MultiVersus

MultiVersus is a new platform fighter from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Player First Games. Before the closed alpha got underway today, ...

She’s an all-rounder who has a nice blend of close-quarters and ranged moves, and she’s effective in the air too. The customization also extends to a perk system and levelling up each character. It’s already fun for me, a relative newcomer to the scene. It’s a bit of a blow that some of the characters people will be most excited to try, like Superman and Batman, aren’t available at the outset. There’s a deep, deep well of IP for the developers to pull from to build out the roster. The initial roster is solid, with a nice blend of big names and some more unexpected characters. Fingers crossed we’ll see the likes of Beetlejuice, Ace Ventura, Wicked Witch of the West, Gizmo and Daenerys Targaryen down the line. The core mode is a 2v2 battle where teams race to knock their enemies off of the map a total of four times. That’s not a big issue, though, since anyone who takes any competitive game seriously is going to put a lot of time into understanding the intricacies of each fighter. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fighting game expert. The core controls are similar to Smash as well, with attacks and specials each tied to a single button and directional inputs. So, you’ll see the likes of Superman taking on Steven Universe, Harley Quinn fighting Scooby Doo’s Velma and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, Tom and Jerry not fighting each other but instead working as a team controlled by one player.

Steven Universes' Garnet and Adventure Times Jake face the camera in MultiVersus trailer. (Image credit: Warner Bros. Games). If Fortnite and ...

MultiVersus isn't a mindblowing idea for a game—on its face, it's very similar to the recent and kind of terrible Nickelodeon fighting game from last year. If you're not a fan of its colorful sheen—which is unabashedly Fortnite—you probably won't be swayed by anything in MultiVersus. It's a game that requires you to take that leap and bask in its absurdity. MultiVersus deploys its unmistakable characters as a trojan horse for a game that's actually more interested in the intricate dance of an expertly made fighting game made for people who aren't already obsessed with fighting games. That Hanna Barbera attitude, which underlines the playfulness and mayhem in a bunch of cartoon characters beating the snot out of each other, is everywhere in MultiVersus. It gives the entire game a loose, but important, consistency, and has me eager to spend hours with everyone on the roster so far. If you want to stay back and look for opportunities to join the fray, support is the answer. That quick ability to read how a game is playing out is exactly the kind of instinctual strategy and teamwork (for all I know the Velma was aggressive to make up for my initial passiveness) that MultiVersus promotes.

To its credit, MultiVersus has the Super Smash Bros likeness down to a tee, with a grid of Warner Bros character icons to choose from such as, errr, Bugs Bunny!

Still, the fact it all costs nothing at all does help to smooth things out in a different way, and from what I've played so far, I think MultiVersus is a cracking Super Smash Bros-like with strong personality and presentation. Another slight rework to the Smash Bros framework is in the UI. MultiVersus pops each character's damage numbers under their person at all times, where Smash Bros stuck them in a static row at the bottom of the screen. Thing is, being a Smash Bros-style game still ends up invoking tough comparison in terms of gameplay feel, and in the long term this could be where MultiVersus falls down. Win or lose with a certain character and you'll net them EXP. Level them up and you'll earn specific perks that you can equip before a match begins, like "10% more damage in mid-air". It's an odd decision, as fighting games like this often tick because everyone's on a level playing field, especially if you're playing online. While it may be easy to dismiss Multiversus as a mere Smash Bros knock-off, the game does do a decent job of trying to iterate on Nintendo's iconic formula. MultiVersus is Warner Bros' spin on a Super Smash Bros-like that's free-to-play and features an all-star mishmash of franchises: Scooby Doo, Game Of Thrones, Adventure Time. Everyone is here!

These characters are fully voiced, with celebrities like Maisie Williams and Matthew Lillard reprising their live-action roles as Arya Stark and Shaggy, ...

Thus far, our first look at MultiVersus has made us even more excited for the game to come out in full. Even the live-action characters fit surprisingly well with the cast. The game also features a 1v1 and free-for-all mode for more traditional platform fighting fans, but the potential for some tricky and rewarding co-op combos is very enticing. Learning how different characters work is a fun experiment in both understanding the mechanics and seeing if your favorite Steven Universe scene made it into the game. As a free-to-play game, the alpha provides previews of many typical freemium features like a Battle Pass and player experience. The game places a heavy emphasis on 2v2 team matches.

MultiVersus Closed Alpha is now live and there are several ways in which players can get their invite codes to participate in this alpha.

- Currently, MultiVersus offers Xbox (One and Series X If one of your friends has already received a code, they can send invite codes to up to three friends. NOTE: This process does not guarantee you will get a code.

The Multiversus roster is loaded with famous characters, but some of the game's pop culture icons are easier to learn than others.

Getting the most out of him means learning to dodge incoming attacks so that you can generate a shield that protects both you and your partner. There’s just a lot to keep up with when you decide to play as Tom and Jerry. Many of their abilities often leave one character or the other vulnerable, and they often depend on the confusion of the average battle for attack windows. That means that you’re going to have to work to keep your distance while managing the cooldowns and ranges of some special abilities. As a Bruiser character, Garnet is designed to get in close and deal tremendous amounts of damage with powerful attacks. He has access to some notable ranged attacks, but they’re a little slow and lack the “get away from me now” appeal of other ranged abilities. She’s an Assasin character with access to a simple buff, a vertical strike, and a basic projectile. As long as you’re ok with relying on a few basic (and still fairly strong) attacks while you’re figuring out the timing of his transformation abilities, you should be ok. However, her simplest attacks can do a lot of the legwork, and she’s a great option for those looking to assist a more experienced partner. Fortunately, most of Finn’s attacks are designed to allow him to stay on the move and safely generate a respectable amount of coins. That means she’s not only naturally able to take more punishment than non-Tank characters but also come equipped with a variety of useful moves that offer additional defenses or can keep opponents at a distance. Your rage meter fills up pretty quickly through the natural course of play, and it’s easy enough to spot opportunities to fill it from a distance. While properly playing Shaggy means learning to spot opportunities to fill that rage meter as fast as possible, it’s really not that complicated of a mechanic.

We sat down with the creative director for Warner Bros.' new fighter to talk roster, netcode, and more.

With that said, we're trying to make the best service game we can, with the goal being to make the best live-service game ever. From the ground up we've had to relearn a lot of different things, including how we actually develop the game with the netcode. All of my friendships involve playing games in some way, it's important to my social life, and we wanted to bring that experience to the fighting game and platform fighter genre. There's a ton of history in these characters, and we want to make sure that we are developing the character in a way that is true to the actual character itself. Because of that, we want to make something that focuses on playing with friends, having a shared objective, and interacting with them. And that's a big part of it, making sure the characters are part of the world, interacting and responding to things that are happening as well as who they're with. After another pass we went back to the community, and they said we were going in the right direction, until finally we came out with the revised model of the character. It starts with gameplay and the way the character looks, and then with voice acting we make sure that they're fully realized as a character and that they deserve to be part of the roster. A big part of that is removing as many barriers to playing the game as possible and introducing this genre to as many players as possible. But internally, when we're looking at that character, we had the inspiration of "what if we could make a character with no physical attacks whatsoever?" That's just not something that I think would be foremost on players, but we thought that we could make something that would surprise and delight players, and that's why we opted to make Velma as part of the cast. Can we make this character play the way that you think that the character should play?"

Critics and fans got their hands on more footage from MultiVersus, and some think it could set itself apart from other fighting games based on good ...

Heavily noted similarities to "Super Smash Bros." aside, the developers appeared to push for a unique experience overall, especially with a dedicated team mode unlike any fighting games before it. In Webster's experience, the game's "real advantage" over "Smash Bros." was in the F2P model and how the game will feature complete cross-play functionality. Makar reported on the game's emphasis on team building, with each character having a unique ability to buff their teammates attack, defense and other capabilities. Andrew Webster of The Verge wrote that "there's very little that's original" regarding how the game plays, but believed it could become "a big hit" regardless. Critics pointed out the similarities to " Super Smash Bros." at length, but with several gameplay twists that set "MultiVersus" apart from the Nintendo franchise, and even " Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl." Other writers, like GameSpot's Jason Fanelli, similarly wrote that the game could "glimpse at the future of fighting games."

Enter MultiVersus: A free-to-play crossover platform fighter that brings together the worlds of WB-owned properties like Looney Tunes, the DC Universe, Scooby- ...

Its 2v2 mechanics are well designed and add new wrinkles to a familiar formula, its roster of characters is a wonderful mix of the new and the nostalgic, and its gameplay is immediately pick up and play friendly while still having plenty of tech for the more hardcore to dig into. Tom and Jerry is one of the most interesting examples, with the player only being in direct control of Tom, but using Jerry as both a projectile and a tool that can be called upon for a variety of other projectiles that can hit from unexpected angles. There are perks that can be equipped to characters that can slightly bolster their stats and add new properties to moves, but those can only be earned by playing with those characters and leveling up their character specific progression track. In addition to that, Steven can also place a healing zone on the ground that heals both him and his partner, he can put out a bomb that can be picked up by his teammate and delivered to the opponents, and he can shoot out a shield projectile that can grant a teammate armor if it passes through them. What this means is that aerial mobility is huge in MultiVersus. There’s no such thing as a character with a bad recovery, because every character has generally the same powerful tools to get back to the stage, and on the flip side of that, every character is also able to be super aggressive off-stage. That alone is enough to grab my attention, but the big question is whether MultiVersus will be able to hold its own with its core gameplay, progression mechanics, and free-to-play monetization plans.