Game: Super Smash Bros Brawl
Ranking: 4/100
Average Score: 92.75%
Nintendo characters tool up to beat each other into submission
for no apparent reason in this offering. Can I bring myself to drop kick a poor
innocent Pokemon into the stratosphere? Yes, as it turns out. Yes I can.
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| 'Come get some, bitches!' |
Intro
The manual is concise and well-laid out, with an easily
accessible list of moves. The objective is simple - smash your opponents off
the screen. Why? Well… the game doesn't care, and neither should you,
apparently. We are treated to a sweeping opening title sequence showing all the
various characters, which gets bonus points for the joyfully ridiculous moment
where Pikachu and Samus seemingly running for their lives in a spaceship. There
are also a wealth of options to choose from - do you want to play the Adventure
mode, the tournament mode, one-on-one? With friends or alone? Link up and play
people online? The choice is yours. The bright, bold menu design is clean and
easy to navigate.
However, nothing in the manual, opening sequence or menu
tells me why all of our favourite Nintendo characters (and others they’ve
decided to co-opt into the fray) are fighting to the death. It felt like being
dropped into the mid-point of a story where everyone else has been in it from
the start; the majestic music tells me this is an urgent event... but I have no
idea why.
Game, would it really be that hard to add a semblance of a
motive in the five minute silent opening cut-scene where every character does
something majestic? It would be nice to know why we're throwing each other off
platforms. Even the Streetfighter and Mortal Kombat games cobbled together a
reason for their tournaments. You get a vague idea from the Story Mode of the
motivation for the brawling, but it still seems to boil down to the Nintendo
princesses enjoying getting their subjects into an arena to fight to the death
for their entertainment. Perhaps there will be a sequel entitled 'Super Smash
Bros: Revolution!'?
Getting Going
The game is easy to get into, and the first couple of stages
of the classic tournament are easy enough that the game allows you to get a
feel for the controls. You progress from a single platform and one enemy to
multiple enemies and several platforms, and this arrangement is changed at each
stage, so you get a wide variety of fights. The story mode (Subspace Emissary)
combines the brawl style of fighting with a platform element, and makes the
gameplay a little more varied and a little more skill-based.
Sadly, it feels like no skill is involved whatsoever in the
tournament stages. I got through the classic tournament by waggling the control
stick and pressing A or B, which generally - but not always - got you through
each stage. The frenetic pace of the game - although engaging - makes it very
difficult to aim specific moves or plan out a strategy. There are many elements
such as overpowered weapons or disappearing platforms which can cause unfair
deaths - not just for you, but for the CPU opponents as well. This makes it not
strictly cheap, but it means that sometimes you'll be close to dying but by
chance an item will drop that allows you to despatch your opponent, or the level
will tilt while you're winning and knock you clean out of the stage.
I think it would be nice to have fewer randomised events, or
to perhaps be able to control the number that happen in a stage. The addition
of items and events that can change the outcome of the fight are definitely a
fun element, but if this were dialled down a bit, I think it would make the
game feel a little more fair.
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| 'I shall fight for your entertainment no more! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!' |
Fun
This game is certainly a lot of fun; it trades chiefly on
the fact that you can pit your favourite Nintendo characters (plus some others)
against each other, but the straight-forward controls coupled with the zany
stages and moves mean that it doesn't need this gimmick to be an enjoyable
game. There is something very satisfying about being able to smack a character
off the screen, and the fact you can see the level of each character's damage
means that you have a reminder of how close you are to being knocked into
oblivion (the higher your damage, the easier it is for you to be hit out of the
game like a baseball). The added gimmicks such a multiple opponents, giant
version of opponents or metal versions psychologically up the ante before you
even start a stage, and the fact you have elements of platforming and item
collection mixed in with the beat-em-up style gives you a lot to concentrate
on.
Alas, the game is a bit cheap! Often I have died in a stage
for no good reason - an opponent got lucky and collected a game-breaking item,
or the platform I was on sank into the ground. More often, I'd win a stage and
find myself shouting, 'How did I win?' because I just shouldn't have, and
somehow my last opponent got flung to the far corners of the earth.
The very elements of randomisation that serve to make it
possible for you to turn the stage around if you're being annihilated do make
the game a bit cheap; reducing some of these would make the gameplay feel a
little more fair and in the player's control.
Visuals
The game does a good job of combining the fun and quirky art
design of games like Super Mario Bros and Kirby alongside more the serious
designs found in titles such as Zelda and Metroid. The different tones of the
games are used in the stage design to great effect, and the incongruity of
seeing Mario jump about on Starfox is more amusing than off-putting. Attacks
which take more off a character's health tend to have explosions or light
effects around them, which makes them look and feel more powerful than a
standard move. There are interesting elements to some stages, where levels may
scroll continually vertically (if you don't keep up, you lose), or fog descends
over the stage and once it clears, you're in a different area altogether.
Another good thing about the visual design is that the levels look relatively
simple in terms of extraneous decoration - something that helps enormously when
you're controlling a sometimes quite tiny character and trying to look out for
all the other characters trying to attack. There are even assistant trophies
that your opponents can grab which hinder your view of the screen - such as a
Nintendo dog that keeps licking the screen. These nods to existing game titles
do provide a little amusement as your winning streak is being impeded.
The problem with some of the more expansive stages, however,
is that sometimes you can wonder where your character has disappeared to, and
those valuable seconds spent searching usually mean you find your character as
he or she is kicked repeatedly in the face.
It would be nice if the characters were just a smidgen
bigger so you can spot them more easily in the larger stages, or keep the
stages smaller but ever changing. There are several stages in Super Smash Bros
Brawl that stick to roughly one screen, but completely change the surroundings
and platform set-up on a regular basis, which creates varied obstacles without
shrinking the characters to fit an expansive stage.
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| 'Down, boy! Better yet, play dead.' |
Intelligence
The opponents you battle with attack with unrelenting might;
their behaviour matches that of someone who is fighting for their life in an
arena - they come at you and leave you very little reacting time. This makes
for a fast paced game where tactics have to be short and swift. Occasionally
they even notice if you repeatedly spam one move and try to counter or dodge
it.
Your opponents attack you. That's all they do; they find you
and attack you. This makes perfect sense, but it becomes painfully clear that
they don't seem to think much beyond that when you can go through a few moves
until you find one that keeps working and spam your way to victory - not
always, but more often than not. Unless someone collects a giant missile that
cannot be dodged or a platform gives way under you, of course. In hard mode,
the only difference is they will work hard to grab every power-up item
available.
I'd like to see some of your opponents recognise repeated
use of a manoeuvre and find a way to counter it. At the same time, this would
need to be balanced with fewer randomised events, otherwise the game would be
frustratingly difficult.
Immersion
The most absorbing part of the game as a single player is
the Story mode; the mixture of fighting, platforming and silent cut scenes are
nicely varied and interesting to play. The short, sharp feel of the tournament
stages do leave you with an urge to keep going - or keep repeating a stage if
you lose. The tournaments use the same stages, but randomise some of the
opponents you face, so you do get a slightly different game if you replay the
tournament section. Plus, each character handles slightly differently, so it's
fun just to try out different characters beyond your favourites. The multiplayer
options make it possible to play with your friends at home on online, and the
issues of cheapness which can be frustration in single player mode add to the
fun in multiplayer mode - it means that even the least experienced players have
a chance of grabbing victory with a well-snatched bazooka.
Once you've completed one tournament, or the story mode, the
only thing to really keep you coming back in single-player mode are the
unlockables. I personally have never been a huge fan of this as a gameplay sweetener,
and in this game, you find yourself repeating tournaments solely to unlock a
new character. I also found myself wondering about some of the moves assigned
to each character. Some of them fit remarkably well, such as Zelda's
magically-influenced attacks and Kirby's absorption of opponents' moves, but
when Mario started repeatedly headbutting poor Kirby during a fight, I started
to wonder whether I'd simply missed the 'Super Mario Bros East-End Protection
Racket' game.
Simply having more variety in the stages you battle in would
be a good way of making the tournaments seem less repetitive, or including more
bonus rounds to vary the action. With such a wide variety of characters representing
many genres of games, there would be huge scope for bonus rounds besides the ‘destroy
the targets!’ stages.
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| After you fight for a while, sometimes you receive random gifts in the area. Much like 'The Hunger Games'. |
Camera
The camera is fairly static, but it will follow you if the
stage scrolls at all - as the basic premise of the game is 'don't get knocked
out of the stage', this makes perfect sense. If you disappear off the stage, a
small circle tracks you. This allows you a chance of scrambling back onto the
stage.
Unfortunately, the circle shows you which direction you are
in relation to the stage, but not how far away you are. Also, when the camera
zooms in and out to accommodate a unique hazard in the stage itself, it can
make it difficult to see your character.
A little counter displaying how far you've fallen from the
stage when you're off-screen would allow you to work out whether you have a
chance to save yourself, but part of the frustrating fun can come from your
desperate attempts to double jump back onto a ledge in the sheer hope that you
won't die.
Controls
The controls are reasonably responsive and pretty
straight-forward; there are no control-stick breaking manoeuvres or thumb
gymnastics required to pull off the special moves. You use one button and the
control-stick for standard moves, one button and the control-stick for special
moves and the two together allow you to grab an opponent. It's very easy to
remember and makes executing moves second nature very quickly when using the
Wii remote and nunchuck.
There are a few problems with the controls - I noticed on
playing Sub-Space Emissary that I sometimes spent ages jumping up and down in
front of doors before the game recognised I was trying to open it. In fact, on
numerous occasions I thought I had to do something special to unlock the door
and ended up back-tracking needlessly through the whole stage.
You could improve the controls by having a separate button
for non-fight actions, but the risk there is that you would start to
overcomplicate the mechanism when its simplicity is such a good feature.
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| 'Now I shall cook you and eat you alive!' PEGI rated 12+ |
Ideas
The novelty factor of being able to play as your favourite
video game characters and beat up other video game characters is a neat idea on
its own, but there are plenty of other fun gimmicks as well. There are scores
of unlockables - from characters to demos of old 8-bit NES games - and there's
even a stage design so you can create your own levels to fight your friends on.
The replay value has clearly been carefully considered, as well as the variety;
if you want to have a quick match with friends, you can; if you want to do a
reasonable length tournament, you can; if you want to get lost in a big story
mode, the option is there as well. The cut scenes of the story mode are
entertainingly tongue in cheek, and the fight moves fit the characters well. In
tournament mode there are even the occasional bonus 'shoot the targets' levels
to break up the brawl action. This game is a lot of fun and will no doubt keep
you entertained for a good while. Except for the demos - they last around
thirty seconds and as a result are fairly unplayable.
It isn't perfect, however. The controls are a bit wonky in
the Story mode levels when it comes to handling things like doors. Some of the
decisions on fight moves are mind-boggling. I played as Fox, who has a vast
array of powerful special moves, but one of them causes him to do an
instantaneous dash across three quarters of the screen, almost guaranteeing
you'll fall off the edge of the stage and die. As the special moves are
triggered by one button, it's very easy for this to keep happening in the
middle of a brawl. Also, even in Story mode things start to get a bit samey -
you climb a couple of platforms, you fight a gang of enemies; lather, rinse,
repeat. There's only so much that the wide variety of level themes can do to
detract from this.
Maybe it would be fun in story mode to have some levels that
reflect the gameplay style of the team members you collect - for example, some
straight platforming a la Mario, then maybe a mini adventure style level as per
the Zelda series - interspersed between the brawl stages.
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| 'But... But I'm not even a Nintendo character!' |
Memory
The combination of beat-em-up action coupled with a little
platforming and a shameless dollop of nostalgia is definitely appealing, and
the gameplay is enjoyable both in single and multiplayer modes. This game will
have you coming back to play a quick round or seven until you unlock everything
there is to unlock and beyond. Also, how can you not love Kirby being able to
eat opponents and absorb both their skills and their distinguishing features?
As well as being great fun and a little addictive, it's also
enormously frustrating. From executing special moves that have a 75% chance of
killing you, to matches where you stare at the screen in disbelief at how you
lost - or even how you won - you will want to flagrantly disregard the warning
screen and throw your Wii remote through the TV at least once.
I think just a little bit of thought regarding the
practicality of the moves available and the environment used would have made
this game close to perfect - fast dashing moves and tiny platforms don't mix.
Overall, I did find this game to be a lot of fun, and
something I do keep having a quick play on now and then. The attention to
detail regarding the characters and all the little game in-jokes I found highly
entertaining, but this is thankfully just window-dressing to a well-thought out,
easy to control game. Even if I couldn’t open doors in Subspace Emissary.
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