I love fighting games. They are absolute favorite. But what happens when you mix a fighting game with a brick breaker style? You get one of the most innovative and fun fighting game to date: Ultra Space Battle Brawl, USBB for short.
USBB is one of the most unique game I have played so far. Here, the objective is simple: hit the opponent’s life crystal five times to win the match. But it’s easier said than done because each crystal is protected by minions (bird-like creatures with your character’s appearance) that you must hit several times in order to remove the barrier they form. However, your opponent is not a sitting duck. Another thing I like about USBB is that you can move your character all over the stage, in all directions. It is not like Pong in which you can only move up and down. This makes the game play even more dynamic, since you can have a barrage of attacks putting yourself right in front of the enemy crystal. With good timing, you can make short work of them.
From the opening movie, you can see that USBB has been heavily inspired by Street Fighter. You can see Djarwani with a bat posing like Ryu from SSFII, all muscular and with a floppy belly. Then the rest of the characters are presented like Alpha 2 presentation. Honestly, you need to take your time to appreciate the developer effort to create a really cool opening, giving nods to the game that inspired them.
You can move with the Left Stick or directional buttons, attack with Y, and with B you can do a dash that you can use to move quickly in any direction (can do it with L and R as well). This is useful to keep pressuring the opponent or to go back to protect your crystal. With the A button, you can do the Ultra as you attack and delete the opponent’s minions or yours are deleted a gauge below the HP starts to fill. Once full, you can activate each character’s Ultra. With the Ultra, you get more attack power, and it’s active until the gauge is depleted.
Each character’s Ultra has different attributes. For example, Djarwani is power smash. This is when you hit the ball, and its attack power and speed increases. Others are so unique and bizarre like a Legion of Flies that slow the ball movement if caught on it or a Wall that makes the ball bounce back. Each character’s stats and Ultra is well balanced, so even if they have different stats and Ultra, everyone is on a same level.
Story Wise, all characters have different reasons to participate on USBB, like winning to find lost parents or building a cat shelter. They are as bizarre as they are fun. And like I mentioned, while this game looks like a brick breaker style of game, each fight is so intense that you would think otherwise.
Graphically speaking, USBB features beautiful 2D art. I really like it from the opening to the menus and even the cut scenes of each character story, to the character movements, and different stages are so well done. You can really see that the developer crafted a memorable cast of characters.
The music is incredibly good. I think that it is one of the best soundtrack so far in all games I have played this year.
Each stage is different from another. In some stages, the crystal is protected by a wall of minions. In other stages there are bumpers. There are some in which there are two crystals on each player’s side, and even one that follows your every movement up and down. There is a lot of variety here to keep you entertained for a long time.
Besides Story mode, there is also versus mode, so you can duke it out with another player in local versus. There is a gallery that unlocks images of each character’s story. However, there is no online versus mode. I feel this is a missed opportunity, since I think this game has a lot of potential. I definitely can see this game being played in an event like EVO (Divekick was played, why USBB shouldn’t). Maybe further down the line, we can see a update that adds online or even a sequel.
Bottom Line: Ultra Space Battle Brawl is a really good fighting game that combines fighting game elements with the addictive game play of a brick breaker game. With a cast of unique characters and nods to popular fighting games here and there, it is a game that you should not miss, even without online this is a battle that should definitely participate in.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided