In the following weeks it became more likely that the game was legitimate. In early April SONY sent out a poll that asked if SONY All-Stars: Battle Royale would be a good name. On top of that a domain for All-Stars Battle Royal was registered.
There is now no more question that the game is the real deal, because it was announced on Gametrailers TV. It is being developed by the newly formed studio SuperBot Entertainment. The studio was formed under SONY Santa Monica and Battle Royale will be their first game. Judging by what they're showing it seems that they've gotten off to a solid start.
Now that video of the game has actually been shown there is no denying that this game is a riff on Super Smash Bros. The two games look eerily similar, except for the fact that the character design is a bit less cartoony. Four characters will duke it out on a 2D plane. The gameplay wasn't explained in the videos, but there were a few things that were clear. Each character will have a super bar at the bottom of the screen, you don't die from falling off of a stage, and there will be a timer. It's been stated on multiple websites that the only way to score is to kill enemies with super moves. As of right now this seems fairly unbalanced, because super moves instantly kill anyone they come into contact with. Hopefully this mechanic changes somehow, or at least gets balanced.
Just like Super Smash, All-Stars: Battle Royale is filled with well known SONY characters. Kratos (God of War), Colonel Mael Radec (Killzone), Fat Princess (Fat Princess), Sly Cooper (Sly Cooper), Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal), and Parappa (Parappa the Rapper) were all shown to be playable. When the president of the studio was asked about third party characters he said that third party characters are a huge part of SONY, so we can only guess that the game will feature a whole bunch of third party characters. He also said that they think the game has huge DLC potential, so I think it's safe to expect a whole ton of DLC.
As you'd imagine each character has their own move set. There were four characters continuously beating on each other the whole time, so it was hard to discern any specific moves from what was shown. What was visible were the supers. Every character has three super moves level 1, 2, and 3. When activated the character will start their over the top animation and rain down destruction on their opponents.
SONY franchises are also going to be getting in through the stages. Only a handful of stages were talked about, but some of them were easily recognizable. I noticed things from Ratchet and Clank, God of War, Jak and Daxter, Little Big Planet, Buzz, and Patapon. Every stage will have multiple franchises mashed together. One such example is Little Big Planet and Buzz. It also seems as if stages will have gimmicks. On the Buzz stage Buzz himself will come in every so often to begin a quiz. If the players don't get the answer right they'll be shocked.
While this does have a very Super Smash vibe around it, it looks different enough to stand on its own two feet. For starters it seems that they're trying to make it like a fighting game. They were stressing that avid fighting game players were hand picked to be on the development team. To be honest I'm surprised that it took SONY this long to make it. Now that the game is known you can bet that they'll be showing more of it off at E3.
As excited for the game as I am, that doesn't rule out all worry. Like I stated above the scoring mechanic seems very unbalanced. It's clear that some super moves are stronger than others. On that same note it almost makes the fight entirely about gaining meter to instantly kill everyone else. However, I have faith that SuperBot will overcome this and show us an entertaining game.
The President of SuperBot said that we can expect the game to be released this coming holiday, so expect news to trickle out until then.
Update: This video was posted on the SONY blog for your viewing pleasure.
-Manny
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