 |
| Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) |
Let me begin with the easy stuff. Visually, this game is incredibly distinct from the previous. They went for a more realistic, for lack of a better word, look, which does help to distinguish it from Melee, but it's not what I'd call the best fit for a game like this. It still looks fine, great even, but it's not my favourite route the art direction could have taken. While it works for some characters, like the Fire Emblem cast or Snake, a lot of the characters that are designed to be more cartoony just don't match up. It's not like they're ugly, or don't hold up as well, it's just that the new art style doesn't suit them quite as well. On the other side of the presentation angle, the one thing everyone is in agreement about is the soundtrack. The music in this game is divine, and the library has lengthened considerably from Melee. While each stage in Melee had 1, maybe 2, music tracks, some stages in this game have upwards of 10, and you can toggle how likely each track is to appear using the MyMusic feature. This is easily one of the best additions to Brawl, and I'm so happy this has become a staple of the franchise.
 |
| Snake |
The roster has been given an upheaval. While in Melee there were 26 different choices, there are now 37, and they've trimmed the fat a little as well. There were 5 cuts made from the previous game, and I agree with 80% of them. Losing Mewtwo was a little weird, but if they could only have 4 Pokemon slots, it does make the most sense. The new characters in this game all feel so incredibly unique and distinct from each other, it's actually really impressive how much variety exists here. I mentioned that the best newcomers in Melee were the ones that felt like they'd pulled their abilities and attributes straight from their home series, and that's certainly the case again here. Pokemon Trainer has you cycling between 3 different Pokemon, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, mid-battle, Olimar has a focus on Pikmin management, Sonic's all about speed, Snake's about stealth and using carefully laid traps to get the job done. The inclusion of 3rd-party franchises is also great to see, as it opens the door to endless possibilities for the future of the series. The new stages are also very unique, and there are some classics here, like Halberd, Frigate Orpheon, Delfino Plaza and Shadow Moses Island. There are also a couple that should never be touched with a 10-foot pole, like Rumble Falls and Mario Bros., but the good far outweigh the bad. At the very least, each stage truly feels faithful to its source material, and it's fair to say this Smash team are getting a lot better at translating these unique worlds into Smash.
 |
| Halberd |
The core Smash gameplay is... slower, but that's a good thing, despite what you've heard on the internet. Melee was just so fast and technical that it made it slightly unappealing to a casual audience, so Brawl slows things down. Sure, even for my tastes, it might be just a little bit too slow, but I'll take 'a little too slow' over 'far too fast' any day of the week. For a party game, it's first-and-foremost about accessibility, especially for being released on the Wii. I don't care that it's not as competitive, it wasn't designed to be. It's a party game. The additions to the core gameplay go beyond speed, as well. There are new items called Assist Trophies, which summon additional CPU character to the battlefield to temporarily lend a hand to whoever summoned them. These range from well-known characters like Shadow and Nintendog to more obscure picks like Barbara the Bat and Helirin. These are a genius way to add more characters to the game without overloading the roster, and none of them are so overpowered that they overstay their welcome and draw ALL focus from the fight. The biggest change to the gameplay is the introduction of 'Final Smashes', which are 'finisher' moves a character can pull off once they break open the Smash Ball. I love this idea, and whenever that Smash Ball appears, the tone of a battle changes instantly, but in the best way possible. My only real gripe is that not all Final Smashes are created equal. Some characters, like Marth and Ness, have really overpowered Final Smashes, while others, like Luigi, Peach and Donkey Kong, have Final Smashes that are so ineffective they might as well not have one. It would be a few years before the Smash series would find a better balance between the Final Smashes, and they still haven't got it perfect, but for the debut of this concept, it was a great success.
 |
| Marth's Critical Hit |
I would spend this final paragraph going over the additional modes returning from Melee, like Classic Mode and All-Star Mode, or new additions, like Stage Builder and Stickers, but there's really only one thing worth talking about from here: The Subspace Emissary. This is Brawl's replacement for Adventure Mode, and boy is it a replacement. It's a full-blown story campaign with fully animated cutscenes, over 10 hours of gameplay and a true crossover in which all the characters on this roster exist in the same universe. There's never a justification as to how this can be, and because the cutscenes aren't voice-acted, they don't do a fantastic job of telling you what's going on and why, but that doesn't really matter, because the cutscenes do a fine enough job of letting you know where everyone is at any given moment, so it's functional. As for the gameplay, it's 80% side-scrolling platforming segments with beat-em-up horde battles, and 20% Smash battles with unique conditions. The Smash battles also include boss encounters with characters like Petey Piranha and Rayquaza, and these elements work fantastically, but this mode suffers from one major setback. The main platforming just isn't that fun. It's fine, but you can really tell the game wasn't designed around it. It's just not as fun as the regular battles, and it's clear that this was worked on by a different team than the crew who worked on the core Smash gameplay, because it was. It 100% was. And, it wouldn't be that much of a problem if the levels were unique and interesting, but there are probably about 7 or 8 level types and aesthetics which constantly repeat across all 30+ levels, which doesn't help me stay invested. Most of the time, however, Subspace Emissary is too ambitious for me to worry about any of that stuff. The fact that it tells a semi-coherent story with all these characters and all these worlds, and it still manages to find a way to keep me hooked enough for the plot twists to carry the weight they do, that's just a great mode, and its ambition well and truly pays off.
 |
| Tabuu |
And that's a key word to describe Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) - ambitious. If Melee took everything that made the first game great and made it better, this game... doesn't quite do the same to everything in Melee, but it does it in the right areas. Enough for it to well and truly stand out over the previous instalment. It does its job, and when it gets it right, it gets it REALLY right. 9/10.
Next, it's Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.
No comments:
Post a Comment