Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Developed by: Nintendo/ Game Arts
Published by: Nintendo

Most gamers today associate the start of their video game hobby with Nintendo. While Nintendo wasn’t the first company to release a video game console, it did, however, revolutionize the entire industry and set the standard for quality gaming for years to come.

The original Super Mario Brothers for NES is widely considered one of the best video games of all time. However, Mario was just the start for Nintendo. Aside from the Mario series, Nintendo pumped out hit after hit; most notably The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, and Pokemon just to name a few.

These franchises set the foundation for Nintendo’s future immense success. Super Smash Bros. Brawl takes characters from all these franchise and more and puts them all into one single game.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the kind of idea a kid would dream of. Who would win in a fight between Mario and Link? Princess Peach or Princess Zelda? Samus Aran or Fox McCloud? Donkey Kong or Bowser? Such character match-ups could equal the magnitude of a crossover between the X-Men and Fantastic Four or Superman and Batman.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is Nintendo’s ultimate video game crossover. Fans of every Nintendo franchise easily fell in love with the Super Smash Bros. series that started on the Nintendo 64 and has since evolved. The premise of the game remains intact, however, in this Wii sequel which isn’t a bad thing at all really.

Players choose their favorite Nintendo icon from the popular (i.e. Mario, Link, Pikachu) to the fairly obscure (i.e. Pit, Ness, Ice Climbers) and fight on several Nintendo-themed stages such as the Mushroom Kingdom and Pokemon Stadium.

In these stages, spaceships shoot at the player, race cars look to run players over, lava rises, Pokemon attack, platforms disappear and many other environmental changes occur. The goal of each player is to send their opponents flying off the stage. Throw in items such as bombs, laser swords, canons, Poke balls and many other Nintendo-themed items and the game becomes a frantic bonanza.

While the core game engine still remains, many other new features have been added to the third installation of Super Smash Bros. First and foremost, there are more than 10 new fighters. Most of them are newer characters from some of the more recent Nintendo franchises. There are, however, two characters that stand out from the rest: Sega’s blue blur Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear’s cigarette-smoking Solid Snake.

Sonic and Mario have always been bitter rivals during the 16-bit era but the inclusion of Sonic in Brawl has become a pleasant surprise to many. Nobody could have seen Solid Snake however. His character has always been known as a cold-blooded mercenary. Mixing Snake into a more light-hearted game had many gamers question his fighting style. Fortunately, Snake’s character was integrated into the game beautifully and his cold-blooded ways have been left behind for the most part.

Meet Sonic

and Solid Snake

Another feature that’s been added is online play. Playing online allows you to battle with friends or random strangers and you can also watch other people play online and bet on specific players with in-game coins.
Playing online, however, feels very limited. In order to play with a friend, you must input their friend code, which is widely abhorred by many gamers as it is such a hassle compared to playing with friends on Xbox Live.

Gamers who looked forward to online matchmaking will be disappointed to find out that all players are made totally anonymous from each other. There’s no way players will be able to keep track of who they played with. No stats are kept, and matchmaking is limited to Time battles; no Stock or Coin matches.

Players can’t even adjust the time limit in these Time battles; it always remains at 2 minutes. While Brawl is Nintendo’s most ambitious online effort to date, it shows that they still have a long way to go. But the online doesn’t take too much away from the game. It’s best played with friends all in the same room anyway.

The very limited online mode

Other new features include a stage builder that allows you to create stages and share them online. Collectibles are no long limited to trophies. Players can now collect stickers that they can organize in an album. Lots of new power-up items have been added but none compare to the Smash Ball which allows a player’s character to unleash a unique, potentially momentum-shifting attack called a Final Smash.

A new single player mode has been added to go along with the Classic Mode and All Star Mode. Super Smash Bros. Melee’s Adventure mode has been replaced by “The Subspace Emissary.” It’s a full-fledged side-scrolling platform game you can play with a friend or by yourself. None of them, however, drastically change the core gameplay fortunately as the fun in the game is still found in smacking your opponents all over the playing field.

Controlling the characters is as easy as ever. Brawl actually gives players 4 controller options. Players can use a GameCube controller, a Wii Classic Controller, the Wii Remote, as well as the Wii Remote + Nunchuk combo. Most competitive players would prefer to stick to the GameCube controllers, however, all 4 control schemes work well.

The dreaded Smash Ball

Brawl was easily considered the Wii’s most highly anticipated game and it did not disappoint. Tons of new characters and new stages keep the experience fresh despite minimal changes to the game engine. Character models and stages have a lot more graphical details.

The character designs are what many have come to expect from Nintendo which is nothing short of excellent. The stage designs help immerse players into the experience. With so much going on at one time, it all hardly matters because you won’t be playing this game for the graphics.

Online mode is severely lacking and character balance is still somewhat of an issue (Let’s face it, a skilled Bowser or Yoshi player can’t beat a Fox or Marth player of the same skill level.) but it didn’t bother players in past installations so it shouldn’t bother players much this time around. Nintendo did an admirable job in shrinking the gap between character advantages and disadvantages. Aside from those issues, this is still easily the Wii’s best game. This game alone is worth owning a Wii.

Grade: 9/10