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Brawl Stars Review: Battle Royale Fun With Brawlers and Guns

7K View2022-05-19

Many know the Supercell team as the developers that birthed Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, two of the biggest hits of recent years in the mobile video game market. Now the Finnish software house has an entirely new (and ostensibly free) experience on both Android and iOS platforms: Brawl Stars. It’s a little bit MOBA, a little bit battle royale, but Brawl Stars doesn’t forget to season that potent mix with some sweet shooter sauce. It’s difficult not to get carried away by this title’s colorful characters and artistic design that plunges you into bullet-strewn battles to gather lots of gems and take out as many opponents as possible. And, after many long hours of playing, I can say that I am sufficiently intrigued by this game, although it certainly does have some flaws.

One of the main elements that immediately catches the eye in Brawl Stars is the overall style. Supercell's work here fully incorporates the cartoon aesthetic of their previous titles, offering a vibrant and colorful design, accompanied by visually striking maps and a roster of playable characters/brawlers as varied as it is stimulating. So at first glance, the game dazzled me on the visual front and instantly thrust me into its picturesque universe through a simple tutorial that allowed me to become familiar with the controls and one of the main gameplay modes.

Brawl Stars, as already mentioned, is a third-person shooter that melds multiplayer and battle royale aesthetics into the lifeblood of its gameplay mechanics; therefore there is no supporting story or narrative, but the entire structure is subservient to the gameplay...and quite fun to boot. Taking up the mantle of one of the fifty or so brawlers that the title makes available (via purchase or eventually via progression), the goal of each game is to traverse the isometric area maps, then shoot anything and everything that moves.

The game does its best impression of the classic MOBAs, while making a series of sacrifices on a tactical and gameplay level that substantially simplify the overall structure of the experience. Brawl Stars is more than a straight up MOBA though. It’s more akin to a MOBA-like: a title that starts at that basic level, using that genre’s most important strategic mechanics, but which also shapes those mechanics to make them its own in an attempt to address the more casual players. This is a choice that, on the part of the development team, will be viewed as making Brawl Stars accessible to the widest possible audience (or lowest common denominator), and also solidifies its hybrid nature by intermingling with the battle royale genre. And, in many ways, this title does stay true to a compelling hybrid path.

One of the main modes is Gem Grab, a variant of capture the flag which consists of, as the title states, grabbing as many precious stones as possible while leaving the opposing team in defeat. Once you have reached the maximum amount of gems your team can carry, a countdown starts. Then you must protect your loot from the assault of the opposing squad until the timer reaches zero. Also, there is the Heist mode, a team deathmatch in the truest sense, in which three players face three opponents in a competition where the number of kills you rack up matters more than anything else.

Another interesting game mode is Brawl Ball, a scrapping variant of soccer/football, where the player must simply maneuver a ball into a net while protecting it from attacks by their rivals. But, at the battle royale soul of Brawl Stars emerges the most basic mode, Showdown. In this mode, which can be played alone or with a partner, there are ten players who compete in frenetic firefights, while the game map shrinks as more and more poisonous clouds surround it (à la Fortnite).

It doesn’t stop there. Brawl Stars features a bevy of other modes, including: Robo Rumble (PvE), Big Game (1v5), Boss Fight (PvE), Super City Rampage (PvE), Bounty, Hot Zone, Siege, Knockout, Power League, and Club League. To enhance this suite of decidedly intriguing modes (but, sadly, one I was expecting more features from), the usual mobile game tropes come into play, tasking players with daily tests, challenges, and “sales” of every stripe.

Everything in the game is clearly devoted to obtaining objects and rewards useful for progression, despite the fact that the title is littered with microtransactions to facilitate the upgrades. Of course, progressing in a “manual” way (i.e., without paying) proves to be equally satisfactory. Though they reduce the need to resort to “pay-to-win” tactics by slightly balancing the freemium nature of Brawl Stars, the presence of loot boxes here can be overwhelming in the long run and do make the game less fun at times. Over time, in fact, the competitive gap between those who pay and those who do not becomes painfully obvious.

It is when taking the field of battle that Brawl Stars starts to show some chinks in the armor—mostly due to how the game itself controls. These controls are positioned on the opposite ends of the smartphone display via two virtual controller sticks. The left side controls movement of your brawler, while the one on the right side (which is divided into two mini-sticks, actually) makes things go BOOM! with both regular and super weapons. And this works fine for the most part, but when the bullets and bombs (and bears!) really start flying, these controls can fail you, and that’s when you’ll be screaming (like me) for a true, twin-stick controller. At its core, this title needs to be controlled like Xeno Crisis or, better yet, the classic Smash TV for it to really work right when you get in those truly sticky situations.

On the technical and graphical side, Brawl Stars is an extremely solid title, not showing any real limitations in terms of particle effects, textures, and frame rate stability. I say this to be clear that the game does not suffer from any slowdown or drops in fluidity, as well as to commend the graphics which are excellent and visually expressive. That said, the experience itself can be rather slow and cumbersome just in traversing from here to there on any given map.

To expound on this point: The movement controls are difficult at times, again, due to the two virtual sticks which aren’t super responsive. These sticks can be moved and tweaked in the game’s settings depending on where you place your fingers on the display, and it is possible to better manage the overall mechanics in that manner. Despite this, however, the motion inputs remain a bit stiff, and the continuous movement of your fingers to the corners of the touchscreen can affect your view of the playfield at times. This is damn shame since the combat system wants to provide twitchy, adrenaline-pumping gunplay.

Both weapons offer two different types of moves (your main attack that fires normal bullets, energy, etc. and the special attack/SuperSkill that’s available after filling the special meter), and the execution of said moves varies depending on what brawler you are using, of course. Aiming functionality has two different flavors, as well: the basic version, available simply by pressing the appropriate command to unleash the shot, and a pointing mechanism that allows players to aim at the exact point where they want to hit. This is a useful tactic to hit a greater number of enemies, calculating the trajectory of your bullets and anticipating enemy movements in the best way possible. At the same time, it is necessary to keep an eye on your ammo, which empties quite quickly but regenerates over time. In this manner, Brawl Stars sometimes takes on a tactical bent, where it becomes prudent to manage your ammo to avoid being left hung out to dry for a few, fatal seconds with an empty gun and bloodthirsty enemies breathing down your neck.

All in all, Brawl Stars has a noteworthy progression system and a lively aesthetic. However, not all the gears of this freemium machine run like clockwork. The cool gunplay is hampered by an overly cumbersome control scheme that will leave you shrieking for a “real” controller—not a virtual one. Brawl Stars certainly entertains a large slice of the public already, and it still has potential beyond its “pay-to-win” trappings, but new players may be deterred because there is just so much (arguably too much) going on in this game at the moment, what with all the daily happenings, sales, new weapons and brawlers, and loot boxes out the wazoo.

If Supercell can cut down on all the noise, tweak the gameplay modes a bit, and add controller support on some level, Brawl Stars will continue to thrive in an already overcrowded mobile game market.

SCORE: 3 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

· The 3D environments presented in Battle Bay are sure to win you over. It’s set in a cool, aquatic locale, the gameplay is simple and the controls are intuitive. You can give this team-based 5 vs 5 shooter game a whirl with some pals when you get tired of all samey bang-bang-shoot ‘em up of the hardcore Battle Royale games.

· Smash TV. If you're a fan of the retro stylings and pulse-pounding, arcade shooter action of this twin-stick shooter, you may find a lot to love in Brawl Stars.

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