Developer: Milky Tea Studios
Publisher: Milky Tea Studios
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
Tested on: PS4
HyperBrawl Tournament – Review
Online ‘party’ games have become something of a hype during these last months, possibly because of party games such as Overcooked! and more competitive online brawlers or titles such as Fortnite, who put the Battle Royale format on the map again. There are many titles that try to mimic a great competitive online experience, but it’s often those that are backed up by a big publisher that actually have enough success to pull it off. This time we take a closer look at HyperBrawl Tournament, a small competitive online title that is played in a 2 vs 2 format, where you have to throw a ball in a goal, albeit with the necessary pushing, shoving, kicking and even killing that comes with it.
Story
At the beginning of the game, you get a small introduction about the HyperBrawl Tournament being a tournament to determine who’s the best of the best for whatever purpose. We’d love to tell you more, but you get a few lines of properly voiced text, to then have a completely vanilla-story experience afterward, as there’s not much more to explore. This game was clearly intended for multiplayer play and we can’t blame the developers for not adding a fancy storyline to go with it.
Graphics
Graphically HBT is a cute looking game, for one that is actually quite violent (albeit not graphically). You have a fixed amount of different heroes to chose from, and these all have their own low-poly cutesy look that suits the colorful arenas you’ll be playing in. It’s not extremely well-polished and the assets used will not drive your PlayStation 4 to the edge, but the game looks decently made. Much like in games such as Rocket League, you have some customization options to make your hero as original as can be.
Sound
The sound design of the game suffices for its goal, as the music can get you pumped up, the overall effects clearly add a bit of ‘oomph’ to things and the general atmosphere is properly set. It doesn’t wow you with the overall sound quality, but it makes sure the experience is properly supported.
Gameplay
The game is pretty much an arcade made-up sports game. You’ll be playing matches vs other teams from start to finish, trying to score goals, take out your opponents by any means necessary, all while choosing different team members with different power-ups and abilities. The overall concept is quite easy, albeit hard to master with a lot of things to keep track of, such as your HP, your overall stats, the position of your opponents and so on. It’s basically soccer, albeit with a lot of combat abilities and a somewhat ‘no rules’ format.
We have to be honest when we say that this game is actually quite hard to master. The basic controls are simple, and it will take you some time to get used to passes and scoring, but your added combat abilities, the fact you can manipulate throws and the power surge you get when nearly dead, make this a fairly complex experience. It will take you several matches before you figure things out properly, and even more matches for you to master certain abilities and finesses.
Overall the game is fairly amusing, and you have the option to play certain modes offline, such as the Arcade mode, where friends can join in on the fun. The Campaign mode, for some reason, doesn’t allow you to team up with a friend, which is a huge missed opportunity. Nonetheless, it’s always the same thing you’re doing, albeit in a different arena, with several new hazards for each different arena. When playing offline, you’ll play against bots, and these don’t feel natural at all, as everything feels very calculated and they will not miss a single attack, even on the easier levels. While the latter is still very manageable to win (most) matches, it just doesn’t feel right for a game such as this. Sadly, the only servers as so thinly populated that you’re not really able to also enjoy the online experience of this clearly intended online game. We reckon this was why we received multiple keys to try out the game.
Conclusion
HyperBrawl Tournament is one of those games that has good ideas and is somewhat fun to play, but not really amusing enough to keep playing. It’s one of those in-between titles, and is actually quite enjoyable to play with friends offline, as the online player base isn’t really present. We assume this might actually be better on PC or even the Switch for that matter, where online subscriptions are either free or a lot cheaper than the competitors.
HyperBrawl Tournament - Review,
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