Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
To say that I was eagerly anticipating this game would be the understatement of the century. I rented the original Super Smash Brothers for the N64 about 20 times before finally buying it. In my opinion, the SSB games are the best fighters out there, and have more replayability than any game from any genre. When SSB Melee came out years later, I was still playing the original. Super Smash Brothers Brawl (SSBB) is about half the reason I bought a Wii, and although it’s not without its faults, it’s still by itself reason enough to buy the system.
If you’ve never played a SSB game before, we can’t be friends…but for journalism’s sake, I will explain how the game works. You choose a character from a long list of Nintendo icons, along with some other familiar faces, and then set the type and length of the match. You and up to three friends then face off in a free-for-all or team match until either time runs out or you’re the last man standing. Unlike mainstream fighters, you don’t have a life meter (except in special brawl). Instead, as you take damage, your percentage increases. The higher your percentage, the farther you fly when you get hit. Fall off the stage in any direction and you die. Each character can perform a standard jump twice, and then depending on the character choice most characters have a third special jump. There are only two attack buttons, but they allow you to perform twelve moves, depending on the button and the direction. The A button is your standard attack button. Press it alone or with a direction independently to perform a normal attack or press it with a direction simultaneously to perform a smash attack, which is more powerful. The B button is your special attack. Pressing it alone or with a direction each performs a different special. Sound easy? Far from it.
The reason that the SSB games have lasted so long is that they’re easy to pick up and play, but have incredible depth. Although the view is 2D, the game feels like it’s in 3D. The levels are big and interactive. Not only that, but there are tons of items that appear randomly to keep the game interesting. But all of this is true for any of the three SSB games. What makes Brawl different? Unfortunately not much, but enough to make for a worthy sequel.
We’ll start with the obvious…more characters. There are 35 in all, compared to 26 in Melee and 12 in the original. The characters are the most important part of the game. Unlike most fighters, each character is completely different, not only in terms of special moves, but also in terms of speed, standard attacks, and strategy. While some of the new characters are original and fun, some are blatant duplicates of previous characters, and others are absolutely useless. Although I’m sure the developers were trying to make the game more balanced, they ended up ruining some really great old and new characters. For example, Samus, from Metroid fame, has made an appearance in every SSB game to date, but new is her ability to fight without her suit. While in zero-suit mode, Samus is quick and weak, but with her suit on, she’s powerful but completely slow. In Melee she was one of my favorite characters, but in Brawl she just can’t keep up.
As for the new fighters, there are some great additions to the roster, but others that are laughable. Diddy Kong is not only the most boring character to play, but also one of the most useless. Then there are characters, such as Pit from Kid Icarus who are a blast to play, but are so weak that they’re impossible to win with. And the characters that I was most excited to play, Sonic and Snake, are completely unusable. Every move sonic does is a spin. For a character with such a rich history and game library to draw from, I can’t believe the developers couldn’t come up with anything better to mix it up a bit. Snake’s moves are interesting, but useless in a fight. THEN we have the carbon copy characters, such as Wolf (Fox clone). There are some copy characters who I consider to be an improvement to the original, such as Ike and Lucas, but the rest are obvious signs of laziness. Now the thing about characters is that everyone has their favorites, so trying to judge the game on individual characters isn’t fair to anyone. Overall, with 35 characters, there’s definitely something for everyone in Brawl. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that no one likes Game and Watch.
The graphics are improved from Melee, but you’re not going to find anything groundbreaking here. The game does take full advantage of the Wii’s limited hardware, with constantly changing backgrounds and fluid character animations. Also, besides online play, which I’ll get to later, I haven’t seen the frame rate drop once. The music alone is worth buying the game for, with orchestral remixes of all of your favorite Nintendo games from some of gaming’s biggest composers. The more you play, the more tracks you unlock, but right from the start you have access to a pretty sweet soundtrack. Not only can you listen to any song you’ve unlocked from the music menu, you can also set how often each song appears in each level. Don’t like the theme from EarthBound? Who does? Turn it off.
As for the gameplay, Brawl feels just like Melee. As soon as I picked it up, I felt right at home. Now you may be expecting me to have a problem with this, after spending so much time above criticizing the game for a lack of originality, but here is one area where I’m glad the developers left well enough alone. The game is meant to be fun and fast paced, and I’m happy to say that it remains so. The only change that I think is even worth mentioning is the introduction of the Smash Ball. This item appears randomly and flies around the stage until someone breaks it. Whichever character breaks the Smash Ball can now activate their final smash, which is a devastating move almost guaranteed to knock off at least one opponent. This is definitely my favorite new addition to the game. I was originally worried that it would make the game too cheesy, and take away from the faced paced action that we’ve all come to know and love. On the contrary, the smash ball only increases the frenetic action. When that ball flies on stage, all eyes are on it, and no one doesn’t at least try to grab it. Even if you don’t think you’ve got a shot, with the ability to grab it using ranged weapons and thrown items, not to mention the fact that it’s more elusive than the snitch in a game of Quidditch, you always have a chance. My only gripe is that there’s no consistency among power between characters. Some have absolutely ridiculous final smashes that last for what seems like forever, like Pikachu. Other final smashes, like Pit’s, feel more like standard specials than uber finishing moves.
And now that I’ve talked about what I like about the game, let’s get into my complaints. Yes, that was me being nice! Other than the lack of originality in some of the characters, I can’t help but be mad at the obvious absence of certain fighters. How can you spend what I’m sure must have been a fortune to get the license to use Sonic in a Nintendo game, and then leave out Tails and Knuckles? How can you ignore all of the great potential Capcom and Square-Enix characters? Forget Megaman and Cloud…let’s add ROB, the robot peripheral from 1984 that NO ONE BOUGHT!!! Not only that, but out of all of the horrible characters that no one played from Melee, they decide to remove Mewtwo, who happened to be one of my favorites. And don’t even get me started on the so called Single-player campaign. There’s only one reason that anyone buys this game, and that’s for the brawls…I mean it’s in the title. To spend that much time on an actual campaign that no one cares about is idiotic. The full motion videos alone, which only exist to force me to press the skip button, must have taken half the game’s development. I wish I could be playing the game that could have been if they had focused all of their energies on the only part of the game that matters.
And now for my biggest gripe…the online multiplayer. When Brawl was first announced, I was so excited I almost wet myself…but what really put me over the edge was the idea of playing with people from around the world. My only problem with Melee was always finding people to play with. Finally, a solution, or so I thought. First of all, the game is plagued with the same problems that all of Nintendo’s online offerings suffer from, so I won’t spend too much time rehashing old arguments, but I have to at least mention them. In order to play with a friend, you each need each others friend code. You can’t see anyone’s friend code from within the game, not even a friend code that you yourself entered. So be sure to keep hard copies. That means that if you manage to find a game in the “Battle Anyone” mode and you want to play with someone again, you’re out of luck. There’s no way to communicate with anyone, except for sending preset messages linked to the d-pad, but only in friend mode. All because Nintendo is scared of being sued for giving pedophiles a way to reach kids. Can you sue Yahoo for hosting a chat room? NO! It boggles my mind how Nintendo can continue to do exactly the opposite of Microsoft. Even if you don’t like the Xbox, you can’t deny the obvious superiority of Xbox live over every other online gaming infrastructure.
Speaking of “Battle Anyone” mode, I have yet to be able to connect and play an actual match, so I can’t speak to it, but I was able to play with a friend. There wasn’t too much lag for me, but my friends complained of constant lag. That could explain why I had +8 points and everyone else was in the negative, but I just figured it was my superior fighting ability…go figure. It was awesome playing with my friends without us all having to be in the same room, but hopefully they will fix some of the connection problems I know I’m not alone in having.
Still there? I hope so, because even with all of the problems I’ve touched on, Brawl is still an incredibly fun game that I’m sure I’ll be playing until the next sequel replaces it. With the lack of Wii games targeted towards my demographic (i.e. over 4 years old), Smash is a must have in any Wii owners library. If you take nothing else away from this review, it should be this…BUY THIS GAME! The large number of diverse fighters and levels alone will have you coming back for more time and time again. I just hope that next time around there’s more common sense around the development table.
Primotech Rating: 
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Don’t be dissin’ Wolf man, and Sonic! Sonic’s final smash is unreal.
I disagree with the paragraph where you talk about the characters you don’t like completely. Learn to play these characters before call them unusable. If played right, both Snake and Sonic are incredibly good characters.
I have to agree with Skyler on the Sonic comment. I’ve had my ass handed to me more times than I can count by a good Sonic player. I’d put him in the same category as Meta Knight: broken but the good kind.