Smash Bros. Brawl: Day 1
March 9th has come and gone, and seen the release of Smash Bros. Brawl, my personal most anticipated Wii title of them all. Sure, I was hugely stoked about Zelda and Metroid, among several others, but I knew that when it's all said and done, I will spend more time playing Brawl than I will any other Wii title, probably by a factor of two or three even. So I reserved my copy at my local GameStop and showed up at midnight to get it. I've had a lot going on today (that time change didn't help things, either) so I haven't spent the entire day playing it, but I thought I would share some thoughts here for anyone considering a purchase. I know there are a lot of reviews and impressions online already, but I think I've probably played more Melee than basically any reviewer (mostly because they're forced to move from game to game, whereas I played Melee for three hours a day, every single day, for about a year). I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who had the same questions I did and those questions may not have been answered in the reviews. The big new features like the level editor and third party characters have been covered by the big sites, but a lot of little things get overlooked. Hopefully this will be helpful to some.
As you've probably heard, Brawl keeps the same feel as its predecessors. This was really important to me, and it's true. Thankfully there are also some improvements. One improvement that is monumental but I think has been overlooked is the camera. No longer does the camera pan out to alert everyone to the (gasp!) wooden box! Or...rolling barrel! No, there is so far one item that I've seen the camera pan out for and it is pretty much the most important powerup in the game. I think there are others, but they're at least limited to items of importance. And not knowing that there's a stupid pig head on the other side of the map because the camera didn't pan out to show you is totally worth it. The other overlooked improvement is that you can use the C-stick to perform smash moves. Yes, I use the C-stick. Sue me.
Now the levels. I typically would play all my matches in Melee at Hyrule Temple, so I was really interested in how it would come out in Brawl and I'm happy to report that it is entirely unchanged, and it is available from the start (ie; you don't have to unlock it). As for the new levels, I don't see myself playing many of them, because in most of them the environments get in the way too much. That being said, some of the levels are really inventive. The Pikmin level had a little token in the level that would appear at one point and when you hit it, it would flip like a coin. Depending on what side it landed, the level would stay dry or become flooded. This is an interesting concept, but the flooded version resulted in a lot of hoax suicides, which makes the level undesirable for me. The one level that I will probably play a lot even though the environment is very involved in the outcome is the Wario Ware, Inc level. This is because it's hilarious. If you like Wario Ware, you'll certainly like this level, it had me laughing out loud.
Next on to the characters. So far I've only got a couple characters that were not in Melee, and none of them were very impressive. However, the comeback characters all play very familiar, which made it easy to pick up and play right away. I played with a buddy who I've played a lot of Melee with and once we unlocked Marth and Falco, the showdown at Hyrule Temple was classic. It felt like we were back playing Melee, with the graphics just touched up a bit. A few things have changed about the character moves. For instance, instead of Marth charing up his sword when holding the B button, he charges up a little jab move, which I find a lot more useful than the charged sword. Also Falco's roundhouse smash move has been replaced by a headbutt, and now his deflection move (down+b) is sort of tossed like a yo-yo. It's hard to tell if that is going to be quite the same. The other original characters vary in similar ways but I was glad to find that they all seemed like improvements. Of the new characters, I liked Meta Knight and Pit. I'm looking forward to getting Snake and Sonic but haven't yet. I'm glad to see that no meaningful Melee characters were cut.
There are several new item types in the game and while I appreciate their addition, some of them can certainly randomize the game a bit more. This is good for beginners playing with seasoned veterans, but bad for veterans playing against veterans. On the other hand, they also offer a bit more strategy and finese in some cases. There is one item that will pretty often get you at least one kill (depending on how many people are playing, you may get more) but to pull it off you have to collect a set of three items. If you get hit hard enough, you'll lose one of the pieces, so it can make for some interesting scrambles. I think veterans of the game often play with little or no items so it doesn't matter to most, and the option of removing an item pretty much takes away any gripes about a certain item being in the game.
Unfortunately I haven't had much luck with the online play yet. I haven't tried entering friend codes, but playing with strangers did not work for me because it was never able to find a match. Very frustrating. Also, it's really irritating that Nintendo is making us enter new friend codes since we've all already entered our friends into our Wii's a long time ago. And who wants to enter long strings of numbers and letters? Nintendo is still discouraging online play, as far as I'm concerned, although this is a step in the right direction. They needed to take it further, however, because playing single player just isn't very much fun.
Oh yeah, the single player mode. I'll give them credit, they worked a lot on the single player and it does show. Really, though, this was never meant to be a single player game. The character movement was never made for moving through obstacles and beating the crap out of a computer player is unsatisfying. They've made major improvements in the presentation, the cut scenes look fantastic, but the gameplay is very meh. The great thing, in my opinion, is that you don't need to play the single player to unlock anything. From what I could tell, all the unlockables can be found by playing VS. mode, which is a breath of fresh air. The challenges and punching bag mode is back, which are more fun than the adventure mode, in my opinion.
Having just gotten about four hours with Brawl, I'm happy to report that I am completely satisfied with this new iteration of the game. They have definitely kept the same feel as the last game, but with some needed additions. If I can get the online play working, I expect that I will be investing an embarrassing amount of time with the game. The real test will be whether or not the game can stay fresh since it is so similar to Melee. I have a feeling that it will get old quicker, but it's also been five years since I heavily played Melee, which is enough time to miss it. Let me tell you, it's good to be back.
Update 3/13/2008: Finally got online to work! Apparently it was a problem with Nintendo's servers. Still, though, the lag makes it relatively unplayable. Thank you, Nintendo, I now know what it's like to play Smash Bros. in slow motion. Ever seen a 2 minute match last 10 minutes? I have...
