Instead, it’s clear that the game’s developers went into this project with questions about who these characters are, what makes them unique, and how they’re going to fit into this mad science mashup in the first place. There’s a level of care that went into Multiversus that could have easily been ignored in favor of letting some famous names punch and kick each other while everyone behind the scenes hopes you care enough about Steven Universe to buy a game that he makes an appearance in. I was often surprised by the ways their moves, movements, quips, and looks exemplified the developers’ love and understanding for their source material and other famous works. I found myself wanting to play as new characters just to see how they stood out from the rest of the roster. As we previously discussed, Multiversus even features a version of Shaggy that is somewhere between the original incarnation of the character and the anime fighter that some fans have seen fit to turn him into in recent years. Even heavy hitters like Superman have to pull out their full bag of tricks. Jake from Adventure Time morphs into various forms, while Arya Stark relies on complex movements and “face steals” to overcome most foes. Batman has to rely on his tools and agility during most fights. If you’re able to brush aside the natural problems that arise when you try to put mascots into a fighting game (as well as some of the issues that plague most modern mashups), you’ll find that a surprising amount of care went into making this game’s characters feel distinct and relatively true to some of the things that actually define them (within the context of a fighting game, of course).įor instance, Velma is a support character who uses her deductive reasoning to buff her team and gain advantages. That’s the thing about Multiversus, though. Those kinds of issues come with the territory. Not to mention that you’re always going to have accuracy issues when you’re talking about a fighting game built around the idea that Velma from Scooby-Doo can go toe-to-toe with Wonder Woman. They’re made (or approved) by those who are perfectly fine with jamming famous faces into whatever corners they can technically fit in. Too many mashups are content with ignoring the things that make the characters they feature…well, characters in the first place. The Multiversus team tried to brush aside the issue by saying this was a version of the Iron Giant from a different universe, but that initial concern remains valid. For instance, there was even a recent controversy about the game’s inclusion of the Iron Giant as a playable character despite the fact that part of what made that character so memorable and lovable was his determination to remain a pacifist. To be fair, Multiversus isn’t immune to that problem. The problem is that it’s a lot more difficult to become excited about that novelty when it’s becoming far more common. Some of those projects are better than others, but they’ve all at least partially relied on the “thrill” of seeing established characters share a screen. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and even WB’s own Space Jam: A New Legacy are all recent examples of projects that prominently featured cameos that were actually a big part of their draw. clones over the years (the aforementioned Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is really just the tip of the iceberg), but more of them were based on fatigue towards the fairly recent onslaught of big-budget projects featuring character mashups. A few of my hesitations can be traced back to the fact that we’ve seen so many failed or disappointing Smash Bros. Truth be told, I wasn’t really looking forward to Multiversus. Yet, the thing that has impressed me most about Multiversus is the way its developers have managed to jam so many characters from so many different properties together without turning the whole thing into a dystopian reminder of the fact that WB essentially controls the rights to so much of our nostalgia. The project has a few problems that still need to be solved, but Multiversus looks, sounds, and feels like a proper platform fighter. At the very least, it doesn’t look like we’ve got another Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl situation on our hands. competitor (the alpha only features a handful of fighters and a couple of modes), but the game appears to be on the right track. It’s a little too early to tell if the game can become a legitimate Super Smash Bros. Multiversus (a free-to-play, Super Smash Bros.- like platform fighting game starring famous WB characters) recently began its closed alpha period, and the reactions have been largely positive.
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