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| Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) |
Right out of the box, this game proves itself worthy of its 'Ultimate' subtitle. Its character roster is without question the strongest in the entire series. There are no cuts. Every single character from every Smash Bros. game is returning, including those that were cut from previous instalments. Not only that, but every returning character has seen a few changes that make them feel distinct from the many different characters included. Everyone feels a lot stronger than they did in the past, and there are few characters that I genuinely disliked using. Not only that, but the newcomers, though sparse, all feel unique and fun on their own. King K. Rool and Incineroar in particular felt really great for me, specifically K. Rool, who quickly became my new main. They even made 'clones' feel less egregious, reclassifying them as 'Echo Fighters', giving them a new identity and leaving fans open to the possibility of more and more clones to come. Even the stage roster is by definition the best its ever been, with 103 different stages, all distinct from the last in either layout, mechanics or aesthetics, with the majority of them coming from past games in the series. I do mean that, since there are just 4 stages new to this game, which I don't see as a problem. The returning stages have all been given a fresh coat of paint, and look breathtaking, especially compared to their appearances in the past. What I find especially impressive is how they made the stages based on 8-bit games look incredible in HD whilst still looking more true to their home games, literally looking like they've been taken directly from their 8-bit environments. Of course, the game as a whole is beautiful, but I'll get to that later.
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| Battlefield |
The gameplay is also updated from past games. With the 3DS no longer holding things back on a hardware front, the game runs faster than the previous games, but not so fast as to return it to the Melee levels of unaccessible. That said, the new knockback mechanics occasionally make it so you briefly lose track of where your character is, since the characters fly faster, but decelerate quicker. It only happened to me once or twice, and once I'd gotten used to the new gameplay speeds, it never happened. In general the game seems faster, and not just because of the movement speeds. The new game mechanics favour offensive play over defensive, since the game punishes players who dodge too frequently, and it's much harder to time your shield to perfectly block an incoming attack. The game wants you on the offensive as much as possible, and this results in quick matches, even on the larger stages. Beyond that, the gameplay is fairly unchanged from the recent games. It feels like the gameplay of 3DS / Wii U but with a little facelift to fix any little inconveniences that arose from those mechanics, leading to the most refined core gameplay in the series.
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| King K. Rool |
Not only is this the best multiplayer content the series has ever had, but it's also got one of the best single-player components. That might initially sound weird since a lot of the single player modes from the previous instalments have been culled for this game. There's no Smash Run/Tour, no Home-Run Contest, no Target Smash, no Events, no Trophies, even All-Star Mode has been relegated to a Mob Smash Mode. This might seem disappointing at first, but when you realise that the massive character roster would require you to clear each of these modes with every single character for full completion, like it was in previous entries, you don't miss them. The modes that are here have been given a lot of time in development, and it shows. Classic Mode is the best it's ever been, combining the replayability of Melee with the structure of Brawl. Every character has their own unique path through the mode, either playing off an element from their home series (Pokemon Trainer battling all the other Pokemon to become the very best) or relating to their appearance in Smash (Lucario fighting the other characters with counters). These are great, and figuring out each character's gimmick is exciting, especially seeing which of the 7 boss fights they'll get (even if half the time it just ends up being Master Hand). The main event here is Spirits Mode, which has a lot going for it. The basic gameplay of Spirits is sort of like a combination of Events, Trophies, Equipment and Stickers. A Spirit is a character not playable, but that uses a playable character as a vessel, giving that character their abilities and attributes, simulating a battle against that character as best the game allows. These are all well thought-out matches, and there's a lot more to Spirits than this, such as levelling them up, combining them to summon other Spirits, and sending them on expeditions to gather loot. The main event of Spirits Mode is the new adventure campaign: World of Light. While it's nowhere near as story-driven as Subspace, the gameplay more than makes up for it. On the surface it may appear to just be a series of Spirit battles with a set path, but there is so much more to it than that, in ways I don't want to spoil for you. Let me just say this: it has by far the greatest final boss in the series' history.
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| Moray Towers |
Okay, one paragraph left, and there's one important thing to address, which may just be the most important part of the game: the aesthetics. The game looks gorgeous as always, and the soundtrack kicks ass, and with remixes like Zinnia's theme, Big Blue, Gangplank Galleon and an epic orchestral rearrangement of Melee's How to Play theme, as well as the new Splatoon and Castlevania music, this might just be my favourite Smash soundtrack yet, but these aren't what make the presentation of this game so great. It's all of the little touches that mean absolutely nothing in the long run. I've mentioned before that the things that elevate something above and beyond are the little touches, and this game has those in spades. There's the big slow-mo zoom-ins that occur on the final strike of a battle, or the way the score flashes up on screen when a KO happens in 2-player battles, or the fact that Ryu and Ken never turn their backs on their opponents, just like in Street Fighter, or the new HUD which displays stuff like Cloud's Limit Meter and Villager's pocketed items, or Incineroar showboating for the crowd after landing or missing a strong attack... Holy f***, there's just so much to like about this game. And that's not even mentioning the quality-of-life adjustments, like the way you pick the rules before anything else, or how you don't need to hold down 5 different buttons to exit a match, or how you can look up each character's special move list from the pause menu, or the new Smashdown Mode which encourages people to be good with lots of different fighters... Gah, it's just so clear that an awful lot of time and care went into making this the perfect package for everyone, and that's not even including the upcoming DLC characters. There are 6 new fighters on the way, 2 of which we currently know about: Joker from Persona 5 and the hilarious Piranha Plant. When you put all of this together, it's hard not to see this game for what it is: perfect.
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| Galeem |
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) is just the best Smash Bros. game ever. I'm honestly a little perplexed as to how they'll top this with the next instalment in another 6 or so years, but for now, I'm not going to dwell on that too much and just play this game forever. All this game needs is for Crash Bandicoot to be playable. And just you watch. I feel good about my chances. 10/10.
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