99% of the reason to even play SP (Stages, characters >>>>>>> Outro/Intro) :/
Character unlocks are terrible and need to die in a fire. It's not like I'm really playing Brawl anymore anyway, but had my save file ever been deleted I would have stopped playing it a lot sooner. Being able to access the full game should not be a chore.
 
It is a pretty bad name, though. Definitely conveys the "no effort" feeling a lot of people seem to have about it.


Character unlocks are terrible and need to die in a fire. It's not like I'm really playing Brawl anymore anyway, but had my save file ever been deleted I would have stopped playing it a lot sooner. Being able to access the full game should not be a chore.

No, being able to access everything right from the start needs to die in a fire. Include a cheat code for those people who can't be bothered playing single player, but don't rob us of the only reason to start any single player mode at all...
 
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