Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Review – When Stimpy Met Sandy (PS5)

It would be easy to dismiss Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl as a licensed Super Smash Bros. clone simply looking to cash-in on the popularity of Nintendo’s own prize fighter. While it ultimately is an unapologetic Smash clone, it actually comes away copying the best parts of Smash Bros. mechanics that really make Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl a surprisingly good fighting game. But outside of that core fighter, this licensed brawler doesn’t really have a lot dressing it up to keep things interesting for extended play.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a fun and quick fighting game that gets back to the heart of what made Super Smash Bros. so special 20 years ago. 20 characters from assorted Nickelodeon properties feature a variety of moves, each with their own unique twists that really take advantage of who that character is. Some are meme-worthy, such as the “No, this is Patrick!” telephone slam move from SpongeBob’s best buddy, while others simple take into account the identity of the character, like April O’Neil’s camera flashes. Some characters are light and quick, others feature longer reach, and still more, such as Reptar, are slower powerhouses.

Where other Smash clones, like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, tried to change up the formula, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl follows it almost to a T, and it’s better for it. You’ll wear opponents down, building up a percentage meter until you can successfully send them flying off the edge of the map. Controls take some getting used to, notably with Triangle acting as the jump button to free the up d-pad input to be an attack modifier, but once you’ve played a few matches and the muscle memory kicks in, it becomes much easier. Nickelodeon doesn’t fix what isn’t broken, embracing essentially identical mechanics to a series that has the brawler fighter genre on lockdown. And the online is fantastic, meaning that, at least for the time being, you can find matches quickly and the netcode works great.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Review – A Shell of Nickelodeon

Where Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl really falters is in basically everything else. At its core is a competent brawler/fighter, yet its layered with only a thin veneer of Nickelodeon paint that makes the experience feel cheap. There’s no voice acting for characters with some of the most iconic lines in cartoons. If you were hoping to hear SpongeBob and Avatar Aang banter before squaring off, you’ll end up disappointed. Characters don’t even say one-liners, individual words, or so much as a grunt while battling either. All you get are a couple of text boxes for pre-match speech, quotes which don’t ever actually relate to one another, and standard thwaps and baps for the fighting noises.

And across the game’s 20 stages (one for each character), few actually iconic locations from Nick series are used. Despite having three SpongeBob characters, not a single one of their stages feature notable environments like SpongeBob’s house (or those of his neighbors), the Krusty Krab, or Sandy’s Treehouse. Instead we’re strangely treated to the generic Jellyfish Fields, the Flying Dutchman’s ship, and Glove World (which looks so much like a generic theme park it took a long time to realize it was actually even from SpongeBob).

That’s not even to mention the very obvious lack of complete Nickelodeon representation here. Despite some series getting two or three characters, other major nostalgic franchises are left entirely out. Where are the likes of Doug, Angry Beavers, Rocket Power, Jimmy Neutron, or Fairly OddParents? Even the character choices from which franchises are included are a bit odd. Helga but no Arnold? Three characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but nothing from the aforementioned iconic series that have no representation? I imagine licensing talks for the full roster were something of a challenge, but you can’t really call the game “All-Star Brawl” when all the stars aren’t brawling.

And for a title using a grip of animated characters and licensing its entire identity off of a platform renowned for its animation, there isn’t actually a lot of animation anywhere to be found outside of the fights themselves. Menus are dull and ugly to look at. There’s a nice little character win pose animation that happens at the end of a series of arcade bouts, but for the most part, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl feels crammed into a cheap shell of a throwaway licensed title, which is disappointing considering its relative gameplay competence.

What You See is What You Get

In a fighting game environment where Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has set the bar extremely high for what to expect from other Smash clones, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl just feels like it falls woefully short. Smash Bros. had already exceeded the 20 character roster by 2001’s Melee. It then spent the last two decades and some change perfecting, expanding, and evolving the fighting game brawler franchise, showing that it could be about so much more than just… simple fighting.

The only alternate mode (aside from being able to choose timed or stocks, or just play Arcade, which is stock based) is Sport Ball, which sees players throwing one of a variety of different ball types through star-shaped goals on either side of the arena. It’s a fun enough distraction for a time, but still lands far from the likes of Smash Bro.’s sheer variety of challenges. I normally don’t like to compare games this blatantly, but when you’re title is a literal clone of another, the differences stand out as much more stark.

With Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, there’s nothing useful or interesting to unlock, no alternate character outfits or looks, and if you’ve played a few matches, you’ve more or less experienced the entire game. You’ll be unlocking art pieces and stage music that you can look at and listen to via a menu, but these are small consolations when there’s absolutely nothing to chase for gameplay. There’s not even a loose semblance of a narrative or anything else to tie it all together aside from just “hey, here’s a bunch of Nickelodeon characters hitting each other in the face.” Gameplay is arguably the most important thing, but the package that it all comes in leaves a lot to be desired.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a great Smash clone that painfully underutilizes its Nickelodeon license, to its own detriment. Lacking some of Nick’s biggest characters, franchises, and environments, absolutely no voice lines whatsoever, and all wrapped up in a rather unimpressive package, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a good concept, and one of the best Smash-alikes to come along in the last 20 years. But it really needs a stronger presentation and more thorough use of its namesake license to earn a better foothold as a mainstay character brawler.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl review code provided by publisher. Reviewed on PS5. For more information, please read our Review Policy.