The end of MultiVersuslives at a weird intersection of ‘completely surprising’ and ‘everybody saw this coming’. On one hand, it’s a video game built around a company with some of the most valuable intellectual property in the history of media. On the other hand,making the game enjoyable seemed kind of secondary to the first part.
Actually, that’s not fair.MultiVersuswas actually pretty fun. But getting to that fun involved swimming throughconfusing microtransactions and virtual currencyand every gaming element that was demanded by stockholders on a quarterly call. Not to mention the fact MultiVersus outrightdisappeared for a while like a dad that went out for a pack of cigarettes and just didn’t come back.
The Bittersweet Existence Of MultiVersus
There’s something a bit bittersweet to me about MultiVersus. There were clearly people working on the game who loved the characters and coming up with interesting ways to play them.Tom & Jerry, for example, were surprisingly fun and loyalto their whole “two characters who hate each other” shtick.
Behind all the timed content and paywalled characters and ever-changing release status,there was a pretty good game in there that could’ve done something interesting. Batman fighting LeBron James is weird, butthat’ll all just happen in Fortnite now anyway. It’s not like customers are turned off by IPs converging. That ain’t what went wrong.
But, in a way, the end of MultiVersus makes me miss the other big swing (and miss) IP mashup fighting game: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. I know it’s been thirteen years, but I think about that game at least once a month. Not because it was a particularly good game. Don’t get me wrong, it was… fine. It was alright.
It wasn’t the first game to try its hand at cloningSmash Bros.but it definitely felt like the biggest attempt at another ‘all the characters we own are here to fight!’ To be clear, I’m excludingCapcomfrom this since both MultiVersus and PlayStation All-Stars were trying to eatNintendo’s lunch here.
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Walked So MultiVersus Could… Also Walk
That’s not important. The important part is that, like MultiVersus, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was overtly trying to be Smash Bros.. It was almost comical for both. One of the wildest tricks that Super Smash Bros. is able to pull off is making it seem oddly natural for all these weirdo characters to be fighting each other.
They’re obviously from different series, they obviously have different looks, but it doesn’t feel wrong in the flow of the game for them to be in the same space. Link hitting Solid Snake with a Poke Ball is normal. You don’t think about it because, as much as the characters call attention to themselves, they’re all designed to appear together.
MultiVersus and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, however… I dunno. There’s a little too much winking at the camera. It’s funny that Smash Bros. lets you play so many different characters from different IP. But that’s never the big focus. The game knows you know it’s goofy and leaves it at that. Simon Belmont and the dog from Duck Hunt get the same amount of gravitas.
MultiVersus and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, however, almost carried this weird embarrassment. A kind of theme park-y ‘Isn’t this wild?!’ element. ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have Arya Stark fight Scooby Doo?’ is an easy question to answer ‘yes’ to. The harder gameplay question to answer is ‘Why?’ There’s more shoehorning and ‘Be sure we get this one in for the convention audience! They’ll love it!’
PlayStation Needs Its Magic Back
So why does this make me miss PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale? Well, because I feel like it fell into many of the same problems as MultiVersus. At least, it did 13 years ago. AfterAstro Bot, there’s now the sense that Sony has a better handle on how to make its IPs interact and punch each other.
In 2012, on thePlayStation 3, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale felt a bit weird and out of place. There was more than enough good PlayStation IP, but the game still felt like it was scraping around the entire Sony universe to find some decent characters to fight each other. I’ve got nothing against Fat Princess, but I’m glad they have a few more top line franchises to choose from now.
MultiVersus seems to be shuttering for two reasons. One: people are tired of live-service games with confusing marketplaces, and they’re especially over live-service games that disappear for a year and then come back. Two: a crossover fighting game needs to have as much confidence in the ‘fighting game’ part as it does in the ‘crossover’ part. In my flawed, unjustified opinion PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale struggled for the second reason. It was fun second, an IP showcase first.
But it doesn’t have to be anymore. Again,Astro Bot has shown us that Sony is stepping up on the IPs. Whether or not you enjoyed the nostalgia bath of those characters, you have to admit that there’s more pride in the history present than a simple need for that history to be acknowledged.
Sony is past the stage of hopefully asking us to think their series are cool and established; its series are now just cool and established. So maybe that’s a chance to make a new PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. One that’s built with the same smooth confidence and joy in the console’s history like Smash Bros..
Do I think it would be better than Smash Bros.? Not really. But I don’t make it a habit of thinking that every game I buy is going to become the greatest game of all time. If I did, I wouldn’t have spent my own money on MultiVersus and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. All I want is something that gives the same nostalgia of Astro Bot with the same deep fighting game nuance of Smash Bros.. Is that too much to ask? Probably. But it would be nice.
