I’ve wandered around the PAX East show floor all day looking for new games to check out and hopefully demo. With the majority of attendees swarmed around the big name companies, it’s always a good thing to look around at some of the smaller booths because you may find a diamond in the rough.
And oh boy, did I find a diamond.
I’m an avid fighting gamer. I love the Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and, of course, the Super Smash Bros. series, but I made it my mission to find a lesser-known fighting game on the floor of Pax East and Brawlhalla from Blue Mammoth Games immediately pulled me in.
Not only was there a sizeable crowd viewing and waiting their turn, the visuals were eye-popping and the fast-paced fighting piqued my interest.
Initially, it reminded me a lot of Smash with the stage layouts and the 2D, cartoony characters but when I finally had my chance to play, it was anything but. First off, there’s no blocking function. Instead, it’s replaced by quick ground and midair dodges that, as Blue Mammoth Game Brand Manager Dan Nichols told me, eliminates the problem of players just running up and grabbing an opponent. With Brawlhalla , you’ll have to carefully time your dodges or else you’ll be punished.
There’s also no “special” attacks or projectiles in Brawlhalla . Each character has light and heavy attacks that you can chain into neat combos. Heavy attacks can be charged in every direction with the meteor smash available.
But as Nichols told me, the big part of Brawlhalla are the weapons. Weapons are crucial in the fighting experience, so much so that when a new weapon is introduced into the game, the meta changes.
So what makes weapons so important? With characters not having projectiles or specials, the weapons make up for it as every character (they’re referred to as Legends) gains special variations of the weapon you pick up. Swords turn into long lances, bows or pistols depending on the Legend. This makes your Legend selection crucial to how you want to play. There’s also the general bombs, mines and the like to get everyone on the same page.
I wish I had more time with the Brawlhalla to really see how each character is different (there are so many Legends), because they all seem unique and fun to play with.
Another interesting aspect of Brawlhalla are the near infinite jumps. Smash players know that every character has only a certain number of jumps to recover and get back on the stage. In Brawlhalla , every character can escape defeat and wall climb back to safety, Mega Man style. This mechanic also leads to some exhilarating and heart stopping mid-air action that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Brawlhalla is definitely a game I can get into. It’s a sleek 2D fighting game with simple mechanics and some unconventional fighting methods that looks like a blast to play with friends. The game is currently only out on Steam but a PS4 version is set for sometime this Summer.
And for the low, low price of free-ninety-nine, every fighting game fan should try Brawlhalla out.
