Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2

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A fun and solid brawler in an often frustrating package

Fast Facts

First Impressions

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is precisely what it promised to be. A competent and fun smash bros clone available on most platforms and with a thick, colourful, and slimy coat of Nick paint. It’s fun to play and has an interesting campaign mode that I’m enjoying, along with the standard arcade beat ’em up, online, and offline multiplayer modes. It looks pretty, though not all of the characters have translated to 3D as well as others. There’s some good variety, but after my first few hours, I struggled for direction. The campaign mode seemed to be the best way to unlock the full roster, but the almost ‘roguelike’ gameplay design, while fun in and of itself, really was drip-feeding me the characters I wanted, sometimes offering me Hey Arnold’s Grandma instead of the Ren & Stimpy’s and Donatello’s that I was looking for. 

How does it play?

The gameplay is a competent but pretty by-the-book brawler experience. The basic level designs will be familiar to anyone who has picked up games like Brawllhalla, or Super Smash Bros. Game modes include a Single Player Arcade experience and online multiplayer options. 

A serviceable Campaign mode tried to mix things up a little from a regular arcade pass-through. There are standard versus fights and matches that ask players to take on multiple enemies in waves and some 2D platformer-style missions—not forgetting the challenges that ask players to pop bubbles or smash robots within a time limit. All this is spaced out nicely with little storefront ‘missions’ where characters act like vendors, offering the players opportunities to modify their characters with temporary buffs and debuffs. It all adds to a fun little mode that I enjoyed. It was almost Rogue-like in nature. Every ‘run’ had me adding perks and skills to Spingebob SquarePants or Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, feeling the moment of a run only to lose out at a boss battle or opponent. Then you go again! It was fun, but I found a lack of variety overall, which had me running out of enjoyment once I’d unlocked the whole roster. 

Giving a game like this the thumbs down for ‘lack of variety’ in its gameplay feels a little unfair. It’s a brawler. You brawl. That’s the point. But even with this caveat, the roster fell thin, though it is likely to expand down the line with DLC, and the Deja Vu settled in worryingly early during my time with the game. 

How does it look?

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 looks pretty good. For the most part, it does a great job of capturing all of the characters, playable or not, pretty well. It’s always felt a little to me the first time I see a 2D character pulled into 3D, and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is no exception. SpongeBob looks weird in 3D. I can’t get past it. So do REN and Stimpy. With TMNT Mutant Mayhem not long out of cinemas, that aesthetic would have been ideal, but instead, there’s a 3D approximation of that traditional 2D look. I’m not a fan of it personally, but they’ve done a much better job translating the characters here in this game. 

The levels, however, look great. Largely because they can play around with perspectives, 2D vs 3D designs and parallaxing enough that they always retain the right feel even when they demand depth so I was impressed in that regard. 

All things considered, I would always prefer a more stylised approach, playing around with styles and aesthetics, particularly considering the variety on hand. The characters all feel like they belong on the screen together, but in a multiverse crash of cartoons from across the Nickelodeon brand, I don’t believe that’s necessarily a good thing. It gets the job done through. 

How does it sound?

The sound design is solid throughout. Voice work feels authentic with all the characters, to my ear, sounding like accurate representations of their characters. The music does a good job carrying the energy, and little audio cues hit home during gameplay, indicating transitions in the levels or preparing me for gameplay elements nicely. It’s always fun hearing your favourite characters voiced in a game like this always feels like a treat. It shouldn’t. But far too often, these kinds of titles revert to text boxes and little barks instead of putting the effort into fully voice characters, so I appreciated it. 

How does it feel?

Narratively, there’s not a whole lot to discuss. The early game sees Patrick Star pulled into a portal. SpongeBob follows multiverse nonsense happening, and a third-party, time-controlling entity encourages you on your way to ‘rescuing’ your other roster members and recruiting them to your team. It’s a bit of a catch-22 with fighters, particularly when they cross brands, characters and IPs over one another. Multiverse is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, so it’s an easy way to justify getting everyone into the fight. I’ll always appreciate an attempt to justify everything that’s going on in a game but in their defence, I’m yet to see a single fighter, outside of a Netherealm game, do a good job on this. 

The game performed well overall. There were some odd little frame drops during loading screens, which may very well be remedied following launch, but in the game, I didn’t feel much of a drop at all while playing on Xbox Series S, Series X and via Xbox Cloud gaming. The latter has just enough unavoidable input lag that I would recommend Online or competitive players from it, but for me, it ran really smoothly. Network conditions may vary of course. 

What’s the Verdict?

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 very nearly gets the job done. It won’t be replacing Super Smash Bros. Anytime soon, but if you grew up on Nickelodeon, you’ll have a few hours of fun with this title. Unfortunately, the fun runs dry with a thin roster (with some curious exclusions) and not enough variety to nail down any sticking power. The core is there, but if getting Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 into a strong position is going to cost recurring DLC prices, then it may be worth giving a miss. 

You can purchase Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 on the Xbox Store