Brawlhalla Adds Shrek As A Fighter, And It Made Me Want To Play On Steam Deck

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Back in the day, one of my favorite games to play with friends was Super Smash Bros. Melee. We would gather around at a friend’s house and play tournaments to see who was the best. It would ultimately come down to either myself or my friend, though it was a 50-50 shot between us for who would take first place. However, to get that fill on the Steam Deck, there are a few games that we can play. One of the ones I haven’t played a lot of is Brawlhalla. Developed by Ubisoft, the gameplay is fairly similar, with a different, more cartoonish art style. However, they have been crushing it on collaborations, and their newest one has caught my attention.

Yesterday, Shrek was added to the game, along with a few other characters and decorations from the franchise. When I first saw the announcement that Shrek was making its way to the game, I was confused and intrigued, and it was enough to get me to download the game on the Steam Deck and try it for myself to see if this is a solid contender for an enjoyable platform fighter on the go.

For the most part, performs quite well in combat. In all of the fights I played, the game would stick to 90 FPS without dropping. I’m not surprised, since this is a 2-D game with simple graphics, but I’m very pleased nonetheless. It feels great to play with a controller, and I could see it being a lot of fun to play with friends, especially when docked.

However, navigating through some menus does drop the framerate pretty heavily. It can sometimes go down to 22 FPS, stuttering as it’s loading in other entries. Luckily, it’s only in the menus, so it doesn’t really impact the moments that matter, but it’s still worth mentioning.

I could see it being a great game to play on the go, and it definitely caught my interest. Before this, my go-to platform fighter on the deck was Rivals of Aether, and it’s still one of my favorites purely because of the Steam Workshop integration. However, the mechanics in Brawlhalla are solid, and I really love the collaboration characters. I was seeing characters from Star Wars, Adventure Time,

And yes, that includes the one and only Shrek. Now, I did not purchase the characters from the franchise, but I did get to try them out through the store page. I have to say, whacking people around with a tree is quite satisfying. We can also play as Fiona and Puss in Boots, who have their own unique movesets. I quite like Fiona's kicks in the way she can grab and slam enemies down with her legs.

After playing Brawlhalla for a bit, I was actually quite surprised at myself for not trying it before. It’s a really fun game, and with a little investment, some of those collaboration characters look really wonderful. If I get enough coins, the first thing I’m gonna do is buy Shrek; that’s for sure.

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