Hands on with Multi-Versus – Preview
Ever since Super Smash Bros burst on to the gaming scene way back on the Nintendo 64, there have been countless attempts by other companies to make their own fighter. PlayStation tried it once and gave up, Ubisoft have their Brawlhalla, which is still going strong and even Nickelodeon have gotten into the fight a few times, but now comes WB Games and Multi-Versus. The game recently went through a technical alpha test and they invited us to take part, so we did and here is what we thought.
There is very little chance you can see any footage of the game in action and not think Smash Bros, it has the same basic moves, stage layouts and of course, characters from across multiple IP. Much like the games I mentioned above, there is a good reason for this type of fighter, it is easy to get into for players of all skill level, so if you are new to the genre, you can still have a blast and if there is one thing I took away from my time with the game, it was that I had fun with it. The game was very careful in providing a tutorial, which as someone who has played a lot of Super Smash Bros games over the years, felt redundant, but there were some nice additions mixed in there. The basics are you have two attacks, one standard and one heavy, you can jump and dodge, see basic. Where the fun comes in, is when the modifiers, basically holding the movement stick in any direction and pressing one button will cause something different to happen, ie a standard attack becomes a side attack.
With the tutorial done and Wonder Woman unlocked, it was time to head into battle and the game offered a few modes, 1v1, 2v2 or free for all and while I was keen to see how chaotic a free for all matches would be, I opted for the 1v1 at first, to give myself some time to adapt to the controls. For the first few rounds, I went with Norville Rogers, who is better known as Shaggy, which was interesting. The game defines him as a brawler, as in someone able to get in and attack and deal out some damage, they are the all-rounder of the game, at least my time indicates that. The game was set up to be best of 2 rounds and with that, the fight was on, but even though I had years of Smash Bros and other associated games under my belt, there was still a learning curve here. Thankfully the game is quite forgiving on my inability to understand the moves and while winning the first round, I lost the second, but took out the tie-breaker for the overall win.
More matches went just as similarly, there were some chaotic moments and some simple ones and swapping to characters like Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn, provided enough difference, to keep things fresh. As the game is going to be free-to-play when it does release, there was a lot of levelling and unlocking of things, which felt weird, levelling up characters especially. The game has a system where you can assign perks to characters, giving them additional buffs that help them out in a fight, some can reflect some damage, others can let you slow down opponents attack speed and so on. The issue with the perks is that they are character specific, at least for now, so if you play only as Batman and have him at a high level and then say swap to Superman, you have to level up and unlock perks all over again, which removes any reason to swap characters.
Additionally, as I was levelling up the characters and earning gold by completing objectives, there was also a season pass levelling up as well, with a free tier and a premium tier. While most of the items appear to be cosmetic, things like emotes and such, the game also offers alternate skins for characters, it is what allows you to have Harley Quinn in her various outfits from across her appearance.
While this is an alpha and things are going to change, the games visuals were interesting, each character, at least the ones I had seen before, looked like you might expect them too. This is helped along by the fact that Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have had hundreds of designs over the years, so while the new looks at different, they still fit within the world of the game. This means that they can stand along side Jake the Dog and not look too out of place, until Jake stretches and breaks the illusion. One thing that is a little weird and their may be a setting to turn it off, is the team colouring of characters, in 2v2 fights it made some sense, but in 1v1 it just was weird, especially as it highlighted characters so much, it removed any sense of their fantastic design.
MultiVersus is an interesting game, it is not doing anything to different from other games in the genre, but what it is offering is some more depth. Being able to tether yourself to other character to save them in battles, honestly changes up the game like you wouldn’t believe. The game is still very much in development, but so far it is one of the best Smash Bros style fighters around and things can only get better.
The game is set to launch into an Open Beta in July, exact timings are not yet known, but when the game is released in full, it will land on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
