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Review Super Smash Brothers Brawl

UltimaLink007

UltimaLink007

Hope Never Dies
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Super Smash Bros. Brawl​



By: UltimaLink007​
​


Super Smash Bros. Brawl returns gamers to a universe where trophies do battle with one another, forever locked in combat. As the player in previous installments, you chose your fighter, and fought to defeat your opponents. This game is no different, but we see something different than both of the two games preceding it, AN ACTUAL STORY! Though it really isn’t much, it does add something to the game. Anyway, I present Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Story – 4/10: Wow, a story in a Smash Bros. Game? HA, that would never work… That was the thought… until now. The story, titled “The Subspace Emissary” which replaces the Adventure mode from Super Smash Bros. Melee, is what Nintendo has bestowed upon eager players as a story for this game. It starts on a gorgeous sunny day, with vast blue skies, in a massive stadium, where trophy fights are taking place. It shows Peach and Zelda smiling and laughing as the two combatants are thrown into the stadium, and animate themselves. These two, are known as Kirby and Mario. Kirby and Mario have a great fight, and eventually, one defeats the other (dependant upon who you choose). The loser is brought back by the winner, and they shake hands, and drink in the applause from the crowd. When suddenly, the sky darkens, and a great airship appears above the stadium, showering the field with beads of what seems to be pure darkness. From the shadows, enemies called Primids form and attack. Zelda and Peach join the two on the field to fight. After victory is assumed, Mario is hit and sent flying into the distance. Kirby turns to find the princesses captured. And so begins the campaign of the Subspace army… The story is fascinating, but can be exceedingly difficult to know what is going on, especially without the use of character lines. I thought at the end that I had interpreted it well, only to go onto the game’s website and look at the post explaining the story, and discover that on a good number of points, I was wrong. If you want to spoil the story, or didn’t understand something after you completed it, go here:http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/gamemode/modea/modea17.html . Because overall it is quite a hassle in the end to even know what really was happening, and confusing beyond belief, the story receives 4 out of 10.

Sound – 10/10: The music has always been brilliant in the Super Smash Brothers series, and Brawl certainly does not disappoint in that regard, by bringing music in from the reaches of the games of every character’s origins. This contains wide varieties of music for each section as well. The “sections” of music included are: Super Smash Brothers, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Yoshi’s Island, Kirby/Dreamland, Star Fox, Pokemon, F-Zero, Fire Emblem, Mother 3, Pikmin, WarioWare, Microgames, Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus, Nintendo (various), Metal Gear, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Not only does this game have what people consider to be “standard game music” (one or two catchy tunes repeated, beeps, etc.), it also has a plethora of stunning vocal pieces, which include the operatic game theme as well as the Fire Emblem theme song, or the faster, more rock-like Live and Learn, along with others. The vocals are astoundingly well-done, and the orchestra that plays may of the songs does an absolutely brilliant job with the music as well. The total soundtrack counts 312 (I believe) songs total as well, so there’s bound to be at least one piece of music that someone can find that they enjoy in this game. What do you like the most? The nostalgic tune of the Famicom (NES) Medley or Tetris? Or do you prefer something with a speedier pace like Metaknight’s Revenge or Tal Tal Heights? Or would you prefer a slow calming melody like Ai no Uta or Route 209? Because of the phenomenal quality, and a huge abundance of songs to pick from, sound receives 10 out of 10.

Gameplay – 7/10: Gameplay, the staple of any game, the biggest part in determining whether a game is amazing, or just another disc that should be thrown into the deepest recesses of a box and never seen again. Super Smash Brothers has always been much different from a standard fighting game, ever since it’s inception in 1999. Instead of the normal 2 fighters with basic Punch, Kick, and Block commands, Super Smash Bros. Is a fight with two to four players, who fight each other on various battlefields, taken from the games, as well as stages with original themes to the SSB series. The character can walk, run, jump, duck, and use both normal and special attacks. Instead of Health Bars, there is a damage percentage, which rises as you get hit more and more. When it is high enough, you can be launched off the stage to the left, right, up, or sometimes, down. There is also the ability to recover, making it tougher to finish someone quickly. Unique to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, is the option of using four different control methods: The Wiimote, the Wiimote/Nunchuck, the Classic Controller, and the GameCube controller. For someone used to playing Melee, the GameCube controller is the best option usually, because the other control styles are quite awkward, especially if you’re used to something. Onto the various game modes and options and such!

-----The first section is VS Mode (a.k.a. Group), the main course for every SSB game. A basic Brawl is where you may have up to four players, Computer or Human duke it out with the rules of your choice. Under rules, you can set what items appear, how often they appear, the type of match (Time, Stock, and Coin), and the handicap. Under extra rules, the player may set timed stock matches, and what stages appear when Random is selected. Also, there is Special Brawl, where there are a ton of customizable match options like making all characters clear with light gravity and high speed. The options certainly seem endless… There is a Rotation mode, where up to six people are rotated in and out of the matches so everyone plays equally. The Tournament mode from Melee is back, where you and your friends may participate in a tournament of humans and computers with the tourney size of your choosing. The biggest drawback to Brawl’s Tourney mode is the new limit of 32 participants. Also, as with Melee, you may create nicknames to use when you fight. But a new feature in Brawl is to completely customize the button configurations for your control styles to exactly what you feel the most comfortable using.
 
-----Next up is the Single Player Mode. Classic Mode returns again, with little change from the previous installments. In Classic, There are eleven stages of fights, with Target Tests after Stages 5 and 10. The type of battle, whether it is 1 v 1, 2 v 2, a character team, or metal is random, but the themes are always in the same order. The eleventh match is always a four combatant free-for-all on Final Destination, which then leads straight into a fight with the ever-punctual Master Hand, who makes this his third SSB appearance as the Classic Boss. When on harder modes, you may get to fight Crazy Hand as well. The only drawback is that, especially with the added stages, Classic starts to feel long, boring, and painfully drawn-out. The Adventure Mode, also known as “The Subspace Emissary”, follows the first ever storyline in Super Smash Bros. Following the story, you go through many areas which are beautifully rendered and pick up new characters to join your party of heroes. While everything looks nice, the adventure gets very dull and repetitive quickly, but that’s not even the worst of it! The worst part is The Great Maze section, where you are forced to run all over a massive maze, killing bosses and computer-controlled characters. In the end, it is just too irritating to bother with, unless you really must or use it to unlock all of the characters, because of the sheer amount of time this consumes. All-Star is available once you unlock every brawler, and seems like it only changed slightly. The first battle will always be against Mr. Game and Watch, and the final fight will always be against Olimar. In fact, the entire All-Star is in one set order! When you reach a game that has more than two characters from it is Brawl, you will fight two at a time, and as you defeat them, the next opponents will appear. You still retain damage in-between fights, and there are still three Heart Containers to heal with as you need them. In Event Mode, you play through various scripted matches and setups, and attempt to complete whatever objective you are asked to accomplish. There are forty-one single matches, and twenty-one cooperative events to complete. All of them may be accomplished on Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulties. Event matches are always great for trying something new, or for just having fun, but even for most of them on Hard, the true challenge that Melee had is gone. In Stadium, you may participate in a Homerun Contest as a single player or with a friend, a Multi-Man Brawl, Target Test, and Boss Rush Mode. The Homerun Contest is the same: Beat up sandbag for 10 seconds, grab the bat and let ’er rip! Instead of individual “Break the Targets” for every character, there are now five difficulty levels, them being the same for every character. The higher difficulties definitely put your skills to the test, as well, because they are no cakewalk. In Multi-Man Brawl, like always you may set timed matches for three or fifteen minutes, ten or one-hundred man Brawl, Endless Brawl, or the torturous Cruel Brawl…The wire frames have been upgraded to Alloys, with the Red Alloy taking after Captain Falcon, the Blue after Zelda, the Yellow after Mario, and the Green after Kirby. Besides how the characters move and attack, the alloys are much smarter than wire-frames, and have the ability to recover from off the stage, making it harder to kill them. Cruel Brawl is just evil though… In Boss Rush, you fight all of the bosses you encountered in the subspace emissary one by one on the varying difficulties (Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Intense). As with All-Star, you only start with one life, but the biggest things is: THERE IS NO CONTINUE, which makes it overwhelmingly difficult as opposed to pathetic when trying to beat it on intense, which losing and starting over and over and over can get extraordinarily frustrating, incredibly quickly. Overall, most of the Single Player modes get very boring, very quickly, which although is not a good thing, it does not matter as much as VS Mode. Phew! The massive single player part is done!

-----Under Vault, there are a couple of really cool features that make the gameplay even better. First up is the Stage Builder, where as the name states, you get to build your own stages! Choose the size, the background, and the music, and get to work! There are almost no limitations to your creativity here! While it is great, the only real issues are that: you can’t turn pieces on their side or upside-down, limited space (though a good amount is given), and a limited set of materials to build stages with (including backgrounds). Although it has its flaws, the Stage Builder was an excellent addition to Brawl. The Coin Launcher is a massive cannon with a field in front of it that you may use coins earned in other parts of the game to launch at trophies that appear. While is does consume a copious amount of coins, it is surprisingly fun and is a cool way to earn new trophies. While there are Masterpieces, which are demos of Virtual Consoles, in Brawl, they aren’t worth talking about because they are too short to start to enjoy. The Challenge wall is a massive wall filled with objectives, many being irritating and stupid, like beating 100-Man Brawl with every character. Another good part (under Options, not Vault), is “My Music”, where you are able to set how often what music plays on each stage. My only personal wish would be to be able to use any music for any stage, but alas that is not reality.

-----Super Smash Brothers has always, and will always be known for amazingly addictive and fun gameplay and a game to be played with a bunch of friends. Although Brawl has only decent Solo Mode options, the VS mode remains phenomenal and a great way to have fun. There are also now THIRTY-NINE characters! Most of which are individual and unique, although some clones remain (Ganondorf/Falcon). Yet the gameplay is slow, and many technical, and even normal aspects have been ruined since Melee. Add to that the ability to build and fight on custom stages, and you have a 7 out of 10 for gameplay.

Graphics – 9/10: Super Smash Brothers Brawl, so sum it up in one phrase, is visually stunning. The stages and backgrounds all look beautifully done, crisp and clean, and just simply fun to look at. The amount of detail put into the character design is just jaw-dropping. Certainly the Legend of Zelda characters look much better in their Twilight Princess (Wind Waker) garb? Yes, yes they do. Everything is pretty and cool, and some stages like the revamped Final Destination utterly blow you away with how amazing they look. These graphics are great, but are they the best? Simply put, no. We have seen godly graphics and beyond, the two greatest examples being Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Mario Galaxy. These games showed us the true capacity of the Wii in terms of visuals, and Brawl can’t honestly compete with them. For graphics, Brawl receives a 9 out of 10.


Nintendo Wifi Capability – 4/10: Now, since 2001 when Melee was released for the Nintendo GameCube, there have been many technological advancements in terms of gaming and consoles. That would be online playing capabilities, where you could be playing against someone half-way across the world as if they were in your own living room, sitting next to you. Nintendo was late coming to the online gaming market, but they brought with them on their DS and Wii: WIFI. SSB has always been the most fun when played with friends, and now they don’t even need to come over, they can play you whenever you’re both on wifi! Online is possibly the best thing to happen to the Super Smash Brothers series. There’s an option to play with your friends in brawls online, as well as teaming up with a friend to do co-op Homerun Contests or Multi-Man Brawls too! You may also play anyone in the world, on a team or in a free-for-all, or you can watch others’ matches and bet coins for prizes! But for every silver lining, there must be a dark cloud hovering. Depending upon each person that you play with and their wifi connection, there can be horrifyingly bad lag, where sometimes it will freeze up periodically, only to unfreeze and leave you in a position of inescapable death. Sometimes you can’t even connect, or when you try to connect to a friend, it disconnects and kicks you off of wifi. Friend codes and lists, and confirmations are a hassle too. When you choose to play with anyone, most of the time it never even finds someone to play with, and the rules are always the same: 2 minutes (Time), all items. There’s also no way of communication with friends either, no voice chat or even text chat. The only way is through taunt-text, which has limited space, and is pointless for delivering messages or trying to talk. Although online SSB is what most fans of the series have been dreaming of, there are a ton of bugs and issues that need to be worked out. In hopes that everything will be fixed for the next game, Wifi Capability scores 4 out of 10.


Replay Value – 10/10: The Replay Value with all Super Smash Brothers is infinite, so long as you have people to play with. Brawl made that easier by giving people wifi to fight each other on there. Besides the fighting, there are other great activities to play on, like the Stage Builder, unlocking all of the brand new characters and learning how to use them, and the wall of objectives. Not to mention a ton of CDs, Trophies, and Stickers to unlock too! But this is all about the fighting, which really doesn’t get old easily. Replay value effortlessly scores 10 out of 10.
 
Overall – 7.9/10: Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a great game to play, and is very enjoyable to play. It loses a ton of speed and a shorter, nicer adventure mode from Melee, but retains some of what has made this one of the greatest series of all time. Include a buggy wifi, a fun stage builder, along with new stages, characters, and game customization options, and you have Brawl. While this is *in my honest opinion* not even CLOSE to as good as Melee, it is still a decent game. Therefore, I end this review by giving Super Smash Brothers Brawl a 7.9 out of 10.

Sorry about the site not indenting... >_>

/wall of text :)
 
Great review UltimaLink! SSBB is a really awesome game!...of course only my cousins actually own the game so I get very little play time :D.
 
I don't know, it seems more like a 4 to me. First of all, the plot is terrible, there's no story in it. Second, it's too short.
 
It's really hard now with the wii remote, i rather use the Gc controller for the master hand dude. Ganondorf is there thank god.
 
I liked it a lot.Espicially changing the Adventure mode to the Subspace Emissary.That made it a bit more funner,longer,and a little more challenging.
 
I enjoyed it, the upgrade in graphix and sound, and the assist trophies (Shadow rox!!!!!) as well as the brawl (giga-bowser still kinda creeps me out...) item was a great add-on as well as getting to make your own stage, but personally, I prefer melee because the moves you exicute actually knock the opponenet easily... but still a great game.
 
Personally, I think I scored it far too high. When I think it over more seriously, this game doesn't even break 9/10. I personally enjoyed Melee adventure over the SSE, despite the storyline. Brawl lost a lot of respect from me for being so horrifically slow and quite honestly, boring compared to Melee, as well as having Nintendo's *utter crap* wifi to support it's online play. Nintendo also decided to make some poor cut decisions in terms of old stages and music, leaving out the amazing Dreamland64 and its musical accompanyment. More freedom in choosing what music goes with what stage would have been appreciated too.

What about the new items? They further unbalance the game, and are, in summary, cheap and stupid. They just ruin the fun. The only truely enjoyable add-on was the addition of stage builder, which is still absurdly limited.

They ruined air-dodging, any chance of getting a combo on an opponent, they ruined the fun, fast-paced gameplay, and they added something as cruel, retarded, and irritating as TRIPPING. I must really re-do this now...

EDIT: Fixed score is up
 
I liked it but i thought Melee was better and the plot made little difference to me, it was dumb..... i think Melee, being a debut, had a larger following because there were never really any other games in its caliber..... but then again pretty much every game for the wii is either reely bad or causes spirratic vomiting so it may gain a large following of dissapointed wii buyers who dont have any good games to play.
 
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