Quick Look: Destruction AllStars

Nice ol' fashion Jeff and Alex quick look... love it

I get the vibe of this game seems like it trying too hard to me.

The core gameplay of this thing is super fun. I'm curious how they expand on it, and if they make the levels feel more different.

I'll just keep mentioning that it needs a Twisted Metal 2 soundtrack in every comment section, and that I'm available for some mid-90's wailing guitars.

And feedback to GB, the 3 Quick Looks this week made me realize that their at home tech solutions are on point. These feel super seemless, like they're in the same room. Hopefully once they're back in the office, the ability to do cross-coast stuff stays.

This game seems unfinished to me

Seems really thin.

I'm down with this game, but... I kinda wish this was another Carmageddon.

I thought I would dislike the characters, but they actually are really endearing to me. Shame that I'm having no fun playing the game. I kind of enjoy the feel of the basic driving and running around mechanics. But the structure just does nothing for me. I don't like deathmatch modes already, and the car aspect of this exacerbates the worst aspects of this. I can't tell my enemies apart and they move across the entire map in seconds, so there is no positional thinking going on, just the (kinda thin) moment to moment.

This looks incredibly slight and barebones for what was initially supposed to be a $70 product. They really dodged a bullet on that one. Also for a next-gen destruction derby the "destruction" isn't really all that great. Wreckfest had pretty great looking deformation and in my opinion a huge part of the fun in these types of games is seeing how badly you can bang up your car. Back in 1998 I was obsessed with a timed demo of Carmageddon on PC, not because it was some amazing game, but because the cars smashed up real good and then you could hold down a repair button to reverse the damage and see your crunched up vehicle uncrinkle back to pristine condition in real time.

The menu music sounds like a Papa Roach song and I hate it

Seems like a "how many popular trends can we capture in one bottle" kind of game.

People, myself included were concerned about the recent lack of quick looks, so it’s been really cool to see 3 posted in quick succession. QLs might be viewed as vanilla, but they are a pillar of GB content. Keep it going! Good job

I've been playing this game a lot not because I like it but because I wish it were better. You can tell a lot of work went into this game but not in the right areas.

Looks very much like a lowest common denominator game. I can see the dev meeting:

"Hey teens with PS5s like driving cars and smashing things right? They like semi-futuristic punk and those characters from overwatch are popular, oh and parkour is something them kids would call 'woke' right?"

Combine ingredients in a blender, mix well, add a dash of microtransaction then serve.

Is this in anyway related to PlayStation AllStars, Sony's blatant Smash Bros rip-off?

@jasonbell: Yeah, i applaud the animation quality but i find this style super annoying.

It may have been a smash ripoff, but it was a very good smash ripoff that got supported for many years with good content updates during PS3's lifespan.

This seems like a totally fine free to play game, can't imagine paying £70 for it however.

Needs some major Balancement, some characters can straight up one-shot kill and others can be … invisible ..?
choice is pretty clear to me

I cannot explain why in any way, but I am having a very visceral reaction of hatred to everything I am seeing of this game. The aesthetic, the characters, the gameplay... all of it just makes me borderline angry. I can't recall ever having this type of reaction to seeing a game before.

You know this doesn't look bad at all. I'm down for some arcade destruction derby - I fondly remember playing car bomb on GTi+ Club online on PS3. It does need some sort of tag mode, and many more game types, but watching people actually playing this... looks good!

Of course, I don't own a PS5...

Nailed the opening.

Jeff was waaaaay less harsh than I thought he was going to be... then I saw he was level 2.

That person straight Naruto running

did they license the MGM Grand to be in the background of that second level?!

Man... for a game where the appeal should lie in the satisfaction of smashing up other cars, the lack of any serious deformation on impact really deflates the experience. Like this feels more like bumpercars. Even on a bunch of these KO's, it's not like your car really got demolished, it's just that it's entirely gone from the screen and replaced with some scrap. A distinct lack of explosions. That's not satisfying at all! Ancient games like Driver, Destruction Derby and even GTA have done better in this regard. A game like Wreckfest really shows how far behind the destruction is.

It's also worrying that there are almost as many moneyhooks in the game as there are modes. The upfront price (Thank god that's being mitigated through PS+ right now) , the skin prices ( Not too bad, Overwatch has shown plenty of people are okay with paying to look good after paying an upfront price) but also having to pay for character storyline campaigns.... I feel that just means that 80% of your userbase won't see the content that your devs have designed within the rule-set of the multiplayer game. You give people the choice between playing a game against bots or humans, and they will generally go for the humans. You charge money for the botmatch on top and you will need some real glorious skin-work to entice people to pay up.

That stockpile mode greatly confuses me as well. Like it seems as if Jeff has to be on foot, can grab like 5 gears at once and has to bank them in. Rinse, repeat. Wouldn't this mode already be WAYYYY more fun if there were 10x the amount of gears on the track, you could drive over the gears, there was a 50 gear limit, and you could smash the coins out of your opponents and pick them up with your car? That sounds like something that Sonic All-Stars Racing or Mario Kart would come up with and be wayyy more captivating already.

Finally, wouldn''t this be better if it had a bunch of weapons and more Battlebots-type map features? Like some of these 'ults' are pretty neat, but 90% of the time all you're doing is wedging your cars left and right to dish out the damage. Some interesting weapon design could really spruce it up. Make me use a gravitational pull beam to drag a car into a pit. Make me sling a car into a jump pad that sends the car flying to the moon. Make me send a homing missle into a wall by making a sharp turn.

Will be interesting to see where this game goes. Like i can see players ditch it quite fast, and it sinking like Rocket Arena / Onrush but i can also see them remain at a steady playerbase, put in the work to overhaul this thing and get to a real good place. Looking at the fate of their vehicular moba game Switchblade doesn't fill me with much confidence though.

The Michael and Bruce Buffer story is kinda wild, from what I read. They didn't even know they were related until later in life, for one.

I seem to remember in the podcast talking about them, Bruce kinda handles the business stuff for both of them nowadays?

Well, it’s nice to see the DJs from Fuser’s campaign mode in their destruction derby second jobs.

Flashing yellow lights and warning exclamation marks indicate when the floor is gonna drop.