Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is out, and it’s a beast of a game. With 20 characters out on October 5th (the same day as the Sora announcement, ironically enough) and each one playing pretty differently, there’s a lot for new players to learn. And, let’s not even get started on all the ways this game diverges from other platform brawlers, such as Smash Bros, Brawlhalla, Brawlout, or even Slap City (Ludosity’s previous game).
So, keeping all that in mind, there’s a lot of little mistakes people are making when playing this game that they’ll most likely figure out given a week or so. Here are just a few mistakes addressed to help beginners get the hang of things in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.
8 Thinking That This Is “Just A Smash Clone”
There are going to be tons and tons of comparisons between this game and Smash Bros, especially since it came out on the same day as Smash’s last DLC character announcement.
And, a lot of the comparisons are justified, given the sheer volume of similarities between the two titles. But, anyone thinking that NASB is “just a Smash Clone” is sorely mistaken, especially given that this game is on Steam. In terms of movement, speed, polish, character types, and probably even future cameo representation, the two games couldn’t be more different.
In fact, if there’s any Smash game that NASB is understandably comparable to, it’s Melee, and even then the comparisons mostly boil down to both of them having the same sort of speed to their combat. Basically, don’t go into All-Star Brawl expecting the skills from Smash to transfer over 1-to-1, because they absolutely won’t.
7 Not Reflecting & Catching Projectiles
Probably one of the biggest changes Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl makes in comparison to other fighters, both 2D and 3D alike, is the fact that players can actually counter projectile spam (a classic trope of the fighting game genre) incredibly easily, either by hitting them back at their opponent or by catching them using the “Grab” move.
Again, this is likely only a mechanic that people following the lead-up to the release of the game would know about, so many of the new players have no idea that projectiles like Catdog’s “Boomerang Bone/Hairball”, Spongebob’s “Bubble Blow”, or Michelangelo’s “Wanna Pizza This?” can be reliably countered.
6 Forgetting To Wavedash
Anyone familiar with Smash even slightly past the casual level probably knows about “wavedashing”. This is the term coined for when players jump then immediately air dash toward or angled toward the ground in order to move across the stage much faster in a much shorter amount of time than they would just by running.
Well, luckily, NASB also has wavedashing, and it’s equally as easy to use. Additionally, because none of the characters in this game have “startup” animations to their jumps, it’s even faster to get off multiple wavedashes than in other games.
5 Sleeping On The “Strafe” Feature
Out of all the new things All-Star Brawl is trying, the “Strafe” mechanic has to be the most experimental yet helpful. Basically, it’s an input that allows the player to keep facing one direction while moving the other way.
In Smash, knowing which way the player character is facing during chaotic combat moments is a big hurdle people have to slowly adjust to. But, in NASB, players can use Strafe to moving backward while throwing projectiles forward or any variety of other useful tricks. Again, it seems small, but even the smallest features can massively change the way a fighting game “feels” to play, which plays a big part in how long people keep playing it.
4 The Fact That They Can Grab In The Air Or Off Ledge
Grabs in NASB might be far less creative and weaker overall than in other games, but they have quite a lot of uses. For example, all the throws in this game toss the enemy pretty close, making them great for leading into combos.
But, a feature of Grabs that a lot of people are unaware of is that they can be used both in the air and to grab someone currently holding onto a ledge. That second method, in particular, is especially useful for another mistakenly ignored aspect of NASB that will be talked about right after this entry.
3 Ledge-Hogging & Spiking In General
NASB absolutely has the ledge-hogging mechanic that was prevalent in early Super Smash Bros games like Melee. For those unaware, this system is based around the ironclad fact that when someone is grabbing onto a ledge, another player cannot grab onto that same ledge. In Smash for Wii U and Smash Ultimate, this was changed to a system where the first player grabbing onto the ledge getting bounced off of it when the second player grabbed on.
But, in All-Star Brawl, players can hang onto the ledge confidently, knowing that it’ll stop their opponent from grabbing it. And more than that, this game has an insane amount of characters with useful spiking moves that launch their enemies down at high speeds, making it even easier to ledge-hog.
2 Handcuffing Themselves To A “Main” This Early
If there’s one thing that is a constant when it comes to fighting games, it’s that the rankings of the roster massively change over the course of the game’s life cycle. Someone who is overpowered at the start, more often than not, doesn’t end overpowered when the game stops getting updates. And, because of that, professional and even casual players of these games tend to play around with the entire cast at the start, then really pick their “main” or their favorite characters to play after the first couple updates.
But, because these are all icons people grew up with, people are really tying themselves down to specific characters more often than usual, and it’s a shame because those characters will, more than likely, not be that overpowered in a few months time. And, additionally, future DLC characters have already been leaked via datamine, so there's even less of a reason to get handcuffed to a specific character.
1 That Right-Stick Is Auto-Bound To Strong Attacks
And finally, let’s end things on a very common mistake a lot of NASB players seem to be making, and that’s the fact that the right stick is auto-bound to Strong Attacks. Sorry to keyboard players, but most of the NASB audience is likely playing the game with some sort of controller. A good portion of players struggle a bit to adapt to both Strong and Light Attacks being bound to different buttons, rather than both being part of the same input as they were in Smash.
Luckily, as sort of a workaround to getting used to this, players can just use the right stick for Strong Attacks, and a face button for Light Attacks. It’s not a fix, but it is a nice middle-ground.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl was released on October 4, 2021, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.