Super Smash Bros. Brawl

THE BAD:

SUMMARY:
Overview of the Game:

The Super Smash Bros. series has gone though three games now, and the main question left to ask is, after a few months of playing, is Super Smash Bros. Brawl standing up to the legacy created by the original and Melee? Being a gamer, I have played the other games as well, and I have to say, the highlight of the series was Melee. It was one heck of a great game, with the least amount of flaws in the series. If you have played Brawl then you have probably asked yourself, “How many people do I truely see playing as characters such as Bowser, Princess Peach, Wario, Caption Falcon, or Jigglypuff?” The reasons behind people not playing as these characters is because of the lack of even game play between characters.

Bowser is too slow without enough power balance him out, and I don’t know what Princess Peach is supposed to be good at, and the same goes for Wario. Caption Falcon verges between power and speed, and as such, does not have enough of either. Jigglypuff, sorry, people have hated you since the first game. The character scheme is just not even. If you want even game play between characters, go play a game like Team Fortress 2. If you have ever watched a tournament, it proves that the characters were uneven, not just the players. In one tournament I was in, Ike won 1st and 2nd place. Ike was created unevenly, with many powerful attacks, and with a proper user, he could even create the illusion of being a fast character. The only downfall on him was his return move, or up-B. Overall the game just does not live up to its legacy. I’ve played Melee for 7 years, and it wasn’t until the 7th year I’ve started to get bored with it, whereas I can get bored of Brawl after about 2 hours. For the first 3 or so months it wasn’t boring, because there were achievements to fulfill. These are a good addition to the series. I enjoyed checking the section with the challenges to do, as it gave me something to do with my time in the game. Now that I have just 10 or so achievements left, I realize just how much of a waste of time it was, seeing as I could never get all of the pointless trophies and stickers. Stickers are completely pointless. They conduct even less of a thrill than trophies, which at least give you a brief background into the game that you have won the trophy for. The only thing you can really do with stickers is put them on the bottom of trophies. Why did they even put these into the game?

Game Play:

Game play is screwed up in so many ways. Some items have been changed, such as the fire flower. You can now move while spewing fire. This gives you the ability to deal massive damage at any time. It can build up to almost 50% before you run out of fire from the flower. With someone like Ike, this will allow you to kill someone with only one smash attack. In battle, weird things can happen such as an attack reaching too far, or a character turning around for no reason. The stages are brilliantly made, however. There are 41 preset stages to choose from, some of which you must unlock, and 35 characters, also some of which you must unlock. For the first time in the series you are able to create your own stages, increasing my stage selection screen to 140 stages (I made 99 custom stages with the aid of a friend). One of the best additions to the game is being able to save replays and pictures at any time in the pause menu. You are also allowed to download one stage, replay, and picture at random from Nintendo a day. You can go to a stage compile website to download stages that others have built if you have an SD card. All in all, game play is not poor, but the stage builder fails for what was expected, and the glitches in game can really drive a player crazy.

Single player (Story):

The story was extremely lacking. None of the characters would talk to each other. How can you create an interesting story with no dialog? And Nintendo pull the old game lengthening trick of making you play every level twice. Why? No one, except people who really like the game, will want to play every level again just for the sake of playing them again. Every boss was too easy until the final boss, when the difficult level goes from a 10% difficulty throughout the entire game to a difficulty rating of about 35%. Once you have beaten the game after a good 6-20 hours of your life, depending on how good you are at this game, you can finally play as one of the most anticipated characters, Sonic. He turns out to be hard to control, extremely weak, and has only 4 different moves. One of his moves turns him into a spiked ball that does very little damage. He can punch, he can jump up high on a spring, or he can kick down so fast you would think he was made of lead. All in all, new characters are found lacking and boring except for a few, such as Snake and Lucas, who find themselves thrown into the storyline with absolutely no introduction. If you read the literature found at The Official Smash Bros. Site, then you find out that the Halberd (the big ship that looks like Meta Knight) was stolen a long time ago, so Snake has probably been there for a long time. All in all, the story is one of the most pointless things I have ever taken time to go through, but I wanted Sonic, so I had to fight though endless amounts of pointless enemies to fight a stupid boss that doesn’t seem to mean anything to anyone. At least the other bosses came from another game and made sense.

In the end, Super Smash Bros. Brawl just didn’t cut it for me. It was below par after all that time they spent delaying and delaying, and Masahiro Sakurai just spent the whole time trying to tell us what he was going to do on the Smash Bros. site instead of actually working on the game. Half of the stuff that he said would be excellent was terrible, and a few of the things that he briefly mentioned, or didn’t mention at all, were better than the things that he wasted his time writing about.


Conclusion:

Super Smash Bros Melee was a better game for its time period. In retrospect, if you compare the two games now, Brawl is a better game, but the glitches just throw me off of the idea of an enjoyable fighting game. There were just too many of them to follow though with.

THE BAD:
Same old classic and all-star modes thrown in
Can get pretty boring after a while

SUMMARY:
Well to start things off brawl is probably my favorite game on the wii. I love destroying my brother and his friends on it as well as playing with people over Nintendo wifi connection. However I did not give this game a perfect score because it lacks certain elements to give it a perfect score (however a 4.3 still is pretty good).

Anyway to start off with the main thing you are probably looking for when buying brawl is just having brawls on its main mode. This hasn't changed too much from melee, it includes added items, cool new characters with the return of some characters from old games and bringing them back in style, such as Pit, the inclusion of third party characters, Sonic from Sega and Snake from the Metal Gear series, fun stages, and of course the arguments everybody gets into after a match.

As from past Smash Bros. games you can only defeat your opponent from ring outs unless of course you are playing stamina mode. The new smash balls are pretty cool and add alot to the game-play. It is a lot of fun to use to destroy your opponent and can flip the whole match around. Also with the new assist trophies you can call forth characters and they will help aid you in battle. These are a lot of fun but are mostly like poke balls.

As for the Subspace Emissary (from now on being referred to as SSE) it is pretty fun. You can now play co-op with a friend, and help save the brawl world from subspace! However SSE lacks fun. When you first start playing SSE you can be playing for like an hour and then you will find that it is just plain boring. The bosses for the most part are pretty easy. The SSE lasts about 3-5 hours to complete and maybe an extra 1-2 hours to unlock everything. The SSE for the most part is pretty easy after you get the hang of it. You can replay it once you beat it to obtain any boss trophies, stickers etc.

The new stage builder mode brings out some fun now that you can make your own stages. Also for the fun parts there is a lot of cool new music that is just great. You can even change the chance a song plays on a stage. Another cool returning feature is taking snapshots from brawls. Now however you can put them on an SD card and put them on the Internet. I find it enjoyable to be looking at all these hilarious snapshots people take of the characters. Now you can watch movie clips from the SSE and other things.

And the best part, online play using Nintendo wifi connection makes it very fun to play against skilled brawlers from around the globe! It has really improved from the online play when Brawl first came out because the matches were so laggy that every time you pressed a button it would take like 3 seconds for it to work. Now however the online play is pretty smooth for the most part. I still come across the occasional lag but it is nowhere near as bad as when it first came out.

Now for the bad points. Well there is no such thing as a perfect game right? Anyway classic and all-star mode return from Melee, they can be fun but alas pretty boring. Nintendo tries to mix it up with adding co-op to all-star mode but sadly it doesn't help. Also now instead of simply putting coins in a coin machine to get trophies, you have to play a game called coin launcher to get them. This can be fun but harder to collect trophies than it was in Melee.

Also the SSE has many good points like a plot but again boring after the first hour. Lastly one thing that stinks in brawl is the on-going arguments lots of brawlers face when winning a match. I brawled people before that started shouting at me after a win. This may not happen to everybody but it is certainly not fun.

All in all brawl is a great game. Most of the bad parts are made up for what brawlers really want the game for, the regular brawling mode, which earned this game a score of 4.3.

THE BAD:
*No real changes to the Smash Bros. formula, and gameplay can get stale

• A few characters from the previous installment are missing
• Stage builder isn't completely sufficient, and you cannot add water, or Land formations without using blocks
• clones, with only slight differences
• Smashes are a very easy and cheap way to become the victor of a match

SUMMARY:
Summary
The newest installment of the Super Smash Bros. Series, that fans have been waiting anxiously for. The next fight for Nintendo's biggest star. It definitely delivers, but lacks a few additions that would give this game a solid 5. Many new characters, stages, and modes to keep us occupied, but what's missing? Here is a detailed overview of why or why not you should buy this game.

Gameplay
As usual, you have a damage meter that displays a percentage, and the higher it is, the better chance you have of getting knocked off the screen and getting KO'd. The same button mashing, smash fest that we all know and love has now released it's 3rd installment, but are their to little changes? The answer is yes. Fighting style has the same feel and gives you a got to win attitude, but nothing has changed drastically, like form Smash Bros 64 to Melee. The only huge difference is the Smash Ball. A small colorful ball with the Smash Bros logo that floats around the stage which you have to "smash" open, and whoever breaks it gets to unleash their Final Smash. The Final Smash is the characters strongest attacks that can turn the tables of the match at any instant.

THE BAD:
-For those of you who played Melee for like 1000 hours, Brawl is fun, but if can get boring.
-Wi-fi has Lag
-Some Character Clones

SUMMARY:
Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The latest and greatest of the Super Smash Brothers Series. Super Smash Brothers has been around since Nintendo's N64. Back then, there were only 12 Characters to chose from. Eventually Gamecube came out, and Super Smash Brothers: Melee was released. Melee was the biggest step up in Smash History, providing many new stages, and of course, tons of new characters and items. Now, the next Generation Console, the Nintendo Wii was released on Nov. 17, 2006. Brawl made it's appearence shortly after, and is now extremely popular. Players all over the world are taking advantage of having someone to play against all the time. With Wi-fi, there are no limits. Ah, one last thing before I forget, All Star has made a return as well, but you don't unlock it for a while. Super Smash Brothers has come a long way.

Gameplay 10/10

Gameplay is really great. There's now more than 35 Playable Characters to use. Many have to be unlocked, but if you don't want to do it the tricky way, you can unlock them by doing regular brawls as well. There is still the famous Classic Mode where you pick a character, difficulty, and the amount of lives you want to start with (Only bad thing is you can't set it to infinite time per battle) and play through the 10+ fights, then the Master Hand. They also added another adventure mode that actually somewhat has a story to it. When playing this new mod, "The Subspace Emissary" you will find yourself in a story with whatever characters are currently being used. Some battles let you chose between 2 characters. The actual mode is much like the Adventure Mode in the last game where you selected a character and did the Side Scrolling battles. What's cool about The Subspace Emissary is that you can even fight bosses like Rayquaza from Pokemon. It's insane. The Subspace Emissary also uses Stickers (those things I mentioned to you in the "Good" section). Your characters are essentially "Trophies" brought to life, and so you use the stickers to put on the bottom of a particular character's Trophy. These stickers give power ups to certain things, be it thunder attacks, Slash attack, a weapon you might have, or Arm or Leg boosts. Each Sticker is from an old Nintendo game. From Animal Crossing to Zelda, you'll see it all. The 1 Mode in Brawl has really been expanded. Oh, and of course, there's still all the Target Smashing and Home Run Contests. Board the Platforms is out, though.

Graphics 10/10

Graphics! The Graphics are awesome in this game, especially for a console that only runs at 480p. You'll awe when you see some of the Subspace Emissary Cutscenes. The actual battle graphics and stages have improved too, of course.

In a 7 Year Leap from Super Smash Brothers 64 to Super Smash Brothers Brawl, we've gone from this:



To this:



Not bad, in my opinion. Nintendo did pretty well making this big of a change with the graphics and everything else over the years.

Music 10/10

There's tons of different music in this game. When you are fighting on a stage, a CD might fall from the sky. Better grab it quick! They disappear fast. Get it, and you've added another song to your already gigantic selection. You can unlock the Songs either by getting them in battle, or by completing certain tasks on the Brawl Challenge Wall (Things like "Complete Target Smash Level 1 in 19 Seconds") There's several things on the challenge wall to accomplish, and some reward you with stages, others with songs, and others with the Masterpieces like Zelda: Ocarina of Time. All the music you unlock comes from old games, like the Zelda Melody, or Wario Ware Inc. When building a stage, you get to pick which music you want to play in it, and it tells you which game the song is from, and gives you all the songs from that game that you have unlocked. The Music will keep you all entertained and pleased.

Story 7/10

Well, Super Smash Brothers Brawl doesn't really have a story, other than Subspace Emissary. But I always do a section on the story, so here we go. The Subspace Emissary basically has the idea of the characters being "Trophies" and battling each other" Note: This isn't actually what you do, this is just the baseline of the story" You'll fight as human. The trophies come to life to battle, and the loser gets turned back into a trophy, which in the Subspace Emissary, is much like Death. During your play of the Subspace Emissary there will be many Cut Scenes with greatly done Graphics for the Wii. Most of the time you get to pick which one out of 2-3 characters you want to use. Then you'll go through the Side Scrolling Adventure. Once you complete that, there should be another cutscene and so on. Of course you can save in between. And you can have seperate save files for Subspace Emissary. It's Save is different from SSBB Overall. And Subspace Emissary is where the Stickers come in. You plaster them onto the bottom of your trophy to gain the added power-ups that the individual stickers wield. Have fun!

Extras 10/10

Usually I don't do a Category on Extras, but here's the section on all those little things that don't really get attention in the big picture. You've got Stage Builder, for one. It comes with most of the parts already, and you can unlock 3 more by using it often and playing on the stages you make. There are 3 Stages to chose from, a Haunted Area, a Sunshine Spring-like Place, or a Metallic indoor area. Each area has a few unique parts, and you can choose whether you want the stage to be small, medium, or large. You also pick your own music, and you can even send them to your friends via Wi-fi! You'll need their Friend Code first, though. You can also send them into Nintendo. Each day, Nintendo randomly selects a stage sent in to them and sends it to your Wii (you have to log into Wi-Fi first and select the OK to Receive Mail from Nintendo" Option).

Then there's the Challenge Wall. This is a wall of many challenges that you must complete. Only a few are revealed, but as you complete challenges, the ones next to the ones you unlock tell you what you need to do. Some give you trophies, some give you music, some give you stages, and some give you Masterpieces. Enjoy working on the Challenge Wall!

Coin Launcher and Masterpieces. The Coin Launcher is similar to the coin machine in Melee, however, you launch your coins at the trophies and other obstacles to gain your trophies and stickers. You can get coins by battling on Wifi, standard Brawl, and various other things. Masterpieces are unlocked via the Challenge Wall mentioned above. With this, you'll be able to play old games like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Kid Icaras for a short period of time. Have fun!

Overall 47/50

Phew. With all the Upgraded Graphics, New Adventure modes, New Characters, all the Old Goodies in previous games, Stage Builder, Wi-fi, Infinite Replay Value, Lots of Music, and more, Super Smash Brothers Brawl will keep you well entertained for a minimum of 50 hours, but most likely, way more than that. You'll have a lot of fun playing with all of Nintendo's Classic Characters from many different games. Not to mention Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4. So what are you waiting for, stop reading this and go get a copy. There's only one thing left to say... It's time to Brawl!

THE BAD:
-laggy wi-fi

SUMMARY:
Overview: SSBB (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) is the successor to Melee and the original Super Smash bros. (also known as "Smash 64") Ever since E3 2006 Brawl has been one of Nintendo's most anticipated games. This game boasted new characters, such as Pit, Ike, Sonic, and Snake. The game also emphasised on its large amount of options and modes. The adventure mode specifically, was greatly improved and changed so that it was a full fledged story mode.

Gameplay: Although Brawl is thought to be less competitive than Melee, it was still a great game for multiplayer because of its vast amount of characters and multiplayer options/modes. The wi-fi was far from perfect however, due to the immense amount of people on at the same time, the wi-fi simply cannot run smoothly all the time, so playing over wi-fi was very laggy. The adventure mode was a huge improvement from Melee's and was more of a major mode than just a side thing. The stage builder could have had more options, but was still very fun and allowed players to make their very own custom stage to play on. In All Star and Classic modes, you fight COMs either alone or with someone else to get trophies.

Subspace Emissary (adventure mode): The subspace emissary or adventure mode, was very different from Melee's adventure mode. The basic concept is a side scrolling mode where you meet other characters and join forces to defeat bosses and move on through the game. There are cut-scenes everyone now and then, this is a first for the Smash Bros. series and brings more story to the adventure mode. You can set this mode on a number of difficulties, easy, normal, hard, very hard, and intense. This mode allows for up to 4 people sometimes, to play this mode as co-op.

Event mode: Like Melee, Brawl has an event mode. In this mode you complete various events that give you specific objectives. In Brawl there is only 40 single player ones, while Melee had 52. However, there are co-op events that you can do for Brawl.

Graphics and Music: This game's music track was by far one of the best I've ever heard, Brawl has over 300 songs. Some of the music is from the original Nintendo game, while others are a bit changed. The graphics for Brawl were also pretty good for the Wii, especially in the Adventure mode cinematics. The colors and textures are a great improvement from Melee.

Smash Balls and Assist Trophies: SSBB brought two new and exciting items to the game. Assist Trophies, like pokeballs, aided you once you opened the item. But, unlike pokeballs, various Nintendo characters aided you in their own way. Smash Balls gave you the power to unleash you're character's smash attack. To get the power from a Smash Ball, you need to pound on it for awhile. Once broken, you press you're special move button to unleash you're smash attack.

Other modes and features: Brawl had many new modes and features. Boss battles, a new mode unlocked by beating the adventure mode, challenged you to defeat all ten bosses without dieing, you are given 3 heart container to restore your percentage. In My Music you can chose the likely hood of a song playing a level, this way you can have the songs that you like on the stages you like. In the coin launcher you can shoot the coins you have earned in various other modes to get trophies, and stickers. As an improvement, you no longer have to chose from modes for Special Brawl, you can create your own custom match with a number of different special options. You can also take pictures and save replays of matches and send them to your friends or enter them to be submitted to everyone.

Overall, I think this game lived up to its hype and was one of the greatest games I've played.

THE BAD:
Despite how awesome this game is, there are still bound to be some bad things. First off, there’s the lag, which I mentioned up above there, plus the game’s story is a bit short. But the great thing is, that doesn’t really even hamper the gameplay. I still love to play the game with my friends or family, the competitive fighting is really fun.

SUMMARY:
This game is really good for many reasons. For 1, there’s a great deal of game modes, such as Subspace Emissionary, Classic, Home Run Contest, Brawl with Friends or the Computer, and many, many more. Subspace Emissionary is a pretty good story mode for a Super Smash Bros. Game, which are not necessarily noted for the story modes. The story is pretty good, as well as it exposes you to a variety of characters that you wouldn’t normally use. There are a few disappointments though, mostly the idea of how it’s set up as a side scrolling adventure, but you have to stop when you encounter an enemy. It’s like Super Mario Bros, only messed up execution. Another thing I found that made SSE a little less fun for me was the fact that it’s way too repetitive. You basically have to go through every level twice, due to the ending. Difficulty is no problem, until you get to the last boss, which even on easy is a bit hard to face. It took two people for me to finally beat him, but that made a bit more fun, actually having a challenge in the game. SSE wasn’t the highlight of the game, no one expected it to be, fighting is where Super Smash Bros has always shined, and I doubt anyone expected them to be able to make the story mode a masterpiece.

The plot is rather simple, you basically are trying to save the world, which sounds very clichéd, and it sort of is, but it comes out definitely good in the case of this game. The fact that this has many unlockables, and some of the exclusive trophies, is good enough for me. Plus, if you play it long enough, you may get an added award, like a demo. It takes quite awhile to complete, and the gaps between each skill level are defined well. That is pretty good because it’s boring to play on low skill levels if your good, and hard as heck if your not good on tough levels.

Home-Run Challenge is a unique little game. The basic feature is to attack a sandbag with a baseball bat, until the countdown starts, then you try and hit the sandbag as far as you can. Tourney mode does exactly what it implies, allows you to set up a tourney. Classic mode is a single player mode where you take on as many opponents in a row as you can, controlled by the computer. I find this mode to be fun to try with different people you don’t usually play with. Rules is a fun little way to play with altered rules, and I find it quite fun to mess around with. Special Brawl is similar to Rules mode, only the battles don’t affect your record at all.

My personal favorite mode is Brawl mode. It’s the mode where you are able to fight the computer to train, or against anyone live in your house. I personally love to train with it, since you can alter the computer’s difficulty level, and that really comes in handy. I honestly went from horrible, to pretty good in a few days playing that. The reason I like Brawl mode playing against a friend in real life is the trash talking, and how much more competitive it is, seeing your opponent sweating it out, and trying their hardest to win the match. This mode is really, what the game was made for, competition.

Online: I did a brief summary of the online up in The Good section, but I honestly don’t think I covered it enough. Online has a few game modes, Brawl, Tag Team Brawl, and Home Run Contest with a Friend. Now, I play regular old Brawl mostly, it’s really easy to find matches. You load up, and pretty much less then a minute later the match is about to start. This is really good when looking for some quick fun. The other part of WiFi is the Friend Code System, where someone adds your code, and you add them, and you could fight, just the two of you, and there’s usually much less lag. This would be good for fighting your friends from faraway, and you could organize tournaments over the internet with this feature. It’s a great deal of fun, since there’s less lag. Searching for a match is usually ruined by those with bad connections, odds are there will be one in every 4 player match, which means you’re going to spend most of your time floating around the screen and being frustrated the entire match, which to me, doesn’t sound like fun.

To play someone you know, first you have to get their friend code, and add them, and then you tell them yours, and their add you. It may sound difficult to those not used to Nintendo’s friend code system, but it’s really not. It’s pretty simple, and once you get used to it, it’s rather quick. It makes WiFi more fun to play against 1 person at a time since then the lag isn’t as noticeable.

Items:
Super Smash Bros is a game that focuses heavily on the items. Some of the important items are Assist Trophies, Pokeballs, Smash Balls, and CDs. Assist Trophies make use of characters that weren’t made into fighters, but were put into the game anyway. Usually they alter everyone in the match, except for the person who unleashed it, a lot of times knocking things off the map. Pokeballs are basically the exact same thing as assist trophies, but the thing is, only pokemon come out of poke balls. Smash Balls are what you get your final smash from. It goes around the map, and the person who breaks it gets their Final Smash unlocked. Cds are gathered throughout the main story, to unlock soundtracks from the game, and from other games too.

The trophies are an awesome thing, not the assist trophies, trophies. They are usually characters from other games that give you the satisfaction of collecting. To beat Subspace Emissionary on here, you have to collect all of the trophies for one hundred percent, so I bid you happy hunting.

Unlockables: There is plenty of unlockables in this game, be it characters, maps, or even demos. I don’t want to ruin it for you by saying to much about them, assuming you reading this review to decide to get the game or not, so I’ll just say that you should have a lot of fun trying to unlock everything in this game. I have been playing the game for around two monthes, and I am still trying to unlock things as I write this review. It takes quite a long while to do.

Controls: The controls in this game are rather unique for the Wii. Sure it was followed up by Mario Kart Wii, and surely won’t be the last game to have used this feature, it allowed the players to use many different controllers to fit their needs. You can use the Wiimote only, the Wiimote+Nunchuk combo, the Gamecube controller, and the Classic Controller. It was pretty awesome being able to use all of those.

Photo brought to you by the Smash Dojo