Destruction All-Stars Review
I went into Destruction All-Stars with fairly low expectations and overall I enjoyed my time with the game. It is by no means a must play title, but if you have Playstation Plus and are looking for a new game to play on PS5 that utilizes the DualSenses haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, it is worth checking out for a weekend.
The game is a multiplayer arcade action title based around car combat. You choose one of sixteen contestants to compete in a gameshow arena in a variety of modes. The gameplay is fun and chaotic as you drive at high speeds to ram and crash into your opponents’ vehicles. The game makes fun use of the Playstation Dualsense controller with haptic feedback in the triggers puttering as your car dips into low health and intensifying as your speed accelerates. Despite the fun moments, Destruction All-Stars falls short in terms of gameplay variety and absolutely bizarre designs decisions. One of the strangest choices made by Lucid Games with Destruction All-Stars is that there is no music during each match. Imagine going to a vibrant and colorful dance club where a crowd of people are dancing to silence; this is what it feels like to play Destruction All-Stars…. It’s really awkward.
The multiplayer modes boil down to destroying other cars. Unique modes like Gridfall stand out as you try to avoid falling while tiles of the floor disappear. Carnado is another mode where you are tasked with causing damage to cars to rack up gear points which must be redeemed in the giant tornado in the middle of the map, but enemies can steal your gear points by crashing into you before you are able to redeem your gear points. While the act of destroying other cars is fun, after ten hours with the game I feel done with no reason to return as there aren’t any compelling unlockable items to justify the level grind.
While there isn’t a story mode in Destruction All-Stars, there are unique character challenges that allow you to complete tasks. These challenges are similarly structured to Mortal Kombat’s tower challenges, where you compete to earn xp and level up. But the weird catch is that you need a special in-game currency to unlock these challenges outside of the first set, which can only be unlocked for real money. I played the game for ten hours and I wasn’t able to unlock additional challenges without needing to pull out my wallet. For a game that is lacking in content variety it seems strange to lock challenges behind a paywall. Additionally you can purchase cosmetic items for your characters for in-game xp or real money, but each cosmetic item feels like a palette swap rather than a significant costume change.
While I appreciate the racial diversity amongst the cast of characters, without any meaningful backstories for the characters it was difficult to care about a specific character. They each have a unique power-up and vehicle that you can unlock during matches, but the majority of matches you will be driving the same vehicles regardless of what character you select. Unlike games like Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros, the gameplay loop in Destruction All-Stars feels very similar regardless of which character that you play as.
Despite the fun I had with Destruction All-Stars, I would not recommend picking it up for full price after it leaves Playstation Plus. The lack of gameplay variety and incentive to keep playing make the experience feel old really fast. However, Lucid Games has promised regular updates and dlc throughout the year, so only time will tell if they can improve upon the solid gameplay experience by diversifying the content offering of the game.
