Game: Brief Battles
Genre: Arcade, Multiplayer, Party, Fighting
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS4, Xbox and PC)
Developers|Publishers: Juicy Cupcake
Price: £12.49| €13.49| CA $19.83|US $14.99| AU $21.50
Age Rating: EU 7+, US E10+
Release Date: February 21st, 2020
Review code provided by Juicy Cupcake.
A Captain Underpants Battle Royale Game
Have you ever wanted to be like your favorite superhero Captain Underpants? Okay…maybe he’s not your favorite superhero (he was definitely mine as a kid), but I’d say he’s definitely on par with all the Marvel and DC heroes out there. Anyway, if you’ve ever coveted underwear related superpowers or even if you’re just someone who gets a good laugh out of butt jokes, then, my friend, this may be the perfect game for you. Brief Battles is a multiplayer party game that has you assume the role of a pink sausage like thing(?) and don some magic underwear that will have you soaring, clawing, and shooting snot at your frenemies.
Butt-tastic Gameplay
The gameplay for Brief Battles is simple, yet fun. The main menu has three different options. You can jump right into an arena battle, practice your skills in challenge mode (The only mode that allows single-player use. More on that later), or check out the rewards for all your booty mashing glory.
So let me jump right into the meat of this game which is the arcade mode. Arcade mode cannot be played with only one player. You need at least two and no more than four to play the main battle games. When I started the game up by myself I tried to look for a CPU option, like what Smash Bros offers, but it seems this game doesn’t support the use of robot players. Juicy Cupcake isn’t kidding when it says this is a party game—no loners allowed.
So many battle modes, so many underpants
Once you’ve straddled a friend or two into the game, then the fun can begin. In the battle arena you have four different play styles. There’s classic mode, where you’re just trying to knock out your friends in a crazy free-for-all; there’s knockout mode, which is slightly different and has a quicker pace and less lives; there’s also underpants collector, where you attempt to amass the most underpants in the time limit (harder than it sounds); and lastly there’s hold the gold, my favorite variation that has you holding a specific pair of pants that slows you down and challenge you to retain them as your friends come at you form all angles trying to attack. What I enjoyed most is that ach of these options had an alternative battle style. For example, I didn’t really enjoy the fast pace of classic knockout, so my friends and I played the alternative “high health” mode that allowed for a bit longer battles.
Once you and your friends have selected a battle arena you get the option of five different regions to play in. For example, you can play in a desert level theme or maybe a forest level theme. The super-powered underpants available in each don’t change; rather, the region affects the slightly different stage layouts you can battle in.
My favorite was the crystal caverns as it had a lot of portals. You could either jump through these portals or send your attacks through them to hopefully hit your target on the other side. I thought these different stage were definitely fun; however, I wish there could have been more variety to them. Depending on the match that you choose, you could have battle that last for like nine rounds. Gameplay starts to feel repetitive when you begin to revisit the same stages during a battle. Sure, there are different theme arenas to choose from, but pretty early on you would have experienced them all.
Speaking of arenas, the game does not have a split screen. The screen stays motionless, the only things moving are the different platforms and your pink pudgy underpants loving friends. Which, I now have to mention, are quite adorably silly. Once again, I have no idea what they are supposed to be, but each character seems to represent something different. Sparrow looks like a pilot while Becky seems to be a pirate. My bookish friend liked playing as Professor Tubbins, the monocle mustache looking fellow, and my other friend thought it would be a laugh to be Chad. Oh, Chad. Anyway, there are six different characters to choose from. None are customizable and there can’t be two of the same characters on screen. For example, there’s no variant color scheme for Violet. Violet is violet and you just gotta like it.
The power is in the pants
Okay, now for the real meat. What defines Brief Battles is its silly superpower-packed underpants. Power isn’t defined by what character you pick; in fact, they’re all very much the same. No one character is faster or stronger than another. They purely aesthetic and allows for everyone to have an even playing field. Your attack power comes from the different underpants that you randomly adorn throughout the stages.
There’s underwear that lets you shoot fire, ice or snot. There’s one that gives you extra defense and allows you to slide out of sticky situations. My favorite one was the leopard print underwear that allowed my Becky to become super fast and attack with some claws. Each underpant is in a purple box scattered randomly throughout the stage. If you get one you don’t like, then you can just jump around for another, as they respawn pretty often and all over the place.
There’s also white boxes that allow you to regain health, and mysterious orange boxes that can either be helpful, by granting you some underwear, or harmful. My friend jumped onto an orange box and it ate him! In the middle of battle I couldn’t understand why there was an orange present box dancing around the screen. Yikes!
It’s all very fun, but I do need to share my gripes with the game. Like the stage levels, I felt as though there wasn’t much variation in underpant powers. I felt as though the game could have been more unexpectedly fun if there were more like twenty different underpant powers to get instead of the five or seven that kept popping up.
The good news is that this may in fact be remedied in the near future. Juicy Cupcake is working on a content update that will be added (I assume for free) sometime soon. We don’t know when just yet, but it’s good to know this game was made by publishers who care about their game. Whenever the update is announced, I’ll be excited to see more underpant powers and different arenas to play in.
Conclusion
Even though I’m usually adverse to crude butt humor, Brief Battles did in fact get some chuckles out of me. At times the loading screens were long and only once did my game crash, but these weren’t problems that ruined the experience for me. I went in thinking I just need to play this game to review, but it didn’t take long for me to start pleading for another round with my friends. (What can I say, I’m a sore winner.)
If you’re looking for a game that’s quick, fun, and doesn’t punish you for not having tons of skill (required for other multiplayer games like Smash Bros or Pokken Tournament), then Brief Battles may be a perfect fit! (Get it?)
Final Verdict: I like it 