bunnykitten

I’ve been playing the Japanese version of Smash Bros Brawl for about a month now. Every night myself and two friends play for a good two hours. Every Saturday night two other friends join us and we play for way too long. It’s a blast, it’s fun and hilarious. It has charm, it invokes nostalgia, and it always surprises. This game has had so much hype surrounding it that one could be lost to the ages if they were to cipher through all of it. There hasn’t been a game with this much hype in a long time and it has people excited. Too excited.

Oh noes!

The reviews were already set in stone about a year ago when Nintendo announced Sonic and Solid Snake would be in the game and that over 60 famous video game music composers would be contributing to the game’s 1.2GB soundtrack. I’d be very shocked to see anything less than a 9.5 out of 10 or the equivalent. Which is a shame because the way I see it, the reviewers are just giving a score to the hype and not to the game. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Smash Bros series. Until recently I’ve always found the game to be nothing more than an amusing button masher, but I’ve been playing Smash Bros Melee quite a lot with my friends in Japan. I’ve learned how to do Smash Moves, block properly, roll-dodge past an opponent and I’ve developed an eagle eye of precision when it comes to throwing items. The game has immense depth. I was always in love with the trophy collecting (and now stickers and CDs). I could read through the museum collection for hours and be satisfied. I love the nostalgia evoking stages and items.

My one problem with Smash Bros, and especially Brawl, is the characters. They are what make the game. It is essentially a fighting game, albeit a platform-adventure-fighting hybrid game. I thought they’d fix them in Brawl. I thought each character would be unique and interesting. But sadly I am greatly disappointed. Why clone move sets? Why have TWO clones of Fox? Why make a clone of Ness that is far superior to him in every way thus making Ness useless? It reeks of laziness on the developers part, which really is a shame considering the amount of fantastic depth the rest of the game has. It’s as if after completing Subspace Emissary, the graphics, the music, the collections, and minigames, the developers completely forget about the brawlers themselves. I’m throwing my own two cents in here, but I and my friends all agree that some of the characters are just plain terrible and we would never voluntarily choose them. If you add those together with the clones that’s nearly half of the characters. In my opinion the characters should have come first. Each should have been fully unique, especially their ultra-hyped Final Smash moves.

Do Want

My next gripe concerning the characters involves the fighting mechanics. I have issues being forced to use an analog stick in a fighting game. I’m glad this version allows you to switch off tilting up on the stick to jump, but why not let me map all movement to the D-Pad? I believe the Classic Controller is the superior controller for all fighting games on the Wii and Smash is no exception. But still, thanks to the analog stick its as if my characters are always on ice. Slipping and sliding around the stages. I know it’s a quirk of the game and it does make things fun, but when you’re trying to grab a much needed item or move in for a devastating grab or attack only to have your character fly by your target, it really gets annoying. Don’t even get me started on stage related deaths due to wonky controls. We could make Tony Soprano cry with the amount of terrible words that come out of our mouths when that happens.

There can only be one

My final problem with Smash Bros Brawl is not the game’s fault. This is a problem with the Wii in general. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge supporter of the Wii if only because I enjoy seeing the underdog take down the big boys. However, Nintendo is not at all taking advantage of their position at the top. They did it so right this time. Awesome hardware, awesome controllers, large disc space, incredible backwards compatibility and wireless internet in every machine. But why are there still only very few great games for the Wii? Why are the AAA titles being churned out at a rate of one per every six months? (And for myself personally: Why oh why aren’t there more J-RPGS!?) This isn’t the Gamecube.

And why is the internet scheme so terrible? Why the friend codes? Why the lack of voice chat and even text chat? Smash Bros Brawl online seems to work great technically. Lag free and quick load times. But the only means of communication with your opponent are the four directions on the D-Pad, which when pressed bring up small text bubbles that say things like “Hello!” … Online games for x486 machines 20 years ago had more indepth communication tools. This is just sad. And the same fate is going to plague Mario Kart Wii as well. And probably every other Wii game that’s going to have online capabilities. I’m just hoping Nintendo’s new “Pay and Play” service is exactly what I think it will be. An online service in the same catagory as Xbox Live. Monthly charges, real friends lists, and real communication.

So yes, I think Smash Bros Brawl is a great, highly entertaining game. I’m not going to delve into all the things that are right with it because you can search for that on Google and get 15 million hits. I don’t think its perfect at all, and won’t until the characters are designed better. But I will own a copy of the game, enjoy all the great parts and continue to complain about the annoying parts.

You tell ‘em Lucas.

This entry was posted Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Videogames. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.