Game Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Over a year of waiting, six months of delays, and countless nights spent stalking message boards, websites, and gaming news pages for the slightest update, Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl finally saw the light of day this past Sunday (midnight Saturday for some). After playing the game for a solid 72 hours, I have some news to report on this year’s hottest game.
The Good
Nearly everything about this game is perfect. It’s clearly been fine tuned and balanced so that nearly every aspect of the game was up to Nintendo’s own standards. All the characters feel balanced after playing through the majority of them. Some will fit the way you want to play better, and that’s one of the benefits of having so many to choose from.
The variety of stages will satisfy most. They range from the most basic of basic flat battlefields, to the Game & Watch extremes where random, flying, two-dimensional bacon can you send you shooting off the battlefield. Warioware is a particularly fun level too, playing the same way it’s namesake does. It will give you random instructions during the match, which you follow with your character to get the edge on opponents.
The different control styles are fun to play around with. Although, if you plan on being a force to be reckoned with, you’re going to want a Gamecube controller. It offers more buttons for advanced or quicker/easier attacks. The remote works surprisingly well, much better than I’d thought. I haven’t had a chance to try the Classic controller, but I’m sure it’s a nice blend between the Gamecube and Wiimote ones.
The graphics, while not PS3 or X360, are still gorgeous. Seeing all the characters of the past (Pit, Metaknight, Dedede to name just a few) in well textured 3D is a treat. The levels look really good, as well. Playing through Emissary mode, you get to see a bunch of different landscapes and they all come out looking much better than any previous Wii title (Super Mario Galaxy excluded).
The Bad
So this is the part I’ve been dreading. I love this game. I really do. I would rather be playing it instead of writing this, going to work, or even enjoying the company of some friends. With that being said, I’m not afraid to point out some of the problems that hold this game back from truly being game of the year. Fortunately, all the issues revolve around one aspect of the game, and if you avoid that, you’ll never have to worry about this.
Online gameplay. It’s not bad. But it’s not very good either. There are virtually no options. In multiplayer offline, you can customize the brawl. You can control how many items, to the type of game (lives, time, or coins). But you can’t do that in the random matchmaking games. You get 2-minute brawls and that’s it. Two minutes to assert your dominance (or lack thereof) on unsuspecting brawlers across the country.
Aside from lack of options, my experience actually playing online hasn’t been very fun itself. It generally takes me anywhere from three to five minutes to actually get four people into a free-for-all brawl. This wouldn’t be so bad if, as I said before, the matches didn’t last two minutes. Once you find a group, though, you can continue to play with the same players. It doesn’t just boot you out to look all over again. But if someone leaves, you’re stuck looking for a replacement, or the game puts a terrible computer player in their place instead. Once I actually got into a match, lag has been a huge problem. I’m playing in a game of delays, whereas offline, moves were responsive and immediate.
In short, the online experience brought down the whole game for me. Although this isn’t part of the “core” of the game, it was included and highly publicized. It is far from the standards normally set by Nintendo; almost as if it was an after thought. I was particularly interested in online play, as I don’t always have three others who are ready to play when I am. Hopefully they’ll address the issue with some sort of update to the system (if that can even solve the issue). So, it came, it was fantastic fun, and it is a welcome addition to my collection of games. It’s just not what was completely promised. Stay away from the online, and you have one hell of a game.
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