At first glance it’s hard to tell if Warner Bros. MultiVersus, a Smash Bros.-like fighting game featuring various Warner-owned characters like Batman, that yellow dog off of Adventure Time, and Shaggy, is more of a quick hustle piggybacking on misplaced metaverse hype, or an actually-quite-fun video game. Either way we were equal parts intrigued and horrified by that latest trailer, so we’ve been playing a little of its closed alpha in our spare time and honestly, we’re still not sure what to make of it. So we decided to have a chat and figure things out.
MultiVersus – Official Cinematic Trailer – “You’re with Me!” Watch on YouTube
Martin Robinson: So, multiverses are quite the thing now I guess? I just went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once at the weekend, which was great! And then I just played Warner Bros’ MultiVersus, which is also a thing…
Chris Tapsell: Loony Toons Metaweb 3.0 you mean
MultiVersusPublisher: Warner BrosDeveloper: Player First GamesPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out this summer on PC, PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox and currently in closed alpha
Martin: That’s the badger! It’s a fairly simple concept to grasp, really, though I hope you don’t mind me being reductive – it’s Warner Bros. does Smash Bros. with its vast amount of IP. They missed a trick by not calling it Warner Smash Bros?
Chris: They did, but the lawyers probably wouldn’t have loved that. The first thing I get from this game is ‘lawyers’, actually. Somehow this game feels more like Intellectual Property than usual, even compared to Smash or Marvel vs. Capcom or anything like that. That is my least favourite thing about it so far – but there are some things I like!