Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

You write so much information.

I think you have too much extra time. :p

Review Mario Kart next though.

Umm, dude I already reviewed MarioKart Wii like a month ago. Also, I wrote the original SSBB review in about 1 and a half hours nonstop on a weekend. I guess that's wasting my time, but I feel it was worth it to bring a comprehensive list of pretty much everything necessary to a Smash Bros. newcomer. Other than the yahtzee part, I wrote that just because I disagreed so much with one of his reviews for the first and hopefully last time.

For even more information, possible spoilers, and some interesting tips go to http://www.smashbros.com/. The site has not been updated once in the past months, but it still contains a ton of information about the game that wouldn't fit well into a review.

Here are pretty much all the videos that every Smash Bros. fans should watch. Enjoy!

Warning: some of these videos are not suitable for children and entertain with crude, lewd humor.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2cX9ecyXs&feature=channel[/media]

...I came.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeVgyzMhsU[/media]

Smash Kingdom
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/413257

Smash Kingdom Melee
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/428847

Smash Kingdom Lost Levels
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480885

Brawl Taunts
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/438529

More Brawl Taunts
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/442158

[jake_]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

You write so much information.

I think you have too extra much time. :p

Review Mario Kart next though.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

Edit: I was pretty much exploding with anger when I wrote this, so take everything said about Yahtzee with several thousand pounds of sugar. I still idolize the man.

Take note of paradoxes and inconsistencies present in the following review link. There will be a quiz.

For a Super Smash Brothers review by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw go to
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/35-Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl .

Quiz:Which kind of game is it: button masher or skill based fighter or is it a mix of both? What do you agree with Yahtzee on? Do you feel Yahtzee should review games he knows he is going to hate before he even plays the game?


Edited: (Man, I sounded douchetastic) I don't particularly agree with Yahtzee's review, but it is still somewhat funny. I believe the game is at the very least a decent middleground for long time gamers and newer gamers, but Yahtzee can spout diatribes all he wants.

I agree with Yahtzee on the unlocking characters bit as being archaic and symptomatic of lonely game designers who never go to parties, but it's a long standing tradition of fighting games. Besides, had they given you everything, why would the player feel the need to continue playing (other than if they enjoy the game) and not just go play another game? Edit: The game designers have this element as an incentive for players to keep playing their game.

I also agree with the Subspace Emissary segment where he denounces the rehashes of level design and the nonsensical story.

The graphical design segment was fairly true, but I don't feel graphical design is particularly necessary to a review.

I agree with the little spiel about Marth and Lucas because honestly, I know nothing about them, except they rock at fighting and one is a member of the Fire Emblem group of games, while the other is a member of the Mother series group of games. I wish Nintendo would release the damn Japanese (translated of course) games where people would care to catch up on their favorite series.

Yahtzee's statements regarding the button mashability of games like Brawl seem to spout from a tiny sector of his Edit: massive, godlike brain. Turn off the items, pay attention to the game, learn the controls through some initiative, stop complaining, and try to enjoy the game before thoroughly bashing it. (That whole last sentence, yeah. Edited.)

Yahtzee claims half the "fu**ing content has to be unlocked through single player", but this just isn't true. The important stuff can be unlocked through multiple methods, but maybe Yahtzee did not recognize that while playing through multiplayer matches, he unlocked Marth, other characters, stickers, music, stages, etc.. There are multiple methods of unlocking almost everything Yahtzee. Edited: The remark about Nintendo using its old series too freaking much is true, but SSB has only been around for 3 editions, so that statement hardly applies to Smash Brothers, although it might apply in the future.

I generally enjoy Yahtzee's style of reviewing and his brutal "honesty", but this review felt subpar. Edited: (Keep in mind, I was essentially drunk and started typing. Also, I'm usually not this arrogant.) Maybe it is because I know more than him about the game, gave a much fairer appraisal, and some of his complaints were... let's say incorrect.

I assume the little clarification of "you already know if you like it or not" is designed to protect him from criticism, but what about the newcomers who recently purchased a Wii and want to know what Brawl is about and like? This review might convince them that the game sucks when they would actually enjoy it very much. This is actually a problem with all of his reviews, but I guess you have to take everything someone says with a hint of sugar. With Yahtzee it's more like a sugar induced coma brought about by eating enough sugar to fill Russia's entire land mass. Whatever, I guess I qualify as a fanboy even though I despise the atrocious Wii name and can recognize many of the flaws he said. To the last question, the right answer is NO, but it is still funny to watch games get torn to shreds, so maybe it's a YES. Just kind of depends on the viewer.

EDITED: 1/22/09 Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Yahtzee's review wasn't that terrible. I just wanted some drunk ranting when I wrote this. M'kay? Besides, my points somehow made sense still.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

Some things I want to mention that I forgot about originally. Music selection is vast with over 200 songs coming from many of Nintendo's stalwart series. The player can set the preference for how often a song will play on each stage or menu including created stages. I don't believe you can change the songs in the Subspace Emissary, but you can always mute the TV if you don't enjoy the music.

Some stages are essentially repeats of previous stages, so they are utterly pointless. Some stages are too big and allow players to continuously run away. However, most of the stages are average size and allow for mostly fair fighting.

One thing I forgot about until I went back and played some Melee was that Brawl took out almost all bonuses at the end of battles. There are still a couple big ones such as completing Classic mode with all lives intact, but the majority of the more specialized bonuses were eliminated. I enjoyed seeing these bonuses and they encouraged me to vary my fighting style, but now I don't care if I have "stale moves" simply because it doesn't matter. Melee also had a challenge to unlock every bonus, which could take an incredibly long time to complete. If they hadn't included this challenge, I probably would never have even tried to get a no hit classic run. This kind of thing really did encourage me to go back and play. Bring back bonuses instead of stickers!

Also, I omitted one single player mode called All Star. All Star forces the player to fight all 35 characters in the game with limited health recovery items. Think Boss Rush mode, but with the regular characters. It is an OK mode, but again this won't keep a player interested for long.

By now I've already told you about the ability to take photos, share videos, make stages, etc., but I forgot to mention the limitations put upon the player. With a Wii FC, players can send these creations to their friends, but Nintendo chose to limit the number possible in a day. This seems to be a recent trend with Nintendo as their Pokemon series also did this. I believe you can only send 5 videos per day, and I haven't sent stages to other people or sent pictures to other users, but I assume similar limitations are in place.

For TGN's official review of Brawl, go to
http://www.totalgamingnetwork.com/ma...d.php?t=180789 .

I posted some flaws and opinions of ThQp's review on there, but the majority of the finer points remain on this thread. I may have forgot some of the things I said on his review when I wrote mine, so read them both. Also, the information in later posts remain relevant to the review, so read them too.


Now I think I've truly covered everything that needed to be covered. Post your response today! Yes you, don't notice that I'm breaking the fourth wall, do it now! Oh, vote in the poll too!

[Salad Snake]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

You didn't get my pun, I think. Balancing issues, see?

Ah, gotcha.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

You didn't get my pun, I think. Balancing issues, see? No doubt the process would have bugs, but the idea is just so awesome I think I would ignore minor difficulties and enjoy the awesome. Besides, I think with a major company behind the helm, this could easily change the face of all future fighting games for the better. It's a relatively simple concept, just hard to pull off without having a smorgasbord of problems because combining every single possibility would require inordinate amounts of time or a couple videogame testers.

[Salad Snake]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

All that.....and remove tripping.


Anyway, I love the concept of Mugen, but it's confusing (adding characters & stages, as well as choosing characters), crashes often, and most of all, playing a fighting game with a keyboard is epic, epic fail.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

What if they had each owner of the game select which characters they wanted from an internet site and then downloaded through the Wii's wifi? So, there would be a max number of possible characters and there would be a selection from hundreds (however many) of characters. Kind of similar to Mugen in fact. I think this would make me happiest so long as I could exchange characters if I tired of one or at the very least allowing me to test out each character before finally deciding. Great idea right? This in addition to the character creation system would equal greatness and I think I would forgive pretty much any flaws with the game just for this amazing system. Combining this system with fair balancing would equal perfection.

[Salad Snake]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

hold up without moving too fast and then press a. It is really easy to do. For extra help, you can disable jumping with your analog stick and then it is even easier to pull off. Just go to practice mode and try it out for a while.

I see, I will try that...


Anyway, I agree they need more characters from certain series and less characters from others (was Falco and Wolf necessary?). I would love to see a playable Golden Sun character in there, or to see Advance Wars represented somehow.

Also, it'd be a long shot, but it'd be awesome to have more third party characters in the next one, especially companies that collaborate with Nintendo often. Imagine Soma Cruz from Castlevainia vs Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark. Or to see some FF Tactics characters.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

sn@ke;2308673[/EMAIL]]

Btw, I think every character (excluding the few that have identical move sets, like ganondorf, but I'd still keep him in the next game, just give him more original moves) has it's place, and I'd be upset if they took Pit, ROB, or any other character out. (Pit is actually my third best character. ROB, well, at least it's unique.) I can't name one character that "I don't care about". Except Jigglypuff.

I too hate Jigglypuff. When they have limited space, why choose probably one of the lamest characters from a series with literally hundreds of other choices? I would have picked Mew/ kept Mewtwo or just picked a pokemon that could actually fight. What I meant by "I don't care about" is that some of the characters included in Brawl are incredibly retro and I have never played their games, so I don't know much about them and I feel that their space could be better utilized.

Instead of keeping Ganondorf the same, just give him his sword and presto, I would stop complaining. I enjoy playing as all the characters in some form or fashion, but certain ones appeal to me less. They deserve a spot in Smash bros. because they fight uniquely, but they got rid of characters from Melee that were unique as well (mewtwo). Also, certain series have too many characters and many play similarly still, so I would prefer a character creation system in addition to the already included characters from Brawl, so that way I can make my own characters with my fighting style in mind and model them after my favorite gaming icons. Do you see what I mean? I like that Nintendo is including new characters, I just don't really want to play as all of them after having tried them out for extensive periods of time.

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

hold up without moving too fast and then press a. It is really easy to do. For extra help, you can disable jumping with your analog stick and then it is even easier to pull off. Just go to practice mode and try it out for a while.

[Salad Snake]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

I need to learn how to do that kick....

So, I just press up-A really fast? How do I do that without jumping or using the mortar?

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

Which attack of Snake's are you talking about? I find only a couple of his regular melee attacks useful (for example, his mid-air axe kick is so friggin' slow it's worthless as an air attack). His best attacks to me are the ones that use his weapons (such as his mortar smash, or his proximity mine), his RPG smash attack is pretty sub-par for a smash though, it feels slower then Ike's smash, with far too little range. I can't count the times someone has been in the explosion from Snake RPG, and yet not gotten hit. I, for one, have never gotten hit by it once.

On the topic of Pikachu's thunder, it's gotta be one of the cheapest attacks in the game, in mid air you can use it like Kirby's stone attack without the risk of landing in a bad spot. On the ground it's ludicrously useful as a defensive tool due to it's speed and the fact that it can't be canceled even if you hit pikachu.

I get the feeling that with a couple patches, the balance issues could be worked out. Alas, it's a console game....

Snake's up A- the kick that makes Snake look like he is a cheerleader. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDWKpP1U1ok[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTJtMqkvetI&feature=related[/media]
watch and be amazed.

Just because it is a console game doesn't mean they can't use the Wii's online updates to knock out a few patches for us. That would rock, but alas this too is a fantastical dream.

[Salad Snake]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

Certain characters will trip more often, but tripping is still random for all of them. Just watched a video, have you ever noticed that the hitboxes for certain attacks are disjointed? Snakes up tilt is a great example. He does not have to touch the target and it will still get hit. That's messed up. I totally agree with you about supers being unequal and some are just plain stupid. Having the same final smash three times (Fox/Falco/Wolf) with slight differences kind of proves to me that Brawl was a rushed game even though they delayed it so many times. Many supers are ridiculously ineffective or the extreme opposite- super effective. Also, many of them are hit or miss, no middleground, so the effort taken to get them can be easily wasted with one mistake.

Also, one attack I never really understood was Pikachu's thunder attack. It lasts for about a second and a half, but in real life this attack would be called LIGHTNING and it would only last for a small fraction of a second, but come down incredibly fast. The problem with it lasting so long is you will rarely be able to air dodge it and that puts an airborne player at an immediate disadvantage to the Pikachu. This move confuzzles me, but whatever.

Which attack of Snake's are you talking about? I find only a couple of his regular melee attacks useful (for example, his mid-air axe kick is so friggin' slow it's worthless as an air attack). His best attacks to me are the ones that use his weapons (such as his mortar smash, or his proximity mine), his RPG smash attack is pretty sub-par for a smash though, it feels slower then Ike's smash, with far too little range. I can't count the times someone has been in the explosion from Snake RPG, and yet not gotten hit. I, for one, have never gotten hit by it once.

On the topic of Pikachu's thunder, it's gotta be one of the cheapest attacks in the game, in mid air you can use it like Kirby's stone attack without the risk of landing in a bad spot. On the ground it's ludicrously useful as a defensive tool due to it's speed and the fact that it can't be canceled even if you hit pikachu.

I get the feeling that with a couple patches, the balance issues could be worked out. Alas, it's a console game....

[Obsidian Spire]

Re: Super Smash Bros Brawl review/ Smash Bros retrospective

Certain characters will trip more often, but tripping is still random for all of them. Just watched a video, have you ever noticed that the hitboxes for certain attacks are disjointed? Snakes up tilt is a great example. He does not have to touch the target and it will still get hit. That's messed up.

I totally agree with you about supers being unequal and some are just plain stupid. Having the same final smash three times (Fox/Falco/Wolf) with slight differences kind of proves to me that Brawl was a rushed game even though they delayed it so many times. Many supers are ridiculously ineffective or the extreme opposite- super effective. Also, many of them are hit or miss, no middleground, so the effort taken to get them can be easily wasted with one mistake.

Also, one attack I never really understood was Pikachu's thunder attack. It lasts for about a second and a half, but in real life this attack would be called LIGHTNING and it would only last for a small fraction of a second, but come down incredibly fast. The problem with it lasting so long is you will rarely be able to air dodge it and that puts an airborne player at an immediate disadvantage to the Pikachu. This move confuzzles me, but whatever.

I agree, some attacks take way too long and will cause you to die if you are off the stage (ex. Ike pressing A button by accident when falling off stage will usually die depending on how far down he is). I don't really mind the suicide attacks, but fewer characters should have them because in all honesty, none of them would actually commit suicide just to win. They would pretend to die, come back one hundred years later and start all over with a brand new hero opposing them. The circle of gaming repeats.

Have you ever recognized that when you press down to make your character fall faster, he/she/it will not be able to grab onto ledges anymore? I don't get this because they should still be able to grab on even if they are falling realistically, maybe give them some damage, but let them survive at least.

There is a lot that is arguable about Brawl because there are a lot of bugs and some stupid design choices that some people having never played previous games will accept while others will decry these same flaws (like me). Seriously, the major reviews for this game have been mostly 9.5 or up. What's wrong with the reviewers? There are a ton of flaws with this game and anyone who states this game is perfect or even near the pinnacle of fighting will lose all credibility in my eyes. I guess they just want to sell more copies of the game because Nintendo pays them or they themselves are fans who can not recognize the errors within a game until someone else tells them fom their perspective.