Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Overview:

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is one of those games that could have gone in a couple of directions. Nintendo could have cranked it out in under a year with a few new characters and stages and justified it with the new hardware of the Wii (as some sequels actually do). And we all would have been satisfied with it for that matter. Luckily, Nintendo knows what their fans want, and took the time to nurture this game into the powerhouse that it really is. It has been a long time coming and many people have wondered if it can live up to the massive hype surrounding it. To end the suspense, I can safely say that this is the Smash game we have always wanted. Any self-respecting Wii owner, or gamer for that matter, should go buy this game right now because we need more like it.

To start off, if you aren’t in the loop, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is basically Nintendo’s love letter to its fans. Ever want to see Solid Snake shoot and RPG at Pikachu’s cute little face? Want to see Sonic finally get his long awaited revenge on Mario? Well that’s exactly what you’re going to get, and then some. Brawl takes all of Nintendo’s favorite franchise characters, as well as a few unexpected game figures, and puts them in an arena for them to fight to the death. Welcome to the thunder-dome b**** =D. But no seriously, Brawl isn’t your standard fighter. Instead of draining away a life bar, you will try and rack up as much damage to your opponents as possible, and then send them careening of the screen into the abyss. The more damage you cause the more prone they are to be sent flying off into space. Damage isn’t the only way to cause death though. Each stage has a boundary on either side of the arena, and even sometimes in the middle, or other random spots. If you’re character accidentally steps over these boundaries and falls off, it’s your job to jump back and grab onto the edge in time or you will fall to your death, and loose a life. Once all your lives are gone you will have to sit out and wait for the match to end (depending on your match setup).

Matches can play out in a couple of ways. You can either set a predetermined amount of lives and play until one player is left standing, or you can set a time limit with an unlimited amount of lives, and play for the most kills. Both of these styles can be customized to your likings.

One trait the makes Smash standout from all the other brawlers, is it’s inclusion of items and collectables in the battleground. Pokeballs, mines, fans, hammers, and other classic items return with new upgrades, but Nintendo has also included many new items to use in your fisticuffs. Trophies and stickers also appear that can be collected to go toward a 100% completion rating, and can also be used to enhance your stats in the single player mode. Most notably and one of Brawls defining features is the inclusion of the Smash Ball item.

Smash Ball:

The smash ball randomly appears throughout a match and floats around for people to hit. The main objective is to attack the ball like a piñata, until it finally breaks open and grants you a power like none other. Each player has its own unique final smash attack (with the exception of a few duplicate characters) and each one can be a game-changer. If you happen to break it open the game pauses for a moment to highlight the new bringer of destruction, but then the mayhem resumes. It’s to your advantage to line up your opponents in front of you and then unleash the fury by pressing the A button. These attacks are truly a spectacle, and not something that you want to mess around with. If you see Mario closing in on you with a final smash, get out of the way in any way possible. If you don’t it’s very likely you’ll be saying sayonara to your friends as you are jettisoned off-screen into oblivion. Most final smashes result in certain instantaneous death, even if you have taken no damage yet. Yes, they are that powerful. There’s nothing quite like having your friends cowering in fear of your awesome might, and then unleashing it to obliterate everything off the screen. I do have a few complaints with this feature, which is a shame because it is probably the best part of the whole match.

For one, a few of the character’s final smashes are not very effective. Most notably: Luigi’s, Pikachu’s, and Wario’s. They just don’t pack as much of a punch as some of the other character’s. Likewise, some character’s final smashes are just too powerful, and when they are unleashed, there is just nothing that you can do about it. This leaves the game feeling a tad unbalanced. The worst offender of this crime has to be Sonic.

A group of friends and I sat down and played around 4 hours of multiplayer one night. My friend chose to be Sonic every time, and we all started to notice why. Every single time he would get the smash ball, and it would just annihilate everyone. It is probably the cheapest thing in the entire game. Sonic transforms into a glowing entity and flies around the screen, being able to pass through any surface, and all he has to do is touch you and you go flying off the screen. The best thing I can equate it to, is it being like a virtual windshield wiper, and you are the poor rain droplets that never even stood a chance. My friend protested and said confidently, “I bet I could still beat you all if you use Sonic and I play as someone else.” We all then rotated Sonic around and whoever played as him, surprise surprise, ended up winning the match. Safe to say we outlawed him for the night. Also we started to notice that Sonic could break open the smash ball easier than any other character. You could be absolutely wrecking the ball, and all Sonic would have to do was walk up and breath on it to make it explode.   Other than Sonic no other character’s final smashes are that unbalanced.

My last complaint with it is the aforementioned duplicate characters. For example: Fox, Falco, and Wolf are three separate characters in the game that have the exact same final smash. The characters already have little to differ in the ways of their normal attacks, but now that they all have the same final smash, it just makes me wonder if the developers ran out of ideas, or just got lazy. I mean, Mario and Luigi have very similar fighting styles, but they still have completely different final smashes. So why do some have the same? Overall though, with the sheer variety of great characters (35 in all) it’s hard to complain about. With the exception these few complaints I find Brawl to be very well balanced and it is very easy to find yourself taking a liking to one character and perfecting your skills with him.

Controls: 10

 Brawl has four primary controller options. You can either play on a classic controller, a Gamecube controller, a Wii remote, or a Wii remote and a Nunchuck. The beauty of this is that you never will be at a loss of controllers because there are so many different selections. In addition to these four unique styles you can completely customize the button layout of each controller style. This means that there are literally millions of controller combinations that you can have, that ultimately let you tailor the game to your needs. And this is another really defining feature of Brawl. Nintendo really wanted it to be YOUR game. The game allows you to customize nearly anything in the game which in turn makes the experience very rewarding and long lasting. Honestly, it would have been enough with the fan service brought on by these legendary match-ups, but with the addition of all the extras and customizability, it makes this game probably one of the most content rich games ever made.

Single Player: 9

Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s talk about the real meat of the game. And boy, if this game were a steak you’d have to be John Candy to eat your way through the whole thing (Great Outdoors reference =D). First off, is the single player aspect. Now I could sit here and literally ramble on for days about all the things you can do in Brawl, but for the sake of your attention I will try and highlight its key features. Brawl returns to form and gives you the standard career that allows you to pick a character and run him through around 20 stages of CPU opponents. You can pick from a wide variety of difficulties, and can use any characters that you unlock throughout the game. This is where most of the replay value comes from. There are 35 characters for you to run through and if you add the number of difficulty settings, it equals a ton of hours.

If you find yourself bored with that you can start Brawl’s new feature, the Subspace Emissary mode. This is Brawl’s main story campaign and probably its most shocking feature. Now, I would have been fine with the normal career, multiplayer, online, etc. but this was a pleasant surprise. It’s not some throwaway mode; this is a full fledge engaging story that includes all of the characters into one cohesive package. The plot might be a little thin, but truthfully this is every Nintendo fans wet-dream, and the ultimate form of fan service. The story can be played with two players and will last up to around 6-8 hours if you go through it at a steady pace. If you are determined to get 100% completion it could take anywhere from 10-15 hours! That’s more than some strictly single-player games! Along your way through the subspace emissary you will meet up with all the characters available in the game, and once you meet them in the story they are unlocked for all the other modes in the game. This really gives you the incentive to play through, so you can have a full roster. The story switches perspectives from different groups of characters and lets you choose which ones you want to control out of their groups. In the end they all come together and you can stack you own “A-Team” with your personal favorites.

After every chapter is beat you are treated with a CGI cut-scene. These look amazing and really show off the Wii’s hardware. Honestly, Nintendo could probably have made this into a movie. Yes, it looks that good, and is that entertaining. The characters don’t really talk, but they gesticulate their motives and make there trademark grunts and noises. You always know what is going on though, and are excited to see what will happen next.

My only complaint with this mode is the pacing. Every stage has you moving from right to left fighting different enemies along the way. Although these enemies are completely unique to this story and have no other Nintendo relevancy (which is nice to see), you start to see a lot of the same enemies and it becomes rather repetitive. There are maze stages, but it still revolves around the same formula. Each chapter has a boss to it and the main strategy in beating them is usually to stand next to it and button mash until it’s dead. It doesn’t take a whole lot of skill, and gets a little boring after a while. As a whole the experience is very entertaining, it’s just I wish they would have added some variety in the things you have to do. Overall though, this mode is a welcome addition to the franchise and will add to its lasting appeal.

In addition to the story and the CPU campaign, you can also set up matches with CPU-based opponents and practice your skills by yourself (just as you could in the previous games). Also there are a decent amount of mini-games and challenges that allow you to collect items and set high scores.

Another unexpected addition is a “create a stage” mode. You can create a stage using a variety of objects and templates from the game, and then you can upload them to the website for people to download. This adds a ton of replay value because you have a constant influx of new stages.

Multiplayer: 8.5

            Multiplayer is really Smash Bros. bread and butter. It is what made the franchise popular and it is still one of the most fun experiences you can have to date.   Nowadays with the inception of online gaming services, the LAN party is sort of becoming a niche thing and may be slowly dying out. I admit it had been a long time since I had played in a group tournament atmosphere. So when Brawl came out it was the best possible reminder I could get. There is nothing like sitting in a room with 20 other people screaming at the top of your lungs with fast chaotic action happening everywhere. Brawl continues this tradition and does it with more fluidity and grace than its predecessors. It is true, Brawl is a much slower game than Melee, but this comes with a new animation engine that looks amazing. The slower pace allows you to think about your moves and makes the experience a real thinking mans game. Brawl is one of those easy to learn, hard to master games. You can be in a group of 20 hardcore players and test your expertise, or sit down and play with 3 equally inexperienced friends. Either option is just as much fun.

            The offline multiplayer in Brawl stays true to form with a few improvements. You can still play with four people or less, with CPU players and tailor the match settings to your likings, but this time there is a whole new level of customizability. You can take out any items you want and set the level of frequency that they appear. You can even add special match settings. If you want, you can have a sudden death, bunny eared, metallic, slow-motion battle, and Brawl encourages you to do so. Stuff like that makes Brawl YOUR own personal experience rather than the same thing over and over.

            The online multiplayer is something veterans of the series have been dying for. I am sad to say that they may have to wait for the next “go around” for perfection however. The online multiplayer has some pretty basic faults. If one player has a laggy connection the whole game moves like a static jolty mess. If all players have a good connection it will move just like offline play, but finding such a game is a rarity. If things had worked out for the best, the content there is pretty good. While waiting for players to arrive you can mess around with a punching bag for practice. You can even be a spectator on live matches and bet on the winner. There are still no comprehensive leaderboards or friend systems, which is because of Nintendo’s online policy; it’s not the games fault. So overall, the content is there, but the connection problems drag down the online multiplayer.

Graphics: 9

For a Wii game, Brawl looks amazing. It runs in 16:9 widescreen at 480p. The character animation is very fluid and all the models look great. Again, the cut scenes in the subspace emissary mode look outstanding. The menus look pretty good and are easy to navigate through. It may not look as good as Super Mario Galaxy, but it is very close in quality to that, and overall it’s a pretty remarkable feet.

Sound: 9.5

            The music in the game is great. It opens with a powerful orchestral score and each level has its own personal theme song that provides nostalgia for long time fans of the characters series. There are also dozens of unlockable songs that can be customized to fit any level you want. The trademark sound effects are back again and are better than ever. You’ll still hear the same “FALCON PUUUNNNCH!!” among other ones, and they all stay true to form. Overall the entire audio of the game is very well done, and Nintendo aims for you to recognize that.

Replay Value: 10

            Honestly, and without hesitation, I can say that this game has perfect replay value. There is so much content in this game it’s staggering. Let’s go down the list: 35 characters to unlock and play through the CPU game, 10-15 hour subspace emissary mode, create a stage mode, offline multiplayer, online multiplayer, item collection, challenges, mini-games, etc, etc, etc. and I could go on and on. Nintendo has really set the industry standard of paying attention to what the fans want and giving it to them in a way that surpasses any expectations we had by twofold. Knowing that getting 100% completion would probably take around an estimated 50+ hours, and then adding all of the offline and online multiplayer is truly mind-boggling. Few games can match the level of depth this game goes into, no hyperbole.

Overall: 9.3

            Basically, YOU NEED TO OWN THIS GAME! You would be a fool not to, and would be missing out. I have only scratched the surface in explaining to you what you can do in Brawl. There is so much to do and see in the game it would be a feat in and of itself to become bored with it. And even if you did see everything there is still an endless amount of fun to be had with the multiplayer. I give this game my highest recommendation and I wish you good luck in trying to pull yourself away from it. Do yourself a favor, go pick up this game, and say goodbye to your free time.