By playing MultiVersuswe first noticed the similarities with the now famous Nintendo gameSuper Smash Bros.. However, it is not just a pale copy. For its first game, the Player First Games studio succeeds in taking up a winning formula by adding a new facet to it.
Right off the bat, let’s make it clear that fighting games aren’t our genre of choice, much less the subgenre that is platform fighting games. So we embarked on MultiVersus with the experience of a neophyte.
Fortunately, the combat mechanics are easy enough to understand so that we can have fun from the first minutes. Not to mention its well-crafted tutorial, which is worth completing, if only for the character of Wonder Woman that we unlock at the key. That said, just because the game is easy to understand doesn’t mean the combat lacks depth. In addition to a jump button and another dodge, each character has an ordinary attack and a special attack, each with four variations.
The objective is not, as in a classic fighting game, to reduce a bar of life points to zero, but rather to weaken the opponent enough to expel him outside the combat arena.
The universes of Warner Bros.
MultiVersus stands out for its emphasis on cooperation. While it offers one-on-one and four-player free-for-all modes (which are otherwise a lot of fun), its primary mode is still two-on-two. Each character has attacks or abilities that combine with those of other fighters, sometimes in surprising ways. These unique mechanics sometimes require practice to execute well, or even master them, which opens up all sorts of synergistic strategies for more experienced players.
For the moment, we can choose from 17 characters (a list destined to grow, of course) from the various intellectual properties of Warner Bros. Discovery. You can pit classic characters, like Superman, Batman or even Bugs Bunny, against other more modern ones, like Harley Quinn, Arya Stark and… Lebron James.
An eclecticism that could, at first glance, raise eyebrows. However, the careful artistic direction of MultiVersus succeeds very well in bringing all these universes together in a single coherent world. The avatars have been designed with great care, and for most of the characters the game benefits from voice acting from the original actors. For example, we will recognize the voice of Maisie Williams in the role of Arya Stark, that of Matthew Lillard for Shaggy or even that of Kevin Conroy for Batman.
Season 1 to come
Nevertheless, MultiVersus being a game free-to-play, it comes with some form of monetization. Thus, most of its heroes are locked behind a paywall. The game maintains a rotating roster of four free heroes. The rest of the roster can be unlocked using the two currencies available in the game: gold coins, obtained by playing matches and completing challenges, or Gleanium, which is purchased with real money. Characters unlocked with real money are permanently unlocked. It is also possible to try them first in the offline training mode, which avoids buying blindly.