Super Smash Bros. Brawl

One of the most eagerly anticipated games for the Wii is (finally) here! With a huge number of characters from Nintendo’s past frantically battling it out, this game adds up to multiplayer fun for a long time to come, but unexpectedly, a great single player experience due to the new ‘Subspace Emissary’ mode.

Yes, after countless delays Super Smash Bros. Brawl is here. But has it been worth the wait? One of the most exciting parts of the game is the Subspace Emissary mode. This is the replacement for the Adventure mode from Super Smash Bros. Melee on the Gamecube. Unlike Melee though, instead of taking approximately 10 minutes to complete the adventure mode, the Subspace adventure takes the average player about 10 hours to complete. This mode introduces all of the game’s characters to the player as you play through the levels and encounter them in very well presented cut scenes, full of action. One example of how exciting the cut scenes are is when (without spoilers!) some bad guys are attacking you and a Starfox Arwing will fly in and Fox jumps out after shooting at them and forms up alongside you. This had me on the edge of my seat, thinking how amazing that just was.

So, the multiplayer. With 36 characters to choose from and a wide variety of old and new levels to battle it out on, getting together with up to three friends and trying to prove you’re the best is great. Those of you who have fond memories of competing with others on Melee will not be disappointed. If you have more than 3 friends you could try the ‘tourney’ mode. Making its return from Melee, the tournament style of battling each other and CPUs is still a fun way of deciding who’s best once and for all. But why not try a new feature for those of you with a larger crowd of people; the rotation mode. This allows you to play with more players than you have Wii remotes by setting whether you want the highest scoring players to be switched out for new ones or the losers. But on the other side, for those of you looking for a good single player brawl, the AI bots can be set to a range of difficulty levels so you can still get a frantic experience.

So you may be thinking that Smash Bros. Brawl will be flawless. Well… almost. The online experience can be very laggy, depending on your opponents, and it can take a while to find opponents. After the great lag-free experience of Mario Kart Wii, some players may be a little disappointed by the online. However, it’s not all bad. There are lots of things you can do online, with friends or random players round the world. The home run contest where you bash a sandbag as far as you can (co-op online and off) and also online team brawls, where you get paired with another player and work together to win against two others.

So overall Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a very good Wii game. The Subspace Emissary mode is a must play for all Wii owners and the brawling is a worthy successor to Melee. Those of you who enjoyed Melee will love this and new players will soon learn due to the easy to learn controls, which are full customisable. Every player can set their own controls and the setup they would like to use (remote and nunchuck, Gamecube controller, remote on its side or classic controller) and save them to the remote. This can be taken to a friends house and exported to their console so that you can take your preferences with you. It is easy to see why it took so long to develop because of the hundreds of stickers and trophies to collect, objectives to complete and the ability to create your own stages. The online may not be fully polished, but it can still be enjoyable. Some of the best graphics on the Wii and so many things to collect and create means that this game has been worth the wait.

Shadowsun9