Overruled! Review (PS4)

Overruled! is a frantic, diverse brawler in which yourself and three other players compete against each other in order to amass points, with the highest total winning the match. Your score is determined by your performance in a selection of objectives, as well through more conventional means, like attacking your opponents – but there's more to the game than you might first expect.

Change-'em-ups are collectible cards that can be activated at any given time, and once they're used, they'll transform the current task at hand – for example, a 'king of the hill'-style tussle for territory can quickly become a wild and bloody fight for survival with the proper interjection. This allows for more tactical players to gain a significant advantage if they – no pun intended – play their cards right.

It's an interesting little mechanic, albeit a rather unstable one, as matches can often grow overly chaotic or busy because of it – although said busyness isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're looking for a zany time with some pals. If you're not looking for that, however, then you're pretty much out of luck, as the online serves are barren, and there aren't any AI controlled enemies to go up against offline, either.

The title at least controls fairly well, and the available roster of characters on offer poses enough variety for you and your friends to pick out favourites from it. Having said that, though, it's more likely that you'll just end up selecting them based on who it is that you can stand to hear the most, as the release's voice acting is grating, to put it lightly. Practically every line of dialogue is accredited to some sort of YouTube personality, right down to the announcer, and it's fair to say that these provide more value in the marketing side of things than the actual product itself, much like the game's beige sense of humour.

What's more, the outing's entire sound design starts to get old pretty fast – dull, familiar bleeps and fanfares absolutely litter it, and the repetitive score doesn't help to make this any more bearable. The same can be said for the title's art style, which aims tirelessly for a comic book aesthetic, but falls flat before it can achieve it, and ends up looking somewhat like a generic, store-bought, asset-driven mobile game.

Unfortunately, the stages provided aren't anything special either, with different levels simply switching up the placement of the platforms a little, and throwing in a new background image where they can. It's at this point that you might be wondering if Overruled! manages to offer anything more than a resoundingly standard romp with some local company, and the answer is, sadly, no. For any lone wolves among you, there are 54 challenge maps to conquer, but even these fail to surpass expectations, and are all relatively short-lived.