Parent's Guide: Playstation All Stars Battle Royale - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Playstation All Stars Battle Royale is a multiplayer beat 'em up in the vein of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Pitting a number of Playstation characters against each other in a fight across Playstation themed stages, it's a tribute to Sony's history - and a heck of a fun game.

Luckily for younger players, things are fairly easy to get the hang of here. You can use either the left stick or d-pad to move your character around, while your three moves are handled by circle, square, and triangle. Each character has a different selection of moves to choose from, so experimenting with characters early on is a great way of finding one your child likes. From there, it's simply a case of pretty much mashing the buttons to dish out damage to other players, occasionally blocking, or dodging moves if you're really fancy, as you charge your super move.

And in fact, it's these super moves that are likely to cause the most trouble for younger players. Rather than dishing out damage to opponents and eventually beating them, or scoring points by knocking them off the stage, the only way to defeat an enemy - and therefore the only way to earn points and win battles, is to use a super move. Charged up by hitting your opponents with regular attacks, the super moves have three potential levels of charge - level one attacks, which are fiddly, and require precise timing in order to pull off, level two, which tend to have some sort of auto-aim to make things easier, and level three, which automatically takes out every enemy on the screen. As level three is the only super move guaranteed to hit every enemy on screen (and takes a long time to charge), your child will instead have to experiment with levels one and two, which can be a bit hit and miss - literally. For younger players, the reliance on timing and reactions may prove a bit too much of a downer, which is why we've gone for a slightly higher age rating.

On the plus side, though, Playstation All Star Battle Royale is a great game for family play. Letting up to four people play along on the same console (which is thankfully seeing something of a revival as of late), the whole family can delve into fast paced, over the top, and most importantly, fun battles that are easy to pick up and play. Either splitting into teams, or as everyone for themselves, multiplayer on Playstation All Stars is very much a "one more go" affair, and with the whole family joining in, you can wave your evening goodbye...

While it may be a beat 'em up, Playstation All Stars Battle Royale is rather light on any questionable content. There's nothing in the way of blood or gore, and characters don't react realistically when hit - there's no cuts, bruising or bleeding, but instead flashes of light as they take damage. While you can collect weapons as items - bazookas, axes, and similar sort of things, and one of the characters actually has a drill for an arm, again, while it may look creepy, there's nothing in the way of realistic impacts - the bazooka will explode on impact, but the character reacts in exactly the same way as if they'd been punched, and carries on regardless. The only other thing of note is that some of the levels feature some creepy looking alien-type characters in the background, and some of the characters in the game have been taken from games rated as 18+ - so it's worth double checking if your child asks for one of the games the characters have come from, having been inspired by Playstation All Stars.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3