Back in the day, there was a game that was released on the Nintendo 64 called “Super Smash Bros.” While it was small and developed on a low budget, it was awesome! Where else could you play as all your favorite Nintendo players and have Mario punch Yoshi until he died? This game was an amazing concept and put a twist on the fighting genre.

Thus, when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, it was a phenomenon! With even more lovable characters, improved graphics and modes, it enjoyed critical and financial success as one of the highest selling games for the Gamecube. It also became the first Nintendo game to be featured in a professional league. Melee was an amazing game that took Super Smash Bros. on the N64 and improved it in almost infinite ways!

Then came the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. The hype was on, would the greatest game for the Gamecube become even greater? With every announcement things sounded better: new characters, new moves and most important of all is the inclusion of online play!

This game was delayed several times to make improvements, which makes perfect sense. The developers had to make sure this was the perfect game, it was not only the pressure from the Melee fans but it was also going to be nearly vital to keep interest with the Wii. Ever since the Gamecube, there has been almost zero third party support with Nintendo, thus they needed to make sure whenever they released a first party game it better be extremely good.

Did the developers succeed in creating the perfect game? No, they did not make the perfect game. However they did succeed in creating a good game. Let’s take a look, shall we?

GAMEPLAY:

The biggest flaw with Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the fact that some aspects of the Gameplay were improved, but some parts actually took a step down. I’ll start with the positive aspects and move onto the negative.

The improvements on Brawl, where there were any are great! The new characters are a welcome addition as you now have more choice to what you can play as. The new characters are on the whole less clone like and have unique moves. This allows for more specialization with characters as you have to be smart to achieve a lot of success.

One thing I do wish about them was that some of the moves were more balanced, Pit’s Forward B move, for example is nearly impossible to escape from unless you wait until your damage is high enough. Similar to this is Ike’s Up B move, which makes him virtually invulnerable while he uses it.

In addition to the new characters, we have new stages and new items. The stages have made some improvements in giving us more fair places to battle, but some stages such as 75m are simply horrid to play on. They also gave us a Stage Builder, which sounds like a good idea at first but when you actually use it you will find out you have to unlock the stage parts first, and even then the choice you have of things to put in is very small and in the end most of your stages will be nearly unplayable.

The items are fine; there are no real “cheap” items beyond the ones that were already cheap in the first place. I never play with items on anyway because I feel it upsets the balance too great when playing to have any real fun (I’ll get to that later). One important item addition is the “Smash Ball”, which floats around and you have to break it. If you are the one to break it, you get an all powerful attack that will either kill your opponent or deal him a lot of damage called a “Final Smash”. These attacks, while sometimes cheap allow for a lot of laughs at parties.

Another positive addition is you can do a lot of Co-Op in single player modes such as the Stadium Events (Home Run Contest, Multi-man Melee), Event Matches and most importantly the all new Subspace Emissary. The Subspace Emissary is the upgraded version of Melee’s “Adventure Mode”, and contains many new levels and some beautiful cut scenes that tell a story. The only flaw I found with the story is that none of the characters actually talk, leaving your imagination to it.

The levels in the Subspace Emissary can get somewhat dull, as basically all you are doing is running from the left side of the screen to the right side (side scroller) while avoiding all the enemies. It was actually fairly easy and you will blow through it in a couple of days. By completing this mode you can get every character unlocked right at the beginning and it’s no longer a challenge to get them all.

Speaking of unlockables, you get a big challenge section with a box for every thing you can unlock in the game. If you unlock one, you can see the requirements of all the challenges around it. There are also some “Golden Hammers” you collect to break some boxes. However, it doesn’t work on all of them which can be a pain as some are quite hard to unlock. And it’s also a pain that a lot of the Music and less important things start unlocked because you can’t enjoy them from the start.

Now it’s time to focus on the real negative aspects:

Brawl’s online mode is just terrible, although I suppose it is better than nothing. Basically, you add “friend codes” to get your friends on, however it’s not simply one person adds the other and they get a message saying that you added them, they have to add you too. One of the worst things is you can’t communicate with your friend besides four small messages that come up when you taunt. It’s hard to tell someone you have to go and it can leave them wondering if you just lost connection or if you’re stopping playing.

The play with people you don’t know mode is just awful. Nintendo is too afraid that little kids might get molested to put in a decent online mode. You can only play a timed match with four other people (yes, it waits until it is full) before you play. I prefer 1v1 stock matches, but I’m forced to play 1v1v1v1 Timed Matches. You can’t communicate with people you play with in any way, and you can’t add them to your friends list either.

Not to mention the online loading time. Fortunately they did give you a waiting room where you beat up a sandbag while waiting. This is about the best part of the online. And the worst part of it all is the lag. While some matches have been virtually lag free I’ve taken part in some where I could press the jump button and literally could count four seconds before my character even started to move. Stick to playing with friends in real life.

Now to get down on Brawl’s new physics engine, what was so wrong with the old one? They changed the engine to remove tactics that made Melee players better than the average gamer such as Wavedashing, L-Canceling and that sort of thing. Okay, fair enough, but did they have to take out the fast paced battles of Melee? It’s all so slow now, and the engine was tweaked so most of the time you will be in aerial combat. This is a huge change because in Melee I was doing short hops and beating the crud out of my enemy, but now I’m in the air going extremely slow trying to hit my enemies. It’s horrid. And those long combos you could pull off in Melee, where you hit the enemy repeatedly racking up big damage, with them completely at your mercy no longer exist. It’s a hit and run kind of game now.

The last negative about Brawl is the balance, while I agree having character moves and stages is necessary for a good game, they made it so that any player can immediately be good. This is no longer a fighting game, it’s a party game. I went from defeating my 16 year old gaming friends to playing my friend’s 9 year old little sister. We played a match with items on and I actually lost. What the heck? I was the king of Melee among my friends, but one match in Brawl and I lost to a little girl? Yes, that is correct. In Brawl, a total master could end up losing to someone who is mashing the buttons as fast as they can.

I’m a competitive guy, thus to try and get some fairness into these matches I actually remove all the items from play. No longer will a bomb spawn on me right as I’m charging up a huge powerful attack only to get blown away by this randomly placed item. The only way to have fun with items on is if you are playing with a load of newbies or you simply don’t care. But if you’re the guy who owns the game and plays it all the time, you shouldn’t be able to be defeated by a first timer because he got better items. Seriously.

The last gripe I have with the gameplay of Brawl is the inclusion of tripping. That is correct, you can now randomly fall over while playing in Brawl. I’m attempting a big attack and I end up sitting on my butt. The only time this is useful is sometimes randomly you can get it and avoid a big attack, but seriously, what were they thinking? It wouldn’t be so bad if they just gave us the option to turn it off, but we’re stuck with it. After about a month with this game I found myself playing Melee again.

GRAPHICS:

The Graphics were one of the best aspects of the game, this is a Wii game, and the Wii has the worst graphics of all the current generation consoles. However, Brawls were done in a style where there is no real good or bad. It’s an artistic thing, the graphics are very pleasing to the eyes and the effects are decent enough, although the regular attacks could probably be a little flashier. The Final Smashes were absolutely gorgeous to watch and the cutscenes in the Subspace Emissary are wonderful! However, if you are expecting Call of Duty 4 quality graphics you will be sadly mistaken.

SOUND:

The music playing in this game are all your classics from the games the characters and stages are from. They’re awesome and great to listen to, and not only that but you can now go through and listen to all of them in the Sound Check, as well as set the frequency that a song will appear in a stage. Now you have a lot more options than Melee had with your music. Unfortunately, the majority of the songs have to be unlocked which can detract from the experience a bit as some can be a little difficult to obtain.

The effects all sound nice, hits and special attack sounds all are recycled from old games or they made their own but either way they are enjoyable to listen to and add to the overall experience. You can also listen to all of these in the Sound Test menu.

STORY:

The Story of the Subspace Emissary isn’t all that interesting really. There’s almost no depth to it at all and it feels at some times that things are just thrown in for the heck of it. The fact that the characters don’t speak (I mean, would it kill them to throw the non-mute ones some words, such as Snake?) kind of makes it hard to understand what is going on at some points. If you have an active imagination then it can be a ball to make up lines for what the characters are saying. As I said before the story is just a pile of things thrown together to make it so you can play as all the characters and extend the life of the game.

CONTROL:

The controls in Brawl are good, but only because they gave you so many options to choose from. You can play with a Remote, a Remote and Nunchuck, a Gamecube Controller or the Classic Controller. All of the options except the Gamecube controller feel clunky and horrible if you have played Melee so you’ll probably break the old ‘cube controllers out. If you don’t have a Gamecube controller it won’t be so bad because you’ll have to learn the controls one way or another.

You can also completely customize the controller in one of the menus, so if the buttons do something you don’t feel they should do you can change it to something that suits you. Thank you for something smart, Nintendo!

OVERALL:

On the whole the game is decent, but it’s not god’s gift to gamers as some people seem to think it is. It’s a must buy for the Wii only because the library of good games is rather small and you probably won’t regret the purchase. You might think this review was harsh on the game but it was my honest opinion while playing the game and if you haven’t played the old ones you might not understand where I am coming from. If you haven’t played Brawl, then you may understand once you play it. Anyway, here is how I scored it:

Gameplay: 16/20
Graphics: 18/20
Sounds: 20/20
Story: 13/20
Control: 19/20
Overall: 86/100

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