Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Nine years ago Super Smash Bros was released. Now in 2008, the series has returned under the title Super Smash Bros Brawl, and it has been one of the most highly anticipated Wii games.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Super Smash Bros series, it's a fighting game. Unlike most fighting games that use depleting HP bars, in order to win you try to build up your opponents percentage by performing various attack moves, and then you win by knocking them off of the stage. The higher the percentage, the more likely they are to be knocked off the stage. There are many items you can pick up while fighting to help you defeat your opponent. If you played Melee the gameplay will feel very similar. It's very simple and straight forward, but there's a lot of depth in SSBB. While the gameplay is great, I'll admit it can get a little boring if you play it excessively.

The controls for SSBB are excellent. You can play with a Wiimote and Nunchuck, just a Wiimote, Gamecube controller, or a cIassic controller. You can also assign any move to any button, so you are sure to find a control scheme that works for you. For better or for worse, the Wii's motion sensing is hardly used at all. The only time it's used is if you decide to turn it on to use as your Smash Attack. The reason I say the minimal use of motion sensing could have been good is because it might have came off as gimicky and hurt the experience a little bit.

There are numorous gameplay modes to choose from in Brawl. There are the standard VS. matches, CIassic mode which lets you work your way up stages with a character, Subspace Emissary, and many other mini game type challanges to mess around with. There are a lot of things to do in Brawl, so it should take a while before you get bored.

Subspace Emissary is really a whole new game seperate from the rest of Brawl. Subspace Emissary is a side scrolling game which lets you play as all the different characters in the game through many different levels. While this sounds like a really cool idea, it comes off as feeling very repetitive and tacked on. There's a few levels that are fun, but most of them are just the same old boring thing over and over again. It'll only take about 8-10 hours to get through Subspace Emissary, and while that doesn't sound like a whole lot, I found myself wishing it was shorter because I couldn't force myself to keep playing. The upside to Subspace Emissary is that the presentation is amazing. The story is told through absolutley beautiful cutscenes which come close to being as good as something you'd find on the PS3 or 360. I'm glad they decided to add the Subspace Emisarry, but definitley don't buy Brawl just for this mode.

 

 

Single player is good and fun, but you'll find Brawl most enjoyable with friends. The game is just a lot more fun if you've got some friends over to play with you. Even if you don't have any friends over, you can now play online with Wi-Fi. Playing online is good for the most part. There is hardly any lag and matches are relatively easy to find. The downside is friend codes just make the experience not quite as good. My other complaint with online is that there's no leader boards or anything like that.

There are 35 characters featured in Brawl with the likes of Mario, Link, Solid Snake, Samus, Sonic, and Fox just to name a few. The character roster is terrific, and for the most part the characters are well balanced. There are also over 40 stages in Brawl. All of the stages are inspired by the games of the characters in Brawl, and a lot of them are very fun.

The soundtrack in Brawl is simply one of the best I've ever heard in a game. There's tons of great songs from the games of the characters in Brawl, and also many great songs made exclusively for Brawl.

 

 

As far as graphics go, Brawl looks great. It shows some of the best graphics the Wii has to offer so far. The character models and stages look great, the animations are fluid, and the cutscenes of Subspace Emissary are gorgeous.

Super Smash Bros Brawl is a great game that is sure to keep you busy for a long time to come.

 

Score: 9.4