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Nov 7, 2023 · Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 takes the groundwork set in the original and actually adds quality and more originality to the mix. ... a true Super Smash Bros. rival By DeAngelo Epps November 7 ...
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- Game Mill
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Nov 7, 2023 · Bros rival, but nevertheless it seems nearly everyone is in agreement that All-Star Brawl 2 is an improvement on the original. It's still early days in terms of a Metacritic score, but it looks like it could settle around the upper 70s or even somewhere in the 80s when all's said and done, which feels like a big success for publisher GameMill Entertainment.
- Editor
Nov 15, 2023 · Just over two years after the first game released, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 has burst onto the scene with new fighters, a new single-player story, and reworked mechanics and movesets. All ...
- Hey now, you’re an All-Star.
- What we said about Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
- Score: 7
- What's your favorite Nicktoon?
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Screenshots
- Charlie's Favorite Platform Fighters
- Verdict
- More Reviews by Charlie Wacholz
- IGN Recommends
By Charlie Wacholz
Updated: Nov 7, 2023 4:57 pm
Posted: Nov 7, 2023 3:00 pm
It’s nothing short of a miracle that a sequel as well-made as Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 managed to arrive just two years after the original. Developer Fair Play Labs’ second attempt at a Nickelodeon-based platform fighter is a massive leap forward from the first, with a more polished feel, more vibrant characters, and the coup de grace: its envelope-pushing Slime meter. It took me a minute to get comfortable with its slightly buffered movement and wildly expressive Slime mechanics, but after a handful of late nights with friends – both online and off – I couldn’t put it down. While comparisons to the Super Smash Bros. series can cast an obnoxious shadow over this genre, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the only other platform-fighting sequel to improve, rework, and refine what came before it to this impressive degree was the legendary Super Smash Bros. Melee itself.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a very respectable platform fighter that serves as a fun, though far less polished and less fully featured alternative to its competition. The characters and stages feel soulless without the iconic Nickelodeon voice acting and music of its source shows, but All-Star Brawl lands its hits where it matters the most: in th...
Read the full Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl review.
It’s incredible, then, that All-Star Brawl 2 takes nearly every frustration and complaint I had with the first one and inverts them. Combos are deeper and more fleshed out thanks to multiple revamped mechanics, hits feel more substantial and satisfying thanks to beefed up sound design and improved animations, and movement strikes a much better balance between speed and precision. And perhaps most exciting of all, its excellent cast of characters shine thanks to their updated, more cartoony models and well-acted voice lines delivered by many of their original voice actors.
Every animation cleverly references something from the cartoons.
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SpongeBob Squarepants
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Hey, Arnold!
Invader Zim
Other (leave a comment below!
That cast hasn’t come without sacrifices, though. Not only have a handful of favorites from the previous game been cut, including CatDog and Toph Beifong, but it’s a little weird to see main characters from their own series not show up. Grandma Gertie and Gerald from Hey, Arnold! are playable, for example, but Arnold himself is nowhere to be seen. The same goes for Reptar standing in for any of the Rugrats. While I can understand why that might frustrate some, these choosier omissions leave room for All-Star Brawl 2’s cast to have more diverse playstyles. Reptar is one of the game’s few heavy characters, and both Grandma Gertie and Gerald’s movesets bring a lot of distinct, cool flair to the cast in a way that feels worth the trade-off.
While new characters may get the spotlight, even the returning cast brings something fresh and new to the brawl. Fair Play Labs has fully rebuilt every aspect of this sequel, so no character is the same as they were in the previous game. This huge rework may sound like overkill, but it’s a necessary step in making every fighter work with the new Slime mechanic, All-Star Brawl 2’s greatest innovation.
The Slime mechanic is versatile, easy to manage, and well-balanced.
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I cannot overstate how much style and finesse Slime adds to this game. With just a single button press and a sufficiently filled Slime meter, you can add extra power to any of your special moves, boost your air dodge, cancel out of freefall after using your recovery, boost that recovery further, cancel out of any move’s ending animations, and even escape enemy combos. Versatile, easy to manage, and well-balanced, Slime is an effective tool no matter what character you’re playing or how good you are at All-Star Brawl 2.
Slime also grants characters the ability to do a beefy ultimate attack, complete with goofy mini-cutscenes like what you might expect from a Final Smash. Cool as they are, these cutscenes do sometimes pierce the veil of All-Star Brawl 2’s otherwise strong art style. Maybe it’s the PC I’m playing on, but models and animations seem to take a dip in quality during some of these Slime attacks compared to normal gameplay. It’s not present across the board, but Aang’s super, for example, brings his model close enough to cover a good chunk of the screen. At that scale, it has a pixelated, grainy look that comes off especially rough compared to when he’s airbending across the stage. It looks like the models used for fighting are the same ones that appear in these cutscenes, but some of them don’t seem like they were designed to be seen that up-close and personal.
I've been playing platform fighters for roughly 18 years now, and competing in Smash tournaments since I was 15. Needless to say, I'm very passionate about this genre and have spent thousands of hours edge guarding, spiking, and wavedashing.
This is where All-Star Brawl 2 takes the most direct cues from Smash Bros., incorporating themed battles and events based on the characters and stages available. Each run does a good job of rotating between different game modes to keep you on your toes and prevent even highly experienced platform-fighting fans from floating through its fights. You’ll encounter platforming challenges, fights with teams of minions, and bouts against mind-controlled members of the cast. After completing enough levels, passing through the occasional shop or upgrade area along the way (each with special guests like Hugh Neutron, Powdered Toast Man, or the cabbage vendor from Avatar), you’ll take on a boss fight against an iconic villain like Shredder or The Flying Dutchman.
The campaign is no Hades, but it is a servicable roguelite mode.
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Like most of the other challenges found in its Campaign mode, boss fights aren’t anything too novel compared to what we’ve seen in similar games, but they’re still fun. And the upgrade systems and randomly generated nature of it help to keep things fresher than they would be otherwise. Unfortunately, this is no Hades or Slay The Spire. Running through a series of diverse challenges that put your mastery of different gameplay elements and mechanics to the test makes for a completely serviceable roguelite, but there isn’t much compelling beyond what’s already fun about All-Star Brawl 2 elsewhere. I never felt the gambling sensation that comes from balancing risk against reward in a good roguelike, where making a desperate play to get ahead might just cut a good run short. Nor did I ever get that nagging “one more time” feeling compelling me to pick away at the itchy scab left by a run gone wrong.
Other single-player options include an Arcade mode, which uses the same challenge level types found in the Campaign and mashes them up with specially-themed fights, like teaming up with SpongeBob to fight Plankton. It’s a big improvement on the original All-Star Brawl’s much shorter, less curated Arcade Mode – I just wish it had more going on to distinguish it from the very comparable Campaign mode.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 finally lives up to its name, standing as an all-star platform fighter. Not only is it a fantastic sequel that takes criticisms of the first game to heart and sends them to the blast zone, it expands way beyond those adjustments. Decent (if samey) single-player options with a good amount of challenge, a training mode cl...
Mode (s) Single-player, multiplayer. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a 2023 crossover fighting game developed by Fair Play Labs and published by GameMill Entertainment. It is the sequel to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021) and part of the Nickelodeon Super Brawl series. The game was released on November 7, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation ...
Nov 7, 2023 · Super Smash Bros. Ultimate casts such a gigantic shadow that still makes all competitors seem small, but Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is an excellent alternative that deserves to delight an ...
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Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a competitive fighting game that has the potential to become the Super Smash Bros. of all platforms. While Super Smash Bros. might be limited to only Nintendo, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is here to satisfy the melee brawler craving of players on all platforms with its solid fighting mechanics, beautiful locations, an amazing character selection, and high bits ...
