{"id":669249,"date":"2026-04-03T22:32:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/digitalfoundry-2022-face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate"},"modified":"2026-04-03T22:32:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:32:43","slug":"face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\/","title":{"rendered":"Face-Off: MultiVersus vs Super Smash Bros Ultimate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate.jpg\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>The Super Smash Bros series is a near-impossible act to follow, but that&#8217;s exactly the challenge MultiVersus faces as a new, free to play Smash-like from developer Player First Games. Now in open beta on PS5, Xbox Series X, last-gen and PC, it&#8217;s a 5GB download that lets anyone hop in. It&#8217;s admittedly light on options &#8211; as you may expect from an open beta &#8211; but you do get to tinker with 17 characters &#8211; all fully voice-acted. Crucially, MultiVersus also launches with robust online play, built from the ground up with rollback netcode &#8211; right away giving it an edge over Super Smash Bros Ultimate&#8217;s online play on Switch. It&#8217;s off to a good start. Speaking purely on MultiVersus&#8217; visual design though as an Unreal Engine 4 title, how much does it get right next to Nintendo&#8217;s heavyweight? And where does it seem to fall short in its open beta state?<\/p>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s actually contained in the 5GB package? Entire modes are blocked off with a &#8216;coming soon&#8217; descriptor, but you do get a practise mode to test out everything. MultiVersus&#8217; character line-up alone is fascinating enough to warrant a giving it a try. Rather than pitting the mascots of the video gaming world against one another &#8211; as is the remit of Smash &#8211; here, it&#8217;s famous faces from Warner Bros&#8217; properties. Between comics, movie franchises, and TV shows, it&#8217;s a wider net being cast. Honestly, the result is as eclectic as it sounds: from Batman to Bugs Bunny, and from Arya Stark to LeBron James (in his Space Jam get-up). Fortunately the game is mechanically sound at its core. Smash fans will feel right at home with its 1v1 or 2v2 melee-battling; standard and special attacks, double jumping, dodging &#8211; it&#8217;s all here. Even if the movement take a bit of adapting to &#8211; and my preference remains with Smash Bros Ultimate in this spot &#8211; it&#8217;s impressive how much MultiVersus gets right.<\/p>\n<p>MultiVersus&#8217; technical make-up on console is strong. In a nutshell you get a native 4K at 60fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X, while Series S targets 1440p at 60fps. Dynamic scaling might be in use, given it&#8217;s an Unreal Engine title, but frame-rates are typically rock-solid at 60fps on all three machines &#8211; barring unique small drops on PS5 during the Sky Arena stage. All of this is a superb foundation to build on for a contender to Smash Bros. In fact, to compare the two, I tracked down the nearest-best match map in Smash Bros Ultimate to the small selection in MultiVersus. Hands up here, some side-by-sides are a bit of a stretch, I realise. Even so, you can see in the shots below that some maps &#8211; like the colosseum &#8211; have a direct equivalence. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/digitalfoundry-2022-face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/digitalfoundry-2022-face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Super Smash Bros series is a near-impossible act to follow, but that&#8217;s exactly the challenge MultiVersus faces as a new, free to play Smash-like from developer Player First Games. Now in open beta on PS5, Xbox Series X, last-gen and PC, it&#8217;s a 5GB download that lets anyone hop in. It&#8217;s admittedly light on options &#8211; as you may expect from an open beta &#8211; but you do get to tinker with 17 characters &#8211; all fully voice-acted. Crucially, MultiVersus also launches with robust online play, built from the ground up with rollback netcode &#8211; right away giving it an edge over Super Smash Bros Ultimate&#8217;s online play on Switch. It&#8217;s off to a good start. Speaking purely on MultiVersus&#8217; visual design though as&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":669250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[1572,6094,21,45,4616],"class_list":["post-669249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer","tag-digital-foundry","tag-multiversus","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-ps5","tag-xbox-series-x-s"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Face-Off: MultiVersus vs Super Smash Bros Ultimate | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Super Smash Bros series is a near-impossible act to follow, but that&#039;s exactly the challenge MultiVersus faces as a new, free to play Smash-like from\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Face-Off: MultiVersus vs Super Smash Bros Ultimate | Arcader News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Super Smash Bros series is a near-impossible act to follow, but that&#039;s exactly the challenge MultiVersus faces as a new, free to play Smash-like from\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/face-off-multiversus-vs-super-smash-bros-ultimate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n<meta 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