Destruction AllStars Season 1 now live on PS5

Destruction AllStars has flipped the switch on its first major update since the game launched on PlayStation Plus back in February. Developer Lucid Games are kicking off Destruction AllStars Season 1 “Hot Shots” which adds a new playable character, Alba, while also introducing the AllStar Pass which comes loaded with unlockable rewards, rewarding players as they compete online.

Patch notes for the Destruction AllStars Season 1 update have been released, detailing a number of game improvements.

There’s still more to come from Season 1 – on May 19th 2021 the PS5 exclusive will introduce a new photo mode as well as the eagerly awaited Blitz game mode. Between May and July 2021 we’ll see new character story modes become available alongside a number of timed playlists.

Destruction AllStars Season 1 Patch Notes

• Season One: Hotshots has begun!

• A New AllStar has joined the roster!

  • Alba has been added into the game for all players to use at no additional cost.

• Added The AllStar Pass to Destruction AllStars

  • The AllStar Pass adds a new way for players to earn cosmetic rewards

  • The Pass contains a free tier and a premium tier

    • The premium tier can be purchased for 1000 Destruction Points

  • Players can level up their AllStar Pass by earning Season Points through various methods of online play:

    • Completing multiplayer matches online

    • Completing weekly Seasonal Challenges

    • Completing Sponsor Challenges

Missing Trophies

• Fixed an issue where players would earn a badge for completing the requirements, but not the trophy.

  • After a match is complete, a check will be made against your account regarding which badges you have, if the trophy for that badge is missing, it will then be applied to your account.

Voice Chat

• Re-enabled voice comms with new UI functionality.

  • Voice comms will be off by default.

  • Global voice comms settings can be changed in Options.

  • Voice comms can also be toggled in-game, by pressing the left side of the middle touch pad button.

  • Voice comms allows players to listen to all player voice chat or mute all player voice chat.

  • This represents our first phase rollout of new voice comms functionality.

Audio Improvements

• Added tannoy speaker music effects and air horn spot effects.

• The Barge Ready sound has been redesigned and will now play through the pad speaker.

• Added new sound for the Gridfall extra life pickup.

• Victory shouts from other players now play more clearly over other audio.

• Added sound effect for when your hero vehicle is ready to be called in.

• Added new voice lines at the start of a match.

Gameplay

• Adjusted Game timer for all modes.

  • Mayhem and Coronado adjusted to 5 minutes, previously 6 minutes.

  • Gridfall adjusted to 3 minutes, previously 6 minutes.

    • Gridfall now features a 30 second grace period at the start of a match where you have one temporary extra life.

• Renamed Challenge Series to Story Mode

  • Same content, new name!

• Fixed an issue with the ‘Smash 20 Score Crates in Wildfire’ star objective in Lupita’s Story Mode.

  • Will now complete if the 20th crate is the last crate in the event.

Network

• Fixed an issue where users with new PSN accounts on first boot were sometimes not being matched with existing players.

• Resolved an issue which sometimes interfered with successfully matching North American and European players.

Balancing

• Bluefang

  • Shredder: Increased the cooldown of the shred from 20s to 25s.

  • Decreased the time the shred is active from 5s to 4s.

  • Reduced vehicle health by 20 (previously 220).

• Hana

  • Sabre ability when active, will beat Bluefang’s Shredder ability when active. (so it will slice the shredder, not shred the slicer).

While Destruction AllStars certainly has some novelty (besides being a car combat game released in 2021) the lack of free singleplayer content, coupled with the eventual repetition that sets in definitely hold the PlayStation exclusive back. In our Destruction AllStars review we scored the title a decent 6 out of 10:

The car combat genre has long been out of fashion and still has a way to go if it wants to take us back to its glory days of the 1990s. Destruction AllStars is a mostly satisfying modernisation that has some neat ideas and looks fantastic, though ultimately spins its tyres on repetitive rival-wrecking gameplay and a lack of truly worthwhile content at launch.

Destruction AllStars was originally slated to launch alongside Sony’s PlayStation 5 last November. However, the game was delayed only to emerge later as one of February 2021’s PlayStation Plus freebies. The game is now no longer available via PS+ and must be purchased via the PlayStation Store. We’ve yet to get confirmation on whether a physical launch is still going ahead.

Source: Reddit