Destruction AllStars Review

"Trying to Smash"

Multiplayer

February 15, 2021 at 7:12pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a multiplayer only demolition derby like car game where you jump into the role of these heroic individuals that each have special cars and aim to come out on top. The lobbies are decently large at sixteen players, with each player taking on a specific character. There’s a variety of conflict whether you’re heading out to matches in a solo capacity, or being placed on teams.

I didn’t find this game to be particularly entertaining, from the lack of modes to the lack of content and in general it not being particularly fun. I’ll be diving into that more under gameplay, but firstly I want to go over what it generally offers when it comes to the game modes that are present. I should also mention that there is some offline content to this one. You can experience the scope of the game against bots if you’d like to, and there’s this challenge area. The challenge spot offered a single free option and then some paid ones.

I’d like you to keep in mind while I go over this, that while it launched on PS Plus it was initially going to be a fully paid game and I believe it will be once this period of time is over as well. There are many microtransactions being pushed here to the point that it really comes across as free to play. Past that, the core of this experience is playing online against others. There’s “Mayhem” where you’re basically smashing one another for points, solos or teams here.

That’s followed by “Carnado” which has damaging features on the map such as a tornado. Again, solo or teams as well. It’s played by damaging others to get gears that are stored in your car, then you hop into the giant carnado to score points. The next option is “Stockpile” which is a play on the whole capture and control type of objective. Collecting gears to then hit up a bank point around the map.

Finally there’s Gridfall where you’re trying to remove each other from play as the world falls around you. That meaning pieces of the arena fall down until there’s nothing left with this being a solo experience. I found the objective modes to be rather confusing in implementation, but I suppose they work to a degree since it mixes up regular just smashing one another by in turn providing something where you smash one another.

Gameplay

This is a really awkward, yet at the same time intuitive sort of derby type driving game. It’s very easy to swipe forward, or to the side to attack. It is however almost impossible to actually deal any sort of memorable damage to others. It seemed like the majority of matches were spent chasing others, or trying to get close enough to hit them and there just wasn’t much focus on actual vehicle smashing. So many misses, or light brushes and not much chaos.

Past that, the walking sequences seemed somewhat silly. You have these heroic characters hopping about on awkwardly placed parkour spots to reach cars and gather some coins. At times you can spawn in a heroic car, but these were all wildly misbalanced gameplay wise. Some being quite powerful, others generally just useless.

That was the same with the vehicles, a good mix of options but some of the cars were just terrible to use. I would have also perhaps liked to see more power-ups be present on the levels, or something to promote more interactions as it felt like I was just driving around in a car seeing others do the same instead of actively trying to hit one another.

It was quite disappointing as I really enjoy this type of genre within racing titles, but it’s all so poorly implemented here. When it comes to performance the game does look really great on Playstation 5, it aims for a dynamic resolution towards 4k at 60fps with the odd dip here or there frame rate wise. Still, it’s quite great looking with lots of detail and particle effects that go off during races when hits are actually performed.

I would have liked more ambience within the worlds too, it’s got a bumping soundtrack in the menus and then matches are silent aside from the awkwardly placed announcers. Going over the environments I thought they were well crafted but extremely limited. There’s only a few arenas, making this feel insanely light on content. Past that, there is some character customization present within their store. Some of it is available through playing the game quite a bit, a lot of it is purchasable through a premium microtransaction currency.

The Conclusion

Destruction AllStars is a rather bland, minimal in content and generally boring take on the demolition derby genre of driving games. It really misses the mark being jam packed with microtransactions and screaming to be a free to play game despite carrying that premium point. I know it’s launching as a PS Plus offering, but when it’s out of there I can’t see this lasting more than a month or two as a premium option.

It didn’t hold my attention very long, being a boring time after the first hour or so of play. It just seemed very lackluster in terms of actually getting players to interact with one another, feels like a game of wild chasing as opposed to having any focus. There’s not much to it, despite looking visually impressive and it’s just a rather bland time.

There’s not much here that makes it stand out, and it would take a lot of content to make these even somewhat enjoyable or less repetitive I suppose. It just really wasn’t for me, and again I can’t see this one being a long lasting game. At least there’s local bot play so that this can be enjoyed in the long term. That’s a bonus I guess. As odd as it might sound for this type of game, I think a racing mode might have been better for it.

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Destruction AllStars Review on Playstation 5
Review Access Provided by SIEC

Rating Overall: 4.8