Super Smash Bros. Brawl

THE BAD:
Despite how awesome this game is, there are still bound to be some bad things. First off, there’s the lag, which I mentioned up above there, plus the game’s story is a bit short. But the great thing is, that doesn’t really even hamper the gameplay. I still love to play the game with my friends or family, the competitive fighting is really fun.

SUMMARY:
This game is really good for many reasons. For 1, there’s a great deal of game modes, such as Subspace Emissionary, Classic, Home Run Contest, Brawl with Friends or the Computer, and many, many more. Subspace Emissionary is a pretty good story mode for a Super Smash Bros. Game, which are not necessarily noted for the story modes. The story is pretty good, as well as it exposes you to a variety of characters that you wouldn’t normally use. There are a few disappointments though, mostly the idea of how it’s set up as a side scrolling adventure, but you have to stop when you encounter an enemy. It’s like Super Mario Bros, only messed up execution. Another thing I found that made SSE a little less fun for me was the fact that it’s way too repetitive. You basically have to go through every level twice, due to the ending. Difficulty is no problem, until you get to the last boss, which even on easy is a bit hard to face. It took two people for me to finally beat him, but that made a bit more fun, actually having a challenge in the game. SSE wasn’t the highlight of the game, no one expected it to be, fighting is where Super Smash Bros has always shined, and I doubt anyone expected them to be able to make the story mode a masterpiece.

The plot is rather simple, you basically are trying to save the world, which sounds very clichéd, and it sort of is, but it comes out definitely good in the case of this game. The fact that this has many unlockables, and some of the exclusive trophies, is good enough for me. Plus, if you play it long enough, you may get an added award, like a demo. It takes quite awhile to complete, and the gaps between each skill level are defined well. That is pretty good because it’s boring to play on low skill levels if your good, and hard as heck if your not good on tough levels.

Home-Run Challenge is a unique little game. The basic feature is to attack a sandbag with a baseball bat, until the countdown starts, then you try and hit the sandbag as far as you can. Tourney mode does exactly what it implies, allows you to set up a tourney. Classic mode is a single player mode where you take on as many opponents in a row as you can, controlled by the computer. I find this mode to be fun to try with different people you don’t usually play with. Rules is a fun little way to play with altered rules, and I find it quite fun to mess around with. Special Brawl is similar to Rules mode, only the battles don’t affect your record at all.

My personal favorite mode is Brawl mode. It’s the mode where you are able to fight the computer to train, or against anyone live in your house. I personally love to train with it, since you can alter the computer’s difficulty level, and that really comes in handy. I honestly went from horrible, to pretty good in a few days playing that. The reason I like Brawl mode playing against a friend in real life is the trash talking, and how much more competitive it is, seeing your opponent sweating it out, and trying their hardest to win the match. This mode is really, what the game was made for, competition.

Online: I did a brief summary of the online up in The Good section, but I honestly don’t think I covered it enough. Online has a few game modes, Brawl, Tag Team Brawl, and Home Run Contest with a Friend. Now, I play regular old Brawl mostly, it’s really easy to find matches. You load up, and pretty much less then a minute later the match is about to start. This is really good when looking for some quick fun. The other part of WiFi is the Friend Code System, where someone adds your code, and you add them, and you could fight, just the two of you, and there’s usually much less lag. This would be good for fighting your friends from faraway, and you could organize tournaments over the internet with this feature. It’s a great deal of fun, since there’s less lag. Searching for a match is usually ruined by those with bad connections, odds are there will be one in every 4 player match, which means you’re going to spend most of your time floating around the screen and being frustrated the entire match, which to me, doesn’t sound like fun.

To play someone you know, first you have to get their friend code, and add them, and then you tell them yours, and their add you. It may sound difficult to those not used to Nintendo’s friend code system, but it’s really not. It’s pretty simple, and once you get used to it, it’s rather quick. It makes WiFi more fun to play against 1 person at a time since then the lag isn’t as noticeable.

Items:
Super Smash Bros is a game that focuses heavily on the items. Some of the important items are Assist Trophies, Pokeballs, Smash Balls, and CDs. Assist Trophies make use of characters that weren’t made into fighters, but were put into the game anyway. Usually they alter everyone in the match, except for the person who unleashed it, a lot of times knocking things off the map. Pokeballs are basically the exact same thing as assist trophies, but the thing is, only pokemon come out of poke balls. Smash Balls are what you get your final smash from. It goes around the map, and the person who breaks it gets their Final Smash unlocked. Cds are gathered throughout the main story, to unlock soundtracks from the game, and from other games too.

The trophies are an awesome thing, not the assist trophies, trophies. They are usually characters from other games that give you the satisfaction of collecting. To beat Subspace Emissionary on here, you have to collect all of the trophies for one hundred percent, so I bid you happy hunting.

Unlockables: There is plenty of unlockables in this game, be it characters, maps, or even demos. I don’t want to ruin it for you by saying to much about them, assuming you reading this review to decide to get the game or not, so I’ll just say that you should have a lot of fun trying to unlock everything in this game. I have been playing the game for around two monthes, and I am still trying to unlock things as I write this review. It takes quite a long while to do.

Controls: The controls in this game are rather unique for the Wii. Sure it was followed up by Mario Kart Wii, and surely won’t be the last game to have used this feature, it allowed the players to use many different controllers to fit their needs. You can use the Wiimote only, the Wiimote+Nunchuk combo, the Gamecube controller, and the Classic Controller. It was pretty awesome being able to use all of those.

Photo brought to you by the Smash Dojo