This seems familiar…
Featuring a roster of animal warriors and the simple yet deep gameplay expected from the ring-out character battling genre, Angry Mob Games looks to fill the Smash sized hole in the Nintendo Switch lineup with their new release Brawlout. While fans of Nintendo’s seminal brawler may come looking for a way to stave off their hunger for a new entry in the Smash Bros series, this grind heavy and feature barren simplified offering may only leave them craving the real thing.
Games like this live and die by their roster of characters, and Brawlout is a mixed bag. The game is so similar to Super Smash Bros it’s hard for me not to mention that game a lot in this review, and as should be expected these characters will not inspire any instant connection or nostalgia like Nintendo’s roster, but they are mostly serviceable. The character designs for the 8 starting characters range from wacky (pro-wrestling frog with four arms) to kind of lame (magic desert cat) but most importantly all stand out pretty well as visually distinct, which is important in this type of fighter. I haven’t noticed any real balance issues with the main characters in the game, although the guest characters (Hyper Light Drifter and Juan from Guacamelee) seem a little overpowered to me.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Switch (reviewed), PC, XB1, PS4
The game features your standard single and multiplayer modes, but no mini-games or over-the-top customization like you might want. Online multiplayer was a real bust for me. I had substantial trouble getting into a game in the first place, and when I did the lag was atrocious. I’d recommend sticking to local multiplayer against your friends instead, at least in the interim until the game has the opportunity to be patched.
Once the match begins you’ll notice immediately how similar to Smash it is. The objective here is to wear out your opponent until you can knock them out of the stage area. Two attack buttons, a standard and a special, and directional inputs to determine which attack to use will put veteran players quickly in control. Two strange and surprising omissions however are the block and grab commands. I can understand the strategy behind limiting grab to a specific set of characters, but eliminating block necessitates a very offense heavy approach to each match. Some players may welcome this change, as it does speed things up a bit, but I found it to be an unnecessary and overly limiting decision.
Unfortunately everything around the visual style and in-match gameplay really lets down the whole package. The matches are very bare bones affairs, missing a lot of the fun and excitement that power-up heavy matches in Super Smash Bros have to offer. Only three stages are available to begin with the rest hidden behind unlocks, which brings us to the single worst thing about Brawlout – this game is a grind fest. Similar in some ways to a mobile free-to-play game, you’ll have to balance two types of currency and a loot-box system to get new levels and characters. You’ll also need to level up each character by repeatedly playing matches with them to unlock everything. Even wins build currency slowly, so expect to play a lot of matches before you can unlock new characters and other cosmetic items. This may be worth if it the new characters seemed exciting or different, but they all appear to be visually reskinned versions of existing characters. This is a lame payoff for the considerable amount of work required to unlock them.
If you’re a Nintendo fan desperate for a Smash clone to pass the time you may have some fun with Brawlout. Just be prepared to deal with the grind and have a couple local friends that you can battle with, but If you go into the game expecting it to live up to Nintendo’s multi-franchise powerhouse though you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.