Post by: NWR_Neal on July 16, 2018, 06:25:41 AM
A well-made arcade sports experience on Switch geared for local multiplayer mayhem.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/47742/super-volley-blast-switch-review
Unfinished Pixel is going in a neat direction after their previous Switch (and Wii U) release Spy Chameleon. The ex-Ubisoft devs from Barcelona are trying to make a sports-focused franchise called Super Blast with the debut title being Super Volley Blast, a beach volleyball arcade sports game. If their future games are made with as much care and immediacy as their opening salvo, Super Blast will be a set of premier local multiplayer games. Super Volley Blast is a simple yet deep game that shines brightest in multiplayer but still has enough content to make the single-player experience totally fine.
The controls are simple. Move your character around and when the ball comes near, hit the B button to set up your partner, the Y button to hit it over the net, and the X button to jump (and then hit the ball with proper timing). While the nuances of volleyball can be harder to grasp if you’re unfamiliar with the sport, the game is gentle in early difficulties and a relatively no-nonsense tutorial goes over the basics succinctly. From my experiences, it wasn’t hard for others to jump in, though cooperation between two human partners can be frustrating or funny, depending on how you look at it.
In single-player, a story mode is present to romp through. It’s just seven matches with some goofy dialogue in between as you fight parodies of superheroes, Street Fighter characters, Shigeru Miyamoto, and even the politically questionable tag-team of Tronald Dump and Jim Kong Un. Completion of this mode doesn’t take long and harder difficulties await you after you beat it. It’s not much, but it’s fun for the short ride that it is.
The meat is in the quick match and tournament modes, both of which are best with friends locally. The tournament mode can have up to 16 players play in a tourney (though it’s only ever two-on-two at the same time). Characters can be pulled from a pool of parodies and random creations, but an avatar creator lets you make your own Mii-esque creations. It’s snappy to do and while everyone making their own characters slows down the time to start the sport, you can make some wacky creations.
While Super Volley Blast is a local multiplayer game to its core, it’s a nicely crafted one that also has enough of an attempt at a single-player story to be entertaining there as well. This is a good arcade sports experience and is very much worth checking out if you want some good Switch multiplayer escapades.
