Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2

Genre: Fighting Game / Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local), 1-12 Competitive Tournament (Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

In 2021, the original Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl was a promising start to a game series that seemed to have the potential to stand toe to toe with Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. franchise. Featuring the same combination of Fighting Game, Platformer, and Party Game elements as Nintendo’s platform brawler, Nickelodeon’s title brought its own roster of legendary characters to battle, and while there was promise, it also felt lacking in various areas.

Two years later in 2023, the series came back with a second installment on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, which seems to seek to address the complaints the first game received, as well as doing a few things all its own.

However, there’s no point in me burying the lead any further here, because if you’ve heard anything about the Nintendo Switch version of the game, it has likely not been good. And here, I will say that it is indeed true – this game’s framerate has been slashed to 30FPS, a framerate it can’t even maintain. The resolution is also apparently pretty low with plenty of aliasing, and there’s plenty of other graphical noise uglying up the game. What’s more, the Nintendo Switch version of the game has absolutely massive loading times, well beyond even what was in the original game.

It’s a real shame too, because in most other respects this game represents a huge leap in presentation over the first game, at least in terms of love and dedication to the source material. Character dialogue makes more sense this time around, and you’ll even get custom voiced conversations between your character and NPCs you encounter in the game’s new Campaign mode, which is absolutely delightful. It’s still missing recognizable music from the source material though, once again just having fairly generic music that mostly fits the game’s disparate themes.

Another major issue this time around is the character roster, which remains the exact same 25 that the first game had if we include paid DLC characters (four this time compared to the first game’s three). What’s more, only 14 characters return from the first game, cutting out characters like Toph, CatDog, Oblina, and both Ninja Turtles, replacing them with the remaining two Ninja Turtles. For fans of these characters, some of whom are the only representation their respective property had in the game, this is truly disappointing. However, players whose favorite character did return will likely find that their chosen character now plays completely differently. While new gameplay mechanics make some change a given, these complete transformations of characters like Korra are sure to frustrate fans of the first game.

That said, this game’s new mechanics definitely bring this closer to what we expect from Super Smash Bros., now giving players a side-special, an on-ground dodge roll, charging melee attacks, and even the equivalent of a final smash move, and it removes the first game’s unique paper-rock-scissors mechanic. Some players may see this as just playing copycat, but All-Star Brawl retains its three-button attack system, and the “slime meter” that powers this game’s take on the final smash works more like meters in most other traditional 2D Fighting Games.

The result of all of this is gameplay that is much more versatile than the first game, and closer to the Smash Bros. series not just mechanically but closer in quality too. Unfortunately, it still has a few issues keeping it from reaching quite those same heights, namely the way characters feel heavy and sluggish, while also being floaty and falling slowly.

However, perhaps the biggest change here has to be to the gameplay modes. This game retains the straightforward battle mode and arcade mode, but adds to it a few minigame modes that seem very similar to Super Smash Bros.’ “hit the targets” and “multi man melee” modes.

However, the massive addition here is the new Campaign mode, which has its own story and plays like a Roguelike where players select paths and unlock other characters to play as while powering up their chosen character. I feel like this game could have done more to make use of the characters you unlock – they don’t really do much if you’re already using a character you like more. However, that complaint aside, this is a great addition that gives the game a lot of single-player replay value.

I suppose before finishing this off, I should mention the online multiplayer, and while I did find a few stragglers to play against online, mostly it was pretty empty, so don’t expect to find much competition there.

In the end, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 does so much right when addressing the issues the original game had and bringing great new features to the table, but unfortunately it feels a lot like one step forward, two steps back, especially on Nintendo Switch. The loss of so many great characters from the first game, the drastic changes to the characters who are still present, and the distracting performance issues and absurdly long loading times on Nintendo Switch make this feel like far less than the triumphant sequel it should have been.

tl;dr – Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a game which, much like its predecessor, combines Fighting Game, Platformer, and Party Game elements much like the Super Smash Bros. series, but featuring Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the Ninja Turtles. This game addresses many of the issues the first game had, and presents exciting new gameplay elements… but at the same time, it doesn’t expand the roster and instead cuts half of the first game’s characters to make room for new ones, drastically changes characters that are still here, and on Nintendo Switch has performance issues and massive loading times. For all this game gets right, it fails in ways that make it really difficult to recommend on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2

Genre: Fighting Game / Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local), 1-12 Competitive Tournament (Online)

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Review:

After the original Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl saw loading times improved so drastically on Nintendo Switch 2 I felt I had to give it a better grade, I had high hopes that Nintendo’s new hybrid game console would rectify the biggest issues that were in the Nintendo Switch version of the sequel.

Before getting to that though, I need to mention that my first time playing this game on Nintendo Switch 2 brought with it a strange flickering problem that made it absolutely unplayable. However, upon restarting the game I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue, and I don’t see others mentioning it online, so I’ll just take it as an odd fluke and move on.

With that out of the way, I’ll start with the loading times, which were absolutely enormous on Nintendo Switch, but have gotten an even more impressive improvement on Nintendo Switch 2 than the first game did. Getting the game to load up the opening logos takes a whopping 1 minute 3 seconds on Nintendo Switch, and only 26 seconds on Nintendo Switch 2. Likewise, loading the game into a match drops the wait from 33 seconds to a mere 14. These are some of the biggest loading time drops I have yet to see on Nintendo Switch 2, and it goes a great deal to making this game more playable.

For the other performance issues, I can say that Nintendo Switch 2 does nothing to improve the game’s low resolution or aliasing, nor does it bring the game above its 30FPS framerate cap. However, it does ensure that the game at least maintains that 30FPS framerate and doesn’t drop beneath it, something that does make this game much better to play, even if it’s still well under the version non-Nintendo platforms received.

While the performance issues on Nintendo Switch ended up making for a worse game than the original on that platform, I think that the improvements here bring it back to roughly on par with the first game on Nintendo Switch 2. It still has the low framerate and resolution compared to other versions of the game, and the roster problems are still a terrible disappointment that’s going to be true for any platform, but the loading times being brought back to reasonable levels here and the framerates made more stable makes this a solid platform Fighting game that’s well worth trying out. Let’s just hope the series sees a third game that finally addresses this game’s lingering problems without introducing new issues.

tl;dr – Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a game which, much like its predecessor, combines Fighting Game, Platformer, and Party Game elements much like the Super Smash Bros. series, but featuring Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the Ninja Turtles. This game addresses many of the issues the first game had, and presents exciting new gameplay elements… but at the same time, it doesn’t expand the roster and instead cuts half of the first game’s characters to make room for new ones, drastically changes characters that are still here, and on Nintendo platforms the framerate is stuck at 30FPS with a fairly low resolution. That said, the framerates are more stable on Nintendo Switch 2, and the massive loading times are severely reduced. The result is a game that, while still flawed, is far more playable here than on the original Nintendo Switch.

Grade: B+

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