Smash is great, but it still has my Wii collecting dust.
Super Smash came out a while ago, and I held off the review until after I had played it with friends over break. Since this is a pretty broad game I will give a very brief talk about the basics of the game, and after that I will speak as though you have played a previous version of Smash.
Smash is a fast-paced, pound-your-friends-in-the-head game that stars your favorite Nintendo Characters. SSB:Brawl has 35 characters or 39 if you count Zero Suit Samus, the other two Pokemon that Pokemon Trainer Uses, and Sheik (no, not Nana, the other Ice Climber). The idea is to hit your opponents a lot and eventually hit them with a "smash hit" to launch them off the screen. Life bars do not count down, but instead they count up. Higher damage means that you will fly farther when you are hit. That is SSB:Brawl in a nutshell. Let's do some Pros and Cons.
Pros: This is everything you could expect from a new SSB game. More characters, more game modes, and more aspects of co-op play give that 2 player experience a little more fun than before.
The controls are perfect, as there are four different controllers you can use, and virtually every button can be customized. The music is completely fantastic and it seems like an endless list of tunes. The game is graphically brilliant compared to virtually anything else on the Wii.
The Final Smashes, special abilities each character can perform after collecting a Smash Ball, give the game a nice touch. It seems annoying in concept that a player could do such a strong attack simply because they got an item, but I like it. It gives players with less skill a chance to do something completely awesome, and it tends to be crazy fun chasing after the Smash Balls whenever they show up. That said, it can get really annoying when the same person gets most or all of the Smash Balls in a game. If that is something you do not like, you can always toggle the Smash Balls off via the Item Switch.
As a small note, the online play works well, but I feel weird playing online as, while I know I am fighting real people, the lack of interaction makes opponents feel fake.
Cons: The Subspace Emmisary (Adventure Mode from SSB:Melee) feels too long. It makes getting the characters much easier, and the story-telling is nicely done. The reason I do not like it is the last level.
(Spoiler, I guess) The last level makes you virtually replay the entire thing again in maze-format.
You have to fight all 32 (how many people I had at the time) people again along with the eight bosses you fought as well. It is completely tedious, pointless, and it is not fun. The first time through everything it is fun, but having to redo it without cinematics makes me sad. (end Spoiler)
The SSE also has too much of the platforming levels in it. They were neat in SSB:Melee because it was new. In SSB:B however, they are overused to the point of frustration. There are at least three levels/instances that I can think of right now that I wish they had never put into the platforming.
As I already said, the online feels superfluous. I cannot seem to enjoy playing against nameless, voiceless, and faceless people because that is what computer enemies are anyways. Playing with friends adds some aspects to that, but the Wii has a weak integration of online yet. To play with friends you would have to organize it some other way, instant messaging or what have you, in order to know when your friends were online. It would be nice to be able to put in the disk and say, "Oh, neat. Three of my friends are on right now. I guess I will play with them instead of all alone." The lack of voice chat also would leave me using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, or even XBOX Live chat (I thought of Halo or CoD lobbies) to chat with friends while I play.
My last complaint is that it is still Super Smash. It is an awesome game, but it is all the same. I had friends over during my break, but we did not play SSB:Brawl as much as I thought we would. Because when it came down to it we wanted to play new, creative games instead of Smash. This is not something that Nintendo could avoid I assume, but it happened to me and I can only assume that others are haveing the same thoughts after playing it a lot.
I give Super Smash Bros Brawl a 4 out of 5. It is a great game, if you are a SSB fan I don't doubt you will love it. Outside that niche I doubt it has much tread. It is another good game I have for the Wii, but it still does not have me playing my Wii all that much.
