Developer: Lucid Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: PS5
Tested on: PS5
Destruction AllStars – Review
Let’s face it, while the next-gen consoles are quite impressive, they both lack exclusive titles to actually make them worth the purchase. Destruction AllStars was such a title to normally drive the PS5’s release forward. Sadly, it got delayed until February 2021 to properly finish the game and make sure it runs smoothly on the new hardware. Now, Fornite-with-cars has finally been released for our entertainment, albeit under the name of Destruction AllStars.
Story
As this is the vehicular-combat equivalent of a Battle Royale game, there is, as expected, no real story content to be found. While every character comes with a little blurb describing who they are, there is no deep storyline to play through in Destruction AllStars. The Challenges have a few tiny lines of text between characters, but that’s basically it.
Graphics
While not pushing the PlayStation 5’s hardware to its limits, the characters and cars all look quite spiffy and cool. The arenas, however, are bland and boring and all have the same neon-lit theme. There is hardly any variety, and they all have the same hazards and feel too big and empty. These last two aspects also influence the gameplay heavily.
One thing is bothersome though, as the game has a lot of skins you can unlock for the 16 characters of the game. Sadly, these are all lazy recolors of the original skin and actually add nothing to the overall fun of collecting new skins. You will have a few different color tones but no actual changes to the models, which is just ridiculous, especially if you have to buy these skins.
Sound
The sound design of Destruction AllStars feels like a massive missed opportunity. While the voice lines by the commentators are nicely handled in a true old-school boxing announcement kind of way, the lines repeat way too quickly and soon become stale. The overall sound effects are okay-ish at best, and feel somewhat generic. The biggest shame is that there is no explosive soundtrack, outside of the annoying 10-second loop in the menus that will actually make you want to punch someone in the face repeatedly if that would make it stop.
Gameplay
Destruction AllStars is an online vehicular-combat game that somewhat follows a Battle Royale principle. There is some single-player content as well, which you have to buy on top of the retail price of the game, it is still mainly a multiplayer experience. Even though the game is not demanding of your console at all, the cash-grab is real, and you won’t be able to locally go online with a friend next to you, even though most modes are actually played in teams.
The game puts you in arenas and the main goal is to wreck the other drivers. This can be done in a free-for-all kind of fashion, but also in teams. Even though you can communicate with other players via voice chat, there is actually no proper planning in this game, as it’s just driving around, trying to wreck your opponents.
Destruction AllStars is not limited to driving around, as you can also leave your vehicle with your chosen character, run around, use a special skill and collect shards and other items to complete your current round. When you have enough shards, you can summon your ‘hero vehicle’, which has its own ability you can trigger upon filling its respective meter. Sadly, the game is extremely unbalanced, and some characters can take out five enemies, while others can leave a 10-meter long trail of fire nobody will drive through. The aspect of constantly swapping vehicles, as vehicles spawn randomly on the map, is quite refreshing, if it weren’t for the somewhat dodgy controls. Driving around feels decent, albeit limited, walking around with your character and doing some ‘platforming’, feels clumsy and annoying most of the time. Even though the game does try to spice things up by allowing players on foot to hijack another player’s vehicle, by winning a QTE mini-game, or with the aforementioned skills, it all feels like it’s still in a beta phase.
After playing a fair number of online matches, the biggest flaw, outside of the dodgy controls and the clear lack of balance, we noticed that this game just hardly has any content. You can play a handful of modes over and over again, to gain some experience and gain a few free credits, but these serve no real purpose other than to ‘get good’; which is also an issue we’ll dive into. You eventually end up grinding these free credits to buy emotes, and skins, which are mere recolors, which are truly not worth the asking price. Playing offline challenges will not unlock with the credits you gain by playing alone, only with currency bought with real money. The entire experience feels like a poor excuse of a money grab, and not even one that rewards you with shiny content when you open your wallet.
Getting good is relative in this game, as vehicular combat games are often somewhat luck-based. Sure, games that use weaponry and certain skills will also rely a bit on skill, but with Destruction AllStars, it often feels like you’re not in control at all. This is mainly due to the oversized arenas, where you are sometimes just driving around aimlessly, hoping to actually see someone you want to smack into a wall. Sadly, when you find that person, a lag spike may immediately teleport him to another location.
Even with a very stable internet connection, you’ll notice a lot of lag when playing online. Even the offline modes sometimes take ages to ‘connect’, and the challenges you buy also keep loading indefinitely for them to work. This is especially true when you minimize the game for a while, doing something else on your PS5. The game is not optimized at all, and we can imagine players actually turning off the game after a few sessions of having to wait over 10 minutes to notice the game isn’t doing anything anymore.
Conclusion
Destruction AllStars is a very nice game on paper, but in its execution, it falls quite flat. While the overall gameplay loop is enjoyable, the bad servers, the zillion micotransactions and the lack of content make it tedious before long. As a free game for those owning a PS+ subscription, this game is worth a few sessions, but if you have to buy it at full price, only to encounter one paywall after another, it’s best to steer clear of this one. With many new content updates promised, we hope this one will reach its full potential, instead of being an excuse to cheat people out of money with uninspired skins and collectibles.
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