Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 review: Some decent tooning

2021’s Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl managed to deliver a competent platform fighter that initially drew players in with its roster of iconic characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Aang, and Danny Phantom. However, a lack of overall content and depth meant that NASB’s time in the spotlight was brief. Developer Fair Play Labs is back with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, a game that meaningfully builds on its predecessor, but isn’t without some considerable shortcomings.

Slime time

In my review of the first Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl in 2021, I criticized it for feeling “barebones” and “shallow.” While there was a decent foundation present, the game didn’t feel like anything more than untapped potential. NASB 2 makes a concerted effort to expand its content offerings with additions both big and small.

Most notably, the game has a roguelite-style campaign in which you work alongside Clockwork to defeat the evil Plasmius. Each run finds you navigating a pathway that includes fighting waves of enemies, taking on corrupted Nick characters, and duking it out with bosses. The fact that your health carries over between stages presents a real challenge and makes for some intense fights during those final battles. There’s voice acting (!), power-ups, and the ability to unlock additional characters to play as on future runs.

Campaign is a mostly good time and I enjoyed having a challenging mode outside of battling the CPU on the highest difficulty. That said, the non-combat stages are hit-or-miss. I enjoyed the respite provided by the vendor stages that allowed me to spend currency and gather resources, but the platforming stages felt incredibly dull and grew repetitive after my first run.

New toons

With this sequel comes a new crop of characters to play and experiment with. This includes the likes of Azula, Plankton, Donatello, and Jimmy Neutron. Again, character design continues to be the strongest aspect of this series. The way that the developers use a character’s personality and behavior to influence their kit is a lot of fun, and feels rewarding as a player who grew up on so many of these classic shows.

Combat has received some necessary tweaks to movement and defense, but doesn’t feel too different from the original game. It all still feels a bit too floaty for me, but I walked away impressed by the core elements at play. Fair Play Labs has also added Super attacks, powerful cinematic abilities that charge over the course of a match and deal heavy damage when they land. They’re fun to watch, and I made sure to go through to see every character’s Super.

One of the more head-scratching decisions in NASB 2 was to remove several characters from the first game’s roster. Leonardo, Toph, Sandy Cheeks, Shredder, and a handful of other characters were all playable in the original game but have been replaced by some of the new additions in the sequel. While rotating fighters through sequels is a core element of fighting franchises, Nick All-Star Brawl hasn’t nearly built the cachet to be pulling characters for seemingly no rhyme or reason. The decision is especially silly considering that the two games don’t feel all that different from each other.

Nick at Nite

Cosmetically, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 has made improvements by adding alternate outfits for all of its heroes. It’s a small detail, but one that players expect when jumping into a fighting game. Karate Grandma Gertie and Earth Nation Azula were my personal favorites.

While NASB 2 has some solid original tracks, it still stings that so many iconic Nickelodeon tunes are missing. Flipping through the jukebox, it’s crazy that we don’t have the actual “Sweet, Sweet, Victory” from SpongeBob’s Band Geek’s episode, the punchy Ninja Turtles theme song, or the unforgettable Rugrats intro music.

Day of Play

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 feels more like a 1.5 or “definitive” version of the original game rather than a full sequel (voice acting and alternate costumes were added to the first game post-launch). It’s the game I expected to play when the first one was announced a couple of years ago. Fleshed-out single-player options actually give me a reason to log on, and the addition of voice acting and cinematics makes the game feel more alive. However, the removal of several fighters from the roster and lack of large-scale innovation makes it a fine, serviceable platform fighter.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is out now for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_