Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale coming Holiday 2012

Hello Everyone,

[Gameplay Video Inside]
Rumors have been circling for weeks, if not months, about Sony's upcoming take on the classic Smash Brothers series. The game, titled Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (PASBR? PBR? They should have a better acronym), is set to launch Holiday of this year and contains some of the iconic Playstation characters. The only confirmed characters so far are as follows: Fat Princess, Parappa the Rapper, Sly Cooper, Sweet Tooth, Colonel Radec, and Kratos. There will be plenty more first party fighters along with a few third party as well when the game finally launches. There will also be full four player splitscreen along with online battles and a story mode.

Every character will have a unique playing style that fits inline with their strengths and weaknesses. Sly Cooper will be very fast in comparison to other characters and rely heavily on close range attacks while Colonel Radec will be focused on using ranged attacks with Helghan military equipment. There will be plenty of diversity between characters that hopefully leads towards a solid system of check and balances.

Not only are the characters play styles diverse, but also is the amount of attacks available at their disposal. Circle, triangle, square in conjunction with the left sticks direction will house your normal attacks while the right stick along with R2 will power your grab and special attacks (Sweet Tooth's transformation in the video below). There seems to be more depth than its Nintendo counterpart that will keep veterans working to learn the best set of moves while still being accessible to newcomers.

The stages in Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (I think I might just go with PBR to confuse people), while not as charming in the platform element as Smash Bros, have fantastic set pieces. The game works to incorporate two games into every stage. The stage shown below features Hades from God of War while Patapon can be seen chugging along in the background. The two stages shown, the previous stage along with a Buzz! and Little Big Planet crossover, all feature environment challenges. The Hades level incorporates Hades himself into the level. Players must worry about fighting off each other along with dodging Hades' fists. The Buzz! level has quick quizzes aimed to keep the battle fresh.

Hades Level

While Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale may be inspired by Smash Bros, it is clear that it is shaping up to be a very solid game that brings the best of Smash to the Playstation 3. Let us know what you think of the game in the comment section below.

Cheers,

Jon