Smash Bros Brawl

[miffy495]

Well, we're going to need a thread for this one sooner or later, so I thought I'd start one up.

Just got it today, have put about 5 hours into the Subspace Emissary mode (but still haven't unlocked Sonic. Grrr... ) and cleared classic mode with Samus. This means I have about 25 (I think one or two more than that) characters available to play as and a bunch of stages. I've also been playing the multiplayer at friend's places since release, so I have quite a bit of experience with that as well. Verdict? Multiplayer is the same as it ever was, Subspace is infuriating at times, fun at others.

What's wrong with Subspace? The character choices. I like that you sort of get the option to pick your character before each level. The game dictates that a certain few characters are playable in each level and tells you to pick from them. When those characters are, for example, Fox, Diddy Kong, and Falco (all of whom I'm terrible with) I get incredibly pissed off as it means a whole lot of dying that wouldn't happen otherwise. Also, Smash Bros is not a platformer. Nintendo, please stop trying to force platforming into it. When it just sets you up in straight-up matches, it's great, and the cutscenes are wonderful. They're just the minority of the experience.

New characters? I'm actually very fond of Olimar right now. Pulling a bunch of Pikmin from the ground and using them as projectiles is great fun, and when they get beaten on by opponents, watching their ghosts rise away from the stage is a very nice touch.

Snake kicks all kinds of ass. If you can get yourself to a safe spot, the homing missile is like Ness' PK Thunder with splash damage and longer range. Beautiful. His triple jump (grabbing a Cypher robot and flying up) doesn't do any damage, but is easily the highest vertical jump I've seen in the game. He's a bit slow, but as I figure out how best to use him I'm reasonably certain he has the potential to be unstoppable.

Sonic, as I said, I have yet to unlock. I did play as him for about an hour last night at a friend's though (what prompted me to buy the game today) and learned very quickly that if you can't control high speed movement, you're completely screwed. All of his attacks seem to be variations on the spin dash, whether it's the standard dash from Sonic 2 or the homing one introduced in Adventure. The homing dash is great for irritating your opponents, as it zooms you towards the closest person and bounces you off their head, allowing you to keep performing it ad infinitum until someone can throw you off your rhythm. His side B move sets him dashing around the stage kind of like Yoshi's egg-ball-thing from Melee, but significantly faster. I lost a match yesterday because of a suicide from not reacting quickly enough to that move when both I and my last remaining opponent had one life and I was far ahead in percentage. Quite annoying to lose a match that was pretty clearly mine due to being too slow to react to my own character. Still, like Snake, Sonic could quickly become a favorite if I work on my timing.

Eep. That's a lot of text. As I wouldn't mind some matches against other thumbs, I'll throw up my friend code here, knowing full well the potential irritation that this could lead to. (see: the pokemon thread) I'm (as always) Miffy at 4124-4854-3796. See some of you out there.

[Roderick]

A friend brought it to my place this weekend to play on my import US Wii and we had amazing fun. I actually like the Subspace Emissary. You should just see it as a really, really, REALLY nice extra to the game, not as a singleplayer game in itself. That's the blatant error sites like IGN made when they complained about it. They perceive it as something that competes with a 'real' singleplayer game (in which case, obviously, it's not up to par) instead of as this astoundingly awesome bonus feature to a great fighting game.

I did play rather conservatively with Link, simply because he's a good rounded character that I was already familiar with. A newcomer I think is really good is Lucario. He has some powerful attacks, awesome range and an interesting feature where he becomes more powerful the more damage he has on himself. Great stuff.

On a higher level, I think the additions especially of the Final Smash ball and the Dragoon parts make the game intensely more fun, because there's now this whole new way of dealing with your opponents. It may appear artificial (just another item appearing), but I love it.