Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is now out in the world (the same day as the Smash Bros Ultimate Sora announcement, funnily enough) for people to experience and try out all their favorite Nickelodeon characters from across the years. And, there’s no denying it, the game has a lot in common with other platform brawlers such as Brawlhalla or the Super Smash Bros series. It also shares quite a lot of features with Slap City, though that makes a lot of sense, given that Ludosity made both that game and this one.
And, while the budget of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl obviously wasn’t huge, the dev team still did a fantastic job making a game this good with what they had. That said, there are still some early flaws people are noticing, both design-wise and mechanically, so let’s go over some of them now.
6 Move-Spam Punishments
First things first, let’s be real, this game is very mashy. Moves come out so quickly and finish even faster, meaning there are a lot of moments in a match where both players will be spamming an input over and over hoping it hits.
And, nowhere is this more annoying than with projectile spamming. Even though they can be reflected or caught, projectile spam is still a very real issue. Smash “fixed” this by including a “Staling” system where moves would become more “stale” when they were used a bunch in a single match, which decreased some useful aspects of them (cast time, damage, etc…).
NASB doesn’t need to use that exact same solution, they’re two completely separate games, but with stuff like Reptar’s “Flame Breath” or Michelangelo’s “Wanna Pizza This?” Special, the spamming of moves with no consequence does seem to be a relatively constant complaint of the game so far.
5 More Control & Keybind Options
The developers of NASB have been so incredibly vocal both in interviews and on their Discord server for the game. They’ve answered so many fan questions and made it clear that they care about this game, long-term. And, one of the most commonly occurring questions has to do with “Tap-Jump”, and this has been answered by Ludosity many times by now. Basically, because NASB uses a digital input system, rather than an analog one, Tap-Jump isn’t currently possible to add, but they are looking for a workaround.
That said, that are still other control complaints that haven’t been addressed yet, such as not being able to “lock” a control scheme to a specific character slot or name, as well as not being able to set multiple inputs for one action, such as having both triggers function as the “Defend” input and so on. The control options in NASB, at least this early on, leave a lot to be desired, but this will likely get fixed, given enough time.
4 General Animation Clean-Up & Less Recycled Animations
This next fix, if it happens at all, is still a long way off. Once again, the game just came out, and the devs are probably having a hard time just trying to make sure every platform is running well in-between future DLC characters getting datamined. But, when they get the choice, budget, or the time, cleaning up the animations for some characters and lessening the recycling of certain moves or animations would do a lot to make this game feel more “polished”.
To better explain this, a good number of the characters in NASB have moves that are the exact same in both the air and on the ground, with very slight changes to the animation (Ren & Stimpy’s "Wild Swing" and "Aerial Wild Swing", for example).
If this were to be fixed, players are hoping that these two animations would have more differences, or would be completely different animations altogether. On top of that, there are some characters (again, Ren & Stimpy) who have a lot of very “disjointed” animations, without much, if any, transition between them.
3 That “Sports Mode” In General
For anyone familiar with Ludosity’s previous work, Slap City, both it and NASB have a “Sports” mode in the “Battle” tab where players can use the characters to score goals on each other, competing for the highest score rather than the most KOs.
And, in Slap City, it was janky but pretty fun overall as there was a slight learning curve. But, in All-Star Brawl, it just doesn’t work very well, at least on release. The star-shaped floating goals in NASB compared to the actual goals in Slap City are so much harder to score into, and it’s way too difficult to accurately aim the ball with any attacks, especially since grabbing the ball is impossible.
It’s a very neat idea for a mode, and with some fine-tuning, it can be a great alternative once the casual free-for-alls start to get stale, but as it is right now, it’s mostly being ignored by the player base.
2 More Visual Clarity On Moves
This is another fix that would need quite a lot of work to actually address, but it is something that would greatly improve the core gameplay overall. As was previously stated, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is incredibly fast-paced. Frankly, the comparisons between it and Super Smash Bros Melee are pretty fair.
But, because of that speed, character attack animations are lightning-fast, and it’s incredibly difficult to tell the difference between them in a lot of scenarios, especially with the characters with move lists made up of varying punches and kicks (Helga, the Ninja Turtles, or Spongebob). Fixing this is difficult, and there’s no ironclad solution, but fans have come up with few decent ideas:
- Outline the character or “limb” used in the attack with a specifically colored outline, such as red for Strong Attacks, yellow for Light Attacks, and blue for Specials.
- Give everyone the same effect as Helga’s attacks, where her limbs grow in size during her animation, making it a bit clearer which attack is which or what limb is being used.
- Extend all the animations by a frame or two so that players have another quarter-second to deduce what move is coming at them. Likely the least viable solution, since it would require almost an overhaul of the combat system.
- Or, separate attacks more clearly by sound. The game does this in a few instances, and Nigel Thornberry, in particular, has a lot of audio cues, but it isn’t present for every character or attack type.
1 Adding VA's Somewhere Down The Line
It feels odd to play this game with so many iconic Nick characters without any of them talking. None of Spongebob’s iconic annoying laughs, Invader Zim’s “greater-than-thou” monologues, or Nigel Thornberry saying “Smashing!”. And, again, the devs have addressed this time and time again as something that has to do with Nickelodeon more than the dev team.
But, hopefully, after seeing the sales of the game, Nickelodeon will drop the dough to implement voice acting in a future patch, because they're certainly not planning on competing with Smash for most DLC characters. Or at the very least, maybe the devs can sneak something in there that makes it possible for fans to mod old voice lines in, though that’s obviously hypothetical.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl was released on October 4, 2021, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.