Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Hands-On Preview

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl arrived in 2021 as a capable but ultimately disappointing alternative to prominent platform fighters such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Its concept was appealing: closely follow the Smash Bros. formula while swapping gaming legends for some of Nickelodeon’s best-known characters from multiple generations. However, the release version fell short of the high expectations set by Nintendo’s genre-leading series. Post-launch updates and DLC moved the game nearer to what fans wanted, but the sizeable gap remained. With Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, developers Ludosity and Fair Play Labs have applied the lessons from the original in an attempt to deliver the Nickelodeon crossover fighter players had been waiting for.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 roster and character changes

That overhaul starts with its fighters. Every character in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 has been reworked, remodelled or rebuilt entirely compared with the first game. Alongside 14 returning characters, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 introduces 11 newcomers, including The Angry Beavers, Donatello, Raphael, Plankton, Squidward and Jimmy Neutron. The full roster has considerably more variety in how its characters play than before, pushing All-Star Brawl 2 closer to the title that plainly inspired it.

As well as having additional special moves at their disposal, fighters are more clearly differentiated, whether through Raphael’s agility or Jimmy Neutron’s ability to summon his robot dog, Goddard, and switch control between them. Zim, another character able to call in assistance, can summon Gir, who copies Zim’s attacks. The most impressive addition in this area may be The Angry Beavers, who are presented as a single fighter but offer more complex mechanics than that suggests. Their tag-focused systems recall games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, allowing players to bring in the other Beaver as an assist. It goes further, however, since players can freely switch which Angry Beaver they control in order to use their individual movesets. During my hands-on session, I gained a strong sense of the available strategies, though I was clearly only beginning to explore them.

Competitive but accessible gameplay

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2’s gameplay is designed to be both competitive and approachable. Simplified wave-dashing, automatic L-cancelling, revised analogue movement, and a detailed training mode featuring hitboxes, hurtboxes and trajectory-data tools should appeal to dedicated players, while there is also plenty for those playing at a more casual level. Ludosity and Fair Play Labs wanted players to be able to express their intended actions without requiring excessive difficulty or technical skill.

The new meter system is one way it achieves that, drawing heavily from Guilty Gear. Players fill their Slime Meter one segment at a time, up to a maximum of three. Spending one bar lets you enhance a special move with extra force or use a Slime Cancel to exit any attack; both options are straightforward to perform and should be highly valuable in competitive play. Two bars can be used for a Slime Burst, equivalent to a Combo Breaker. A full Slime Meter, meanwhile, enables a character-specific Super for three bars, complete with a brief cinematic. Although these moves are powerful, they have been balanced for competitive play rather than designed as one-hit K.O.s, though they will K.O. target(s) if their damage is sufficiently high.

Single-player modes and fully voiced characters

These systems extend across every aspect of the core multiplayer experience, which supports up to four players, but the expanded single-player offering is another major addition this time. Campaign is a roguelite mode built around node-based challenges featuring various headline and minion characters under different conditions. As you progress, you unlock power-ups and other bonuses, with some carrying over to later runs. I enjoyed the creativity on display in this mode, and it gave me confidence that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 will be more enjoyable immediately. Beyond Campaign, players can tackle a standard Arcade mode, several minigames, or the demanding Boss Rush, which pits them against every extravagant boss encounter from the single-player campaign.

These updates join other improvements made to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl after launch, including the heavily requested voice-acting update added to the first game; in All-Star Brawl 2, every character is now fully voiced. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. Its characters feel far more distinct than they did previously, while Campaign adds some appealing features that I can imagine returning to repeatedly.

Although no platform fighter is likely to come close to Super Smash Bros. in the foreseeable future, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 appears much better placed than its predecessor to establish its own niche within the genre. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is due to launch on 7 November for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.