We should mention that it’s quite possible that the delayed PAL release for the game has dulled its impact somewhat. If you’ve got an internet connection and have more than a passing interest in the series, you’ll have known everything there is to know about the game months and months ago, via The Smash Bros Dojo blog. The world of gamers is now an instantly global one: think of the YouTube videos you’ve watched, the reviews you’ve already read, the forum posts you followed. Perhaps you even managed to import the game. This distance is both an advantage and a disadvantage for obvious reasons. Ultimately, though, the game should speak for itself, hype or no hype.
Mario had trouble explaining this position to Peach.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the definitive full stop to the series, the punctuation mark that indicates the completeness of a franchise. Here is a game so evolved (and we use that word carefully) from the initial incarnation that it has reached saturation point, and it is impossible to imagine further development. Any wish you’d ever had while playing the original, or Melee has now been made possible. You want online play? Granted. You want to play as Sonic the Hedgehog? Granted. You want a level builder? Granted. Perhaps it even indicates an analogy between videogames and computer software: what we have here is Super Smash Bros. 3.0, with improved options and features. It is undeniably an amazing improvement, and those who loved Melee will undoubtedly want to upgrade to Brawl, but only in the same sense that those who use Word 2003 will want to upgrade to 2007. At its absolute core, the game is the same.
That might seem like a thinly-veiled insult, but it’s more a simple observation. After all, keeping the same basic gameplay might not be a bad thing in any sense. In fact, you could mount a pretty good argument that changing what isn’t broken would be a bigger mistake than to leave it untouched. The previous Smash Bros. games were wildly successful for good reason. The initial ‘pull’ of the game might have been the chance to beat the pulp out of your least-favourite mascot, but long after the novelty wore off, players kept coming back. The mascots eventually ceased to be characters and instead became simple avatars with strengths and weaknesses within the Smash Bros. universe. The gameplay just somehow stuck. Maybe it was the fresh and unique approach to the fighting genre that stood out. Maybe it was the sheer fun of the multiplayer, and the real sense of competition and reward it offered. One of the major strengths with all Smash Bros. titles is that (and like all good Nintendo games) there never feels like there is a barrier standing between you and your character. What you do really counts. The game never steps in to help out your movement or attacks. It is your skill on trial, and nothing else.
We never understood what was so deadly about sausages. We think Ness is vegetarian.
And of course, that remains true for Brawl. The gameplay is wonderfully tight, and victory feels as rewarding as it ever did. There is still a beautifully held line between competitive balance and fun, and we’re sure that this game will still be doing the rounds until the next Nintendo console is released. The little tweaks that have been made to the gameplay are for the better as well. The combat has somehow been shifted upwards, and you’ll now spend the vast majority of your fighting time airborne without noticing it. There are no obviously useless characters, though some will take practice to reach their full potential. The dreaded ‘clones’ of Melee are now all but eliminated (though the Starfox triplets leave a little to be desired), and the Final Smash Ball brings a great new surge of tension to the game. The levels are aggressive in the truest sense - it often feels as if the landscape itself does not want you to be there and is doing the best it can to help eliminate you. Returning Melee levels provide well-needed respite, and the option to make your own and share with others provides potentially limitless variety.
Additionally, the game is leaps-and-bounds ahead of its siblings, aesthetically speaking. Many stages, such as the Pikmin-inspired ‘Distant Planet’ are nothing short of beautiful, while others, such as ‘Warioware, Inc.’ provide some great and quirky art. The effort put into the music is nothing short of exhaustive, with an enormous track list filtered from every game that has a remote connection with Smash Bros. Most are completely fresh arrangements, as well, and with over 30 composers working on the game, it’s more than likely the arrangement was done by the original composer. Cutscenes, so often implemented to the detriment of good gameplay, are here a work of magnificence, with one late sequence in particular being truly breathtaking.
Moments later, Mario regrets serving baked beans as Wario's evening meal.
In fact, so much love and devotion to detail has obviously gone into this game that it feels somehow unfair to criticise it. If the problem is that now, everyone who loved Brawl’s predecessors can now play the game the way they want to, what kind of criticism is that? It’s certainly not a stinging rebuff of the game, but it is a flaw. If ever there was a game pulled down by the weight of its feature set, it’s Brawl. The game feels like Masahiro Sakurai and co. have created a sandbox to surpass the sandbox genre - there are simply so many ways to play that Brawl lacks identity. For example, the game can be played with any controller set-up imaginable on the Wii: Wii remote, Wii remote plus nunchuck, classic controller, or GameCube controller, while the buttons can be configured to your slightest whim. Taken on its own merits, this means that any player can play in their preferred fashion, but it’s indicative of a larger feeling - that the makers were afraid, or unable to push Brawl in a single, definitive direction of its own.
The one area where Brawl takes a chance and tries on a new hat for the series, so to speak, is the story mode, here amusingly titled ‘The Subspace Emissary’. All Smash Bros. titles have had a single player mode, but this marks the first major attempt to actually tell a story. It’s reasonably engaging and can hold your attention (which is more than can be said for the previous single-player modes), but unfortunately fails to be anything more than an interesting barrier to unlocking all characters. The Subspace Emissary showed all the signs of being an interesting and modern take on the side-scrolling platform-adventure, but it seems that it was not to be: the enemies, with the exclusion of some bosses and reoccurring Nintendo faces, are uninteresting and the stages uninspired. It’s still enjoyable, and certainly the first thing that you’ll do in the game (as, unfortunately, Brawl falls prey to that familiar trap of forcing players to play lengthy bouts to unlock the most interesting characters), but it won’t be the first thing you think of when you recall Brawl in a decade’s time.
Perhaps by being willing to limit itself, Brawl could have been a great game. As it stands, it is simply the strongest iteration of a great series. This is no understatement, or a downplaying of the game’s strengths. The game that hits store shelves tomorrow is a very, very fine example of design and will undoubtedly remain one of the Wii’s most attractive multiplayer games until the end of the system. In saying that, however, it’s worth noting that by squeezing so many improved features into the one game, the makers have somehow managed to turn Brawl into something not too dissimilar from its GameCube sibling.
Loading...
