MODERN GAMING
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Developer:  HAL Laboratory
Publisher:  Nintendo
Genre:  Beat-em-up
Year:  2008
System:  Wii

Now and again will come a game that splits entire communities into three.  The lovers, the haters, and the don't-give-a-fuckers.  Whatever reason the game has for dividing people apart be it a brilliant storyline, innovative graphics or addictive gameplay, there's always one every few years.  So here's another one that will be marked with mixed interest from its beginning.

Story - Super Smash Bros. Brawl has the same story of Melee...at first.  The Classic mode has you as a character battling through others to reach Master Hand and defeat him to prove yourself as a great warrior, collecting various items along the way to aid you or keep as trophies. 

However with Brawl comes a new story known as The Subspace Emissary.  Mario and Kirby are about to battle in an arena when suddenly a strange dark cloud fills the air, and with it comes the Halberd, Metaknight's ship from Kirby Super Star.  Brought forth is the Subspace Army and the Ancient Minister who plant a Subspace Bomb, blasting the stadium into subspace as well as kidnapping Zelda and Princess Peach.  As the Army spreads across the land, various legendary heroes of Nintendo come forth to fight them in various quadrants, joining up with other groups to face off in a great battle against their most strangest but perhaps most epic adventure ever.


Gameplay - While everything is the same in Melee admittedly, there are some differences involved.
Firstly there are now 35 characters in Smash Bros Brawl which offer a much wider range of abilities and fighting styles than in Melee, with some of them being refined for better or for worse.  A few have been replaced as well to have other more modern characters you will either love or hate.  Because there's so many of them to talk of, I will pick 5 new characters to talk about and their pros and cons.  If you REALLY have been avoiding all the news of new Brawl characters, then just don't look at the next part.

I'm serious, I'm gonna reveal a few secret characters, two you will undoubtedly know unless you retreated into the woods with your nose buried in Walden for the past half year, in order to just show the pros and cons of the additions and a taste of what you can expect.
Okay are you ready now for the next characters between this picture and the next one?  Seriously?
Then let's go.




Solid Snake - The first big news of Brawl and really the very reason for why Brawl drew so much attention to itself since it's first news.  A very unusual fighter, Snake is for the more skilful challenging fighters for his viciously punishing combo attacks and explosive Smash attacks.  If you know how to use him, he's damn powerful.  If you don't know how to use him, he comes off a bit of a mess doing nothing but standing around letting rockets fly around or plant claymores endlessly.  Here's a few things of note.
Firstly, his down A smash attack is planting a claymore, and yes it will hurt even Snake himself.  The same for his down B attack which is planting a C4 which he can activate anytime.  Secondly his forwards B attack is the Nikita guided missile, which while is good for hitting someone who avoids you in the air, leaves you absolutely vulnerable to everything else.  Third he's not too good a jumper and his up B recovery move, Cypher, is a little slow.

Lucas - Admittedly he has more difference from Ness than the Star Fox characters do for the fact he's an absolute powerhouse.  Compared to fellow Mother psychic Ness' powerful PK attacks, Lucas is weaker than him and they tend more to hit and miss.  However in exchange of that, he has more powerful physical attacks aided with the power of PSI.
Particular favourites of mine are the Up A Smash move which delivers a slow but strong PSi energy attack around him and above, his Up A normal move which is a PSI backflip and his normal A A A combo which is a rather cool kung-fu triple kick.  He also can grapple ledges thanks to his Rope Snake, same as Link or Samus.

Olimar - While a bit less useless than Jigglypuff, Olimar is a weird fighter for all of his B moves don't really attack but rather keep himself constantly guarded with Pikmin.  The Pikmin can be thrown with Forwards B and depending on what colour they are, do various attacks like poison or burn the enemy.  His Up B recovery move that helps to grapple ledges is only really useful if you have more than 3 Pikmin, otherwise it's too short, and you barely get any extra air off it so it's nearly useless.  He does however has some decent physical moves as well as a spinning air combo.  Again, not as useless as Jigglypuff.
But then, a piece of half-burnt toast is not as useless as Jigglypuff....because maybe it can get some crumbs in someone's eye and blind them.

Wolf - Let's be fully honest.  He is an absolute clone of Fox.  Okay we had Falco but we accept two characters who are copies of each other.  Pikachu had Pichu who kept hurting itself like some sort of symbiotic suicide bomber, Captain Falcon had Ganondorf (albeit much slower and powerful and not even from the same series but the same goddamn moves seriously) and Link with a more athletic weaker Young Link.  But THREE characters who all act the same is just too much.
Wolf is even more of a cheap character than Fox because once you go Wolf, you can't go back to Fox for being not only a LITTLE bit slower but also much more powerful, same moves and all.  Hell he's so blatant about it, his Final Smash is just a Star Wolf copy of Landmaster.  Now THAT'S cheap.  Wolf stole a slot that could sorely have been used by someone else much more original and worthy....like Geno.

Sonic - This guy is all about speed in itself naturally.  He is without a doubt the fastest fighter of the game but in exchange for that his attacks have shorter range than expected, as well as his B moves being difficult to handle at first.  He's a character you have to practise with a lot in order to know when to stop moving to attack right, or stop moving so you don't skid off screen.  Remember, he went so fast he wore himself out and now all his games are really mostly shit, so don't let the same thing happen to you with your skills in this game as Sonic!  Take some time to slow the fuck down and strategise a bit.



Now on other notes of the game apart from Subspace Emissary, the Classic mode, the All-star mode and the Event challenges there are some other things to do.  There's getting all the trophies like before but instead of having that dumb stage of collecting trophies from the sky or that stupid gumball machine, there's a much more entertaining way called Coin Launcher.  Essentially a one-sided Table Hockey game of shooting coins you obtain from the game in various ways at trophies, stickers and enemies to get points to make more trophies appear.  Another way to obtain trophies is to get a Trophy Stand during the Subspace Emissary and after weakening an enemy enough, throwing it to capture them.  Yes it's EXACTLY like Pokemon, why do you ask?

Stickers are the same as trophies except they don't offer background info on characters and you place them underneath a trophy in order to gain skills, like accessories, and of course the stickers not only appear randomly in any fight but are all references to characters of Nintendo, Sega or Konami.  Nice eh?  At least those little favourites somehow get in.
Lastly there is a stage builder.  If you're an inventive type then you can build stages to actually brawl in, should you ever want a change of scenery.  With a choice of three sizes, three backgrounds and ANY music you've unlocked, you can go right ahead and build some crazy stuff, from the simplest layout to the most twisted spike filled maze.
Lastly there is the newest attack all characters can posses called a Final Smash.  A rainbow ball floats occasionally around the stage and whoever breaks it open, is able to use a special move ranging from Lucas' PK Starstorm of a raining inferno of star-studded anguish, to Kirby's Cook Kirby where he throws everyone into a pot and makes food out of them with boiling hot stew.


Now let's focus on the controls.  Smash Bros Brawl has a choice of four controllers to use.  The Wiimote, Wiimote and Nunchuk, Classic Wii Controller and Gamecube Controller.  Now let's get one thing out of the way.  Many believe the Gamecube Controller to be the best one.  And it is, because it's the EXACT same controls as Melee.  Everything is the same precisely and naturally if you played Melee a lot before, you WILL probably use this controller for being so familiar, which is good thinking on Nintendo really for those who don't really want to use any different controls.
So because of this natural bias let us not count the Gamecube Controller and focus on the other three Wii-specific controls  I will list them in my personal order of worst to best after trying each of them with Mario in Normal Classic Mode of which I already aced through with 28 characters.

Wiimote - This thing was REALLY awkward.  Mainly, the d-pad is the smallest of the controllers meaning that half the time, I'm jumping when I want to run forwards, or suddenly grabbing people when I wanted to duck down through a platform.  Everything on it is so small, the Japanese have a strange affinity for small things which must be the only explanation for the fact that tiny buttons exist to use in a fighting game, of which are surprisingly less helpful than the Dreamcast's joystick (which hurts your fingers like fire ants in an S&M orgy after 3 minutes of Street Fighter).  It's all just placed not right without some sort of dialling wand needed, as well as the focused vibration on the left side of the wiimote which is really irritating after a while when it's only in one area.
How many stages before I died:  4/12 (god I hate Marth)


Classic Controller - Since it's built to be like a SNES controller, this is a decent controller to use.  The only difference and perhaps slight problem is the tendency of those who play Gamecube or SNES games to move instinctively to the d-pad which activates taunts, instead of the PS2-style left joystick which is for moving around.  The controls are most similar to the Gamecube with just the d-pad and joystick placement swapped as well as somehow nicer to reach shoulder buttons for guarding, but in return the smaller awkward to reach grab buttons between the shoulder buttons and the wiimote cable.  It's not a bad controller, average with little problems other than your own.  Course if you want to change the d-pad to be the movement, you can always change the controls to your will.  This isn't Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness guys, you can change controls to whatever configuration you want!
How many stages before I died:  10/12 (Giant hedgehog = ARGH REVERSE ROADKILL)

Wiimote and Nunchuk - Now this is good.  The movement in one hand with a jump button and guard button together, and all the attacks on the other, it's very easy to coordinate yourself with this, and if you've bought the Wii before Smash Bros Brawl, you're gonna sit in nicely with this.  The joystick moves even a bit more freely than the Gamecube controller's and the A B buttons being on opposite sides of the wiimote are so easy to handle.  This is certainly the best Wii-specific controller for Brawl in my opinion.
How many stages before I died:  12/12 (Bitchslapped by Master Hand)


Graphics - Everything looks that much shinier and the detail compared to Melee looks all the better.  Mario now has actual denim stitches, Link's tunic looks more finely silken, Samus looks...shinier.  That's really all that can be said for the characters in that they look shinier.  The real innovation of the graphics here are the stages.  To say they look twice as better as the stages of Melee and perhaps twice as exciting also, would not be an understatement.  Every stage ALWAYS has something happening in it, whether it dramatically changes the layout of the land or is just a very nice background touch.  The graphics do a good job of keeping you always on your toes for anything that might happen, as you should in a game as insane as this.  Even the Melee stages look a little bit nicer now with a bit more detail.

Music/Sound - This is perhaps the best part of the game itself.  A whopping set of 36 composers from various games from Cho Aniki to Wild ARMs have joined the orchestra to bring about what may well be the greatest remix album ever made with over 230 songs from the varying franchises of Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Pokemon, F-Zero, Metal Gear, Sonic and so forth.  There's a song in there you will love endlessly so from 30 years of Nintendo, 20 years of Metal Gear and 17 years of Sega.
My only complaints with the music in general is Sega's general laziness with their song set.  First off, WHO likes that song from Secret Rings OR that REALLY REALLY fucking shit "pretending to be j-pop" Sonic R song?  Seriously, j-pop is annoying enough in a racing game but when it's TRYING to be j-pop, I want to just run over some hedgehogs.

Second, why only ONE remade song?  Konami brought in some more treats than that, what did YOU bring Sega?  Oh a guest appearance of Silver from the NEW (read as: shit) Sonic the Hedgehog on the 360, and Shadow as an assist trophy?  Oh wow you really sold me there when Shadow has the same use as an item that's already in Brawl except more reliable.  Well done, your extra assist character who everyone hates and blames for ruining the Sonic franchise is SLIGHTLY more reliable than the Stopwatch Timer.  Bravo.
And third, why the hell did you pick Emerald Hill Zone instead of the MUCH more known Chemical Plant Zone???  WHO remembers Emerald Hill Zone more than Chemical Plant!?!?  Anyways, the soundtrack is in general so surprisingly diverse from fast-paced techno to full-blown orchestral that you'll rarely get your ears sore.


Speaking of which, there is a lovely feature called My Music.
Various stages have a set of songs and in My Music, you can set which songs will be played more or less.  Say for example on the Halberd stage you hate the Butter Building song but really love Forest/Nature area.  Well you can completely turn off one song and make one song much more frequent against others.  With this in mind you at least don't have to worry about a song you really dislike or not prefer as much as another popping up so often.

Smash Bros. Brawl may feel like half-baked remake and half-received fanservice but a great number of people love it for being just that.  Whether it's this character being added or the soundtrack or the Subspace Emissary story like some childishly fun fanfiction, it will be remembered for years to come for all of this.  Whether it will be looked upon fondly or bitterly is up to you.

Fun and Innovation - 3
Replayability - 5
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 5

I think Brawl is pretty fun but only for so long. I can't take the absurd game mechanics and seizure-enducing colourful visuals as much as some people.

Olimar is actually a really good character if you play him right. He's fast, survivable, and can do a lot of damage. Not as good in 1v1 as some characters but in multiplayer matches he owns. Just spam your pikmin, let your enemies get damaged while you dodge, and wait to use your up smash to ring bitches out.

Yeah I can agree with all you guys.  I mean the Subspace Emissary story IS a nice addition for the single player sad losers like me, as well as for the good pals who wanna play together, and the sheer amount of unlockable things does make for good length.

Fuck the stupid Nintendogs Puppy!

great write-up as always. My question is: where the hell is mega-man?