Will punching folk in the face ever get boring? When those folk are loveable cartoon characters, probably not. Developer Fair Play Labs and publisher GameMill Entertainment have thrown Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 into the ring for some cartoony, punch-in-the-face action.

“Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 lets you duke it out with the biggest and best fighting character roster yet! Choose your favorite brawlers, master their unique move sets, and use all-new powerful Supers to land the finishing blow with friends or across a unique, roguelike player campaign!”

I’m going to make a bit of a confession… I’ve never liked Super Smash Bros. It’s just not a game franchise that I ever found any love for. I only mention this because, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 basically is Super Smash Bros. with Nickelodeon characters. Oh, this was also going to be one of my Daddy/Daughter reviews, but my daughter said that she didn’t want to play this one, so I’m having to do this one solo.

As I just confessed that I never liked Super Smash Bros. (nor any of its imitators), it will probably be no surprise that I never even knew that there was a first Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. This does mean that I went into this game with zero expectations. The short version is that I really was pleasantly surprised by this game. While someone better versed in the sub-genre that is the platform-fighter could probably pick several holes in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, I found it a genuinely entertaining title to play.

You get a decent-sized selection of characters pulled from a variety of Nickelodeon shows. Some I instantly recognised, with the likes of SpongeBob, Garfield, Ren & Stimpy, Donatello (TMNT) and Jimmy Neutron. And other characters that I have no idea who they were like… well I can’t tell you because I have no idea who they are. You can have some really great scraps on some fun stages that are wonderfully detailed and crammed with frantic fighting action.

There is a good selection of different game modes to test out your cartoony fighting skills. All the usual suspects are here in terms of modes to play. Yeah, you can try out the training mode to practise with your chosen character. A single-player arcade mode, multi-player modes that let you play both on and off-line and more. All the usuals.

But perhaps the most interesting game mode is a rogue-like campaign which throws in quite a bit of variety and kept me entertained more so than any of the other modes. You only get one chance to get to the end and you don’t heal between fights. You do earn in-game currency that can be used to unlock upgrades. So you lose, upgrade and try, try again, as is the very nature of a rogue-like.

In terms of the overall content, there really is quite a lot to get your teeth into with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 and you are far from being short-changed. But then again, this does depend on which version you go for. Rather generously, I was given a review code for the Ultimate Edition of the game. You get a costume pack and a season pass. What you get with the season pass is 4 new fighters and an extra costume, which does come with a £70 price tag. This does seem rather steep to me for a game like this, especially as the base game is a much more reasonable £40. Are the 4 other fighters and some costumes really worth the extra £30? I’m not going to make that call for you… but it is almost twice the cost of the base game.

However, £40 for the vanilla version is a pretty good price. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is available now for PC and all of the consoles. I may not be a fan of this type of game, but I do have to admit to having a good time with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. I think that someone who is a bigger fan of the platform-fighter sub-genre could have a much more enjoyable time than I did, and I really liked it. This is definitely worth a look.