Playstation All-Stars' Greatest Enemy: The Problems With A Teen Rating

Playstation All Stars Battle Royale's release date is coming up fast. As we approach closer and closer to the release date, more details about the game's story and characters are being revealed. While I'm eagerly anticipating the game's release, I've started to wonder something- just what is this game going to be rated?

We've gotten characters from games ranging from E for Everyone all the way up to M for Mature. If it was just the character's themselves then this wouldn't be a problem, but as we all know Playstation All-Stars will have a story mode to worry about. How will some of the more mature characters handle the transition to a more family friendly setting?

Out of the twelve characters announced so far, four of them are from M rated games. Sweet Tooth, Kratos, the Big Daddy and Colonel Radec. I'm sure we'll see a few more M-rated characters before the game's release this October, but we'll focus on these ones for now. Colonel Radec probably won't be that big of a deal going into All-Stars seeing as he's just a war nut who will stop at nothing to win.

Sweet Tooth

Things get more complicated when you get to Sweet Tooth. One of the main characters in the Twisted Metal series, Sweet Tooth was an ice cream truck driver who snapped and murdered most of his family while dressed as a clown. It then became his mission to find his surviving children and kill them too. While dropping him into a T-rated game should work, they'll have to seriously nerf his story if they expect to keep their rating at a T or lower.

Kratos

Then we have Kratos, killer of Gods, layer of women. Each sequel he starred in was pretty much just an exercise to see how brutally he can kill someone given the newest leaps in technology available to the team that created him. As we've seen from the gameplay trailers, Kratos has been tamed down considerably. At no point will he be pulling off Nathan Drake's head. In fact his story will probably just be about him finding whoever forced him into these fights so he can rip them in half off screen.

The Big Daddy

Finally we have the Big Daddy. A character who's soul mission in life is to stop people from murdering the children they protect. As far as I know, they don't really do much else other than that. Will the Big Daddy be fighting off Heihachi and Parappa from trying to kill a child? Doubtful, but I'm interested to see how they'll possibly involve that in the story.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale will not get an M-rating. There's no way it could become Sony's answer to Smash Brothers if it did! But just how will these characters work in a T rated setting? And what if Superbot decides to goes for an E-rating? Only time will tell, but until then I'll be looking forward to even more character reveals.

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How do you think Superbot will handle these rather violent characters in a game geared more towards a family friendly crowd? Do you think they'll be pulling punches when it comes to the stories of some of the more insane characters? Why not tell us what you think in the comments below? As always, thanks for reading.