Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2

I went in expecting another mid-tier licensed brawler to bounce off of in twenty minutes, and came out having genuinely enjoyed myself for several hours, which is not the usual story with GameMill titles. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a platform fighter in the Smash Bros. mould, but Fair Play Labs has done serious homework since the first game. The revised control scheme separates light attacks, charge attacks, and special attacks onto distinct buttons, which makes combo execution cleaner than you might expect from a game with cartoon frogs on the cover. The big new addition is the Slime Meter, a three-bar resource that you build by landing hits. Spend a bar to amplify a charge attack, cancel out of a move, extend your aerial recovery, or save all three to unleash a character-specific super. SpongeBob's super drops his helpless driving instructor into a pinball version of Bikini Bottom; Zim's leans into his puppet-master fighting style. The supers are goofy and occasionally janky in their animations, but they fit the tone perfectly and add a real strategic layer to fights that would otherwise be approachable chaos. The roguelike campaign is the bigger surprise. Vlad Plasmius has gone on a multiverse mind-control spree, and SpongeBob has to dimension-hop through branching stage layouts, fighting waves of minions and brainwashed Nickelodeon characters to unlock them for future runs. Between bouts, you spend currencies on permanent upgrades at a hub area called the Timeless Stardial. It is not a deep roguelike, and the repetitive enemy waves do wear thin on longer sessions, but the character-to-character banter and fan-service callbacks in the writing give it more warmth than the thin plot deserves. The whole thing is also fully voice-acted from launch, with many original cast members returning, including Tom Kenny as SpongeBob, which does a lot to sell the production as a real product rather than a quick cash-in. The roster of 25 base fighters is where opinions split. Every returning character has been heavily reworked, to the point where SpongeBob shares almost none of his old moveset. Reptar is a heavy tank who punishes being knocked off-stage, Nigel Thornberry is a quick nimble brawler, and the Angry Beavers switch between themselves mid-fight. New additions like Jimmy Neutron and Squidward were long-requested, and Garfield even has his own lasagna sub-meter. The downside: several fan-favourite fighters from the first game, including CatDog, Oblina, and Sandy Cheeks, were cut, and some roster choices feel like they prioritised novelty over crowd-pleasing. Four additional characters were released as paid DLC post-launch, which softens the sting somewhat but not entirely. The PC version holds up well. Netcode is reportedly solid and the Steam reviews land at a mixed-but-leaning-positive 76 percent, with most criticism aimed at the thin solo content rather than the core fighting. Online player counts are low enough that finding a random match can be a wait, so treat this primarily as a local couch game or something you run with friends over voice chat. If you are coming in purely as a solo player, the roguelike campaign is good for a few evenings but will not carry you through weeks of play the way a deeper single-player mode might. For the audience this is clearly designed for, which is Nickelodeon fans who want a competent platform fighter with zero barrier to entry, it delivers. It does not threaten Smash Ultimate's throne, and anyone hunting for tournament-grade depth will find it thin. But the Slime Meter genuinely adds interesting decisions to every match, the presentation is a clear step up from its predecessor, and the couch multiplayer is legitimately fun even for non-fans of the IP.

Alex · Scout Team

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