Brawl is like a bigger badder melee, but is it worth 50 bucks

I got Super Smash Bros Brawl the day after it came out, worked late on Sunday so I couldn’t get to gamestop instill after it closed, so had to wait till monday. I have come and played a lot of 1 player and some 2 player and well Super Smash Bros Brawl is a great game, but it does nothing compare to melee in moving the series forward in terms of innovation. While there are some cool new twists that make Brawl worth checking out, just don’t expect it to give you the same feeling Brawl did the first time you played it.

Story.
The Subspace Embassary mode does have a story to it. In this one dark little aliens are going around turning Nintendo characters into statues and then cloning dark replicas of them. Different Nintendo heroes and eventually villains unite to put a stop to it.

The story really doesn’t make any sense and while the cut scenes are well animated Nintendo not opting for any dialogue written or spoken means there is plenty of WTF moments that you have to figure out your self.

Graphics.
Graphics are a step up from Melee anybody comparing the Wii to the Gamecube 1.5 need to look at the character sprites between the two. Mario whose clothes were all ready darker and more faded then usual in Melee gets a new look, Link sprouts his twilight Princess look. The backgrounds have a lot of eye candy to them in a lot of areas, including the age whole classic mode finish hand with the giant glove. Not all characters designs though are created equal some are a bit freaky, Toon Link tops that list. While he does capture the cel shaded big headed cuteness of the Wind Waker Link, the fact that they opted for a 3d model to a cel shaded character makes him look a bit to unusual for my liking.

Sound.
Take every sound track from Nintendo games new and old and combine them into one super collection of sound track. Themes from classic Donkey Kong, to Zelda, to Wario Ware and you have the sound track in the game. With collectible CD’s that can let you customize the sound track for whatever level your playing. The VA’s are a mix bag some characters only have Japanese voices, it all depends on weather or not the character has been released in America. They did give Kid Icraus a voice that was pretty good that surprised me since we haven’t seen him around since Captain N went off the air.

Gameplay.
Ok Brawl is a fighting game but it isn’t like Street Fighter 2 were complex button combos to do moves to knock your opponent unconscious are used. Rather it’s a wacky sumbo wrestling. Attacks increase the damage gage, the more damage an attack does, and the higher your opponents damage gage the further they fly. Fall down a pit or fly out of the ring and your done for. The mix of stages in the game are pretty good each stage with it’s own traps. My favorite was the classic Mario Bros stage complete with pow blocks and moving crabs. And Wario Ware were the mico games will have you doing something in order to A not get clobber, and B get a free power up for completing it.

There are also weapons and items you can use to clobber your opponent if special moves and stage traps don’t work. And there are a few new items to use here. One of them is the assist trophies that appear in dome balls, these are like Pokeballs but usually the effect lasts longer and can quite often effect all players. Things like Little Mac popping out to beat the crap out of people, or a Nintendog popping up on the TV to obscure viewing are all possible out comes. There are also rolling crates that you can push into people if you don’t want to break them. A new rocket launcher that kicks the super scopes chargeable butt when it comes to sure power, unfortunately aiming and turning becomes a problem with that weapon but that’s the price if you want the fire power. And of course the smash ball which will you will either love or hate, has it is the ultimate cheap butt attack but man are they cool. When one of these comes floating into the rings you have to attack it, whoever breaks it starts glowing and they can do a finishing move. Links triforce slash is shown in may previews but there are others and they are usually powerful finishing moves.

Has for characters we get pretty much a mix of Melee some of the characters that were a bit obscure on Nintendo side have been tossed aside for 2 third party characters and more obscure characters. Still even newcomers like Ike feel a lot like Roy from the original with his one shot kill special. A few new comers like Pit and Pokemon trainer come easily to recommend, pits ability to fly comes in hand and Pokemon Trainer is 3 characters in one. Has for the 2 3rd party characters Snake is hard to use but if you get his explosive special moves right they do a lot of damage. Sonic isn’t the best on small stages but on big ones were he can run around and he will kick some major tail with his speedy moves. They also have ROB the robot a little known NES accessory, so now I can blow up an unused NES accessory with a super scope an unused SNES accessory, talk about irony.

Has for the clone characters that still make the cut like Luigi and Falco the good news is they have changed them up a little bit. Luigi’s upper cut still does more damage then Mario but he can’t move in till he comes down and lands on his head meaning he’s open to a smash attack if he misses. Falco can now throw his shield making an intresting attack. This opens up a little more difference in the clone character but Falco is still Fox like Ken is still Ryu.

Modes.
So what are the different modes, well the one player mode is pretty much identical to Melee. You have your classic mode, your events modes, training and mini game mode. The only difference is the adventure sub space embassary is now a full length 2d platformer. Problem is bigger isn’t always better and while it is rare to have an actual 2d platformer on a console, the smash controls aren’t made for them. Worst is that the enemies are generic either you get Mario enemies (hammer bros, koopas, and goombas) or made up aliens, or Robs you get bored fighting the same handful of enemies. It’s not terrible but there are better things to do in Brawl. Play it only to unlock the charecters it would take several hundred matches in order to unlock.

The multiplayer mode is still fun with all its different modes and options to choose from. The game is completely customized and it’s always fun to play on multiplayer. Up to 4 can play and the gameplay becomes pure chaos in a 4 player brawl. The game does have online multiplayer and I would love to review my online experience. Unfortunately it extends to me waiting in a room punching a bag for 5 minutes and getting an error code that I can’t connect to anyone else. This happen every time out of a dozen time I connected to Nintendo online system, this is the one really bad point other then there isn’t too much difference then Melee. Nintendo I can understand in this age of litigation why you have friend codes, but when I can’t play the game because of error messages you need to fix your online.

There is also the vault were you can view your trophies and stickers you collect. Trophies have classic characters on them and have bios of the characters. Stickers are made for powering up characters in the sub space mode (to bad they don’t have it to were you can customize for online or multiplayer brawls) but there are more to them. Each sticker is based off artwork in either ads or the instruction booklet and should invoke nostalgia along people who have been die hard Nintendo fanboys since the days of the NES.

Oh and for those who are looking for Wii controls in smash there aren’t any. All control types are used and all of them are fully functional but (all though wii mote sideways without analog takes a bit getting use to) there is no motion control used in the game, not even on the menus. Since that is the case and while the rest of them are functional you really can’t beat the gamecube controller, since the controls are identical to Melee jumping into brawl with a gamecube controller requires you to learn absolutely nothing new.

Final Recommendation.
Super Smash Bros Brawl has everything that made Melee a big hit, fun game play, multi player mayhem, and plenty of Nintendo nostalgia. Problem is that Melee really dosen’t to anything to improve rather just adds more characters and stages to it, not that it’s a bad thing but I was looking for something different. The fact that it’s almost impossible to even connect to Nintendo online network is also disappointing has well. Still 4 out of 5 and a yes recommendation this is still probably one of the biggest and best games you can get for any system this year. If the online had worked I would have had no problem giving a it a 5 out of 5.