Got Brawl working yesterday - Impressions so far

The first match I played was myself (Metaknight) vs my friend (Kirby). We had items on default settings, and I was confused as hell about what to do. haha.

Well, after about 3 or 4 matches, we decided to turn items off. When you don't know how to use the characters, it makes the game so chaotic.

My initial thoughts upon playing this game were "Wow... it really does suck."

Well, it's definitely different from Melee. It doesn't feel like it has the competitive potential that Melee does. After finally breaking the habit of trying to L-cancel and wavedash, I finally started to make some progress in learning how to play this game. (by the way, trying to L-cancel will not effect you at all) The reason? This is one thing I really don't like... On the Gamecube controller, you have to press R or L in all the way for everything. Rolling, shielding, shield grabbing, spot dodging. Everything that you used to be able to do by light shielding.. because you can no longer light shield.

Another thing I don't like is that on the analog stick, it seems that you have to press the direction all the way to do things such as drop from the ledge and so on. I'm used to a light tap, followed by a quick jump, which often left me just doing the jump from ledge animation.

I think the reason this was done is because people who use the WIimote will not have the option for analog or pressure sensitive controls. Which is lame, but it is what it is.

One cool trick I did manage to learn is how to grab the ledge very quickly. I've only tested this with Marth, so I don't know how well it works with other characters, but if you run off the ledge and fast fall to an immediate up B you will grab the ledge instantly. Thanks to the new ability to sweetspot anytime during your up B.

Other than that, the only discovery I thought was kidna neat is that Metaknight can recover with his down B, up B, and side B. (not sure about his neutral B), and if you side B off the stage, he will come back to the ledge like a magnet when the animation finishes.. weird.

That's all for now. I may get some videos up eventually of me, -Chad-, Iori, ihavespaceballs, and a few others.

Very nice. I want my pressure sensitive controls back D: At least there's still short hopping.

How are Mario and Pit?

Pit is awesome. Amazing recovery, quick moves, projectile. A shield that blocks attacks and reflects them. He's got a lot going for him.

I haven't really used Mario yet, so I can't say much about him.

lol no one uses mario... ever and thats why us mario mains are tight. We just have to wait till we get our hands on the game put actually put good use to mario cause no one else plays him or knows how to play him

Help! said:

lol no one uses mario... ever and thats why us mario mains are tight. We just have to wait till we get our hands on the game put actually put good use to mario cause no one else plays him or knows how to play him

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Thanks for the Pit info. And no kidding about nobody using Mario. I looked at the character poll SamuraiPanda posted and even Samus/Zamus has more votes than Mr. Nintendo.

Well, it's definitely different from Melee. It doesn't feel like it has the competitive potential that Melee does.

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I still don't understand this.
They take away the chaotic 200MPH gameplay that was Melee.
Add more potential for aerial combat.
Get rid of glitch exploits.

And suddenly people believe this game lacks good enough potential for the competitive scene?
Right. Because without that stuff there won't be competitive playerz lululuolololz

It sucks because you don't understand the controls?

I'm gonna sound like a broken record here but it's not melee 1.5.

Still, I'm happy for you/secretly jealous that you've got the game. Oh and if you get the oppurtunity. Check whether Peaches final smash hits airborne foes, I've heard contradictary accounts about it.

Dogenzaka said:

I still don't understand this.
They take away the chaotic 200MPH gameplay that was Melee.
Add more potential for aerial combat.
Get rid of glitch exploits.

And suddenly people believe this game lacks good enough potential for the competitive scene?
Right. Because without that stuff there won't be competitive playerz lululuolololz

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That's because in most fighting games, the developer actually keeps and enhances the game engine, trying to build on what existed before to make the game "better."

Look at Guilty Gear--it's wildly popular in Japan, and there's quite a few iterations (GGX, GGX2, GGXX# Reloaded, GGX2 Isuka, GGXX/, GGXX^C), and in each iteration, they usually keep all the important techniques and try to expand on the game engine. They never took out glitches that added to the game (i.e. option selecting). They tried to balance it by taking out excessively broken elements (dust loops that took over half your life bar). They added completely new mechanics while keeping the old ones (like slash back).

In Melee to Brawl, we have Sakurai presenting a completely different philosophy. Instead of doing keeping the basic engine, expanding on it, and trying to balance it, he re-worked the entire thing from the ground up, removing a lot of the technicality that made Smash unique (different falling speeds, CC'ing, L-cancelling, etc.).

Another thing to note is the fact that modern fighting games have shifted towards faster-paced, combo-oriented gameplay (i.e. GGXX, Arcana Heart, Melty Blood, etc.), and away from the slow footsies-type gameplay of older fighters (SFII Turbo). Melee fits into the modern fighter genre trend, but Brawl is taking a regressive step, trend-wise.

In this respect, Sakurai--as a developer--really isn't treating Brawl as a fighter. THAT is why all the competitive Smashers have little faith in Brawl.

And before you get in a hissy fit Dogenzaka, realize that I'm not suggesting that Brawl is going to be awful or it's going to "suck." I'm merely stating that Sakurai has decided to treat Brawl as a party game rather than a fighting game--that's his development philosophy, and we can see that's the case through his numerous decisions. That, compounded with the fact that you're on a competitive fighting game forum, filled with (hopefully) decent competitive players.

You do the math as to why there's so much negativity directed towards Brawl.

maelstrom218 said:

Melee fits into the modern fighter genre trend, but Brawl is taking a regressive step, trend-wise.

In this respect, Sakurai--as a developer--really isn't treating Brawl as a fighter. THAT is why all the competitive Smashers have little faith in Brawl.

I'm merely stating that Sakurai has decided to treat Brawl as a party game rather than a fighting game--that's his development philosophy, and we can see that's the case through his numerous decisions.

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Wow. Trying to say that Brawl isn't a fighting game because it's not like other Japanese fighters, while simultaneously praising Melee in that aspect, is one of the most ironic things I've ever heard.

You know, you can just run off the edge and hold the opposite direction to grab the ledge. It's almost faster than a wavedash-to-edgehog.

Dude out of everyone elses views on brawl yours is the best i mean i actually have trust in your detailed report, instead of telling me stuff i dont know i can relate to how you feel.

Myztek said:

Stuff

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My question is why didn't you invite me?

Sadness.

Crushed said:

Wow. Trying to say that Brawl isn't a fighting game because it's not like other Japanese fighters, while simultaneously praising Brawl in that aspect, is one of the most ironic things I've ever heard.

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You don't seem to really comprehend his post? Stop laughing.

Hes saying it still might be a good game, but it doesn't have the depth of a fighter. Its a party game, according to him anyways.. I haven't played it.

How is that contradictory?

Myztek said:

I may get some videos up eventually of me, -Chad-, Iori, ihavespaceballs, and a few others.

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A few others is me. I love you, Austin. Hahaha.

Crushed said:

Wow. Trying to say that Brawl isn't a fighting game because it's not like other Japanese fighters, while simultaneously praising Brawl in that aspect, is one of the most ironic things I've ever heard.

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What? What the heck. . .? What?

See, now I'm just confused. When did I ever say that Brawl wasn't a fighting game? And when did I ever praise Brawl? Did you even read my post?

I'm saying--and actually please read what I write this time--that Sakurai didn't using a fighting game philosophy during his development of Brawl. Nor is he following standard fighting game conventions, not the current trend anyways. I'm not making a subjective argument about the worthiness of Brawl as a competitive game, I'm simply stating the fact that--again--Sakurai took a non-fighter approach and bucked current fighter conventions.

And then I made the conclusion that this is the reason why competitive Smashers are upset.

You, good sir, are making no sense. Your response to my first post has me thoroughly bewildered, because I said none of the things that you thought I said.

Edit- Smashboards made me post twice. =/

Sorry, typo. I meant "praising Melee," which wasn't exactly following fighting game trends at the time, nor was Sakurai exactly "treating it" as such any differently from Brawl.

Myztek!

Come to G4S5 and bring it with you! You have to allow your good buddies down in Columbus to try it out XD.

Have anything to say about Dedede?

Grats on getting your game to work Myztek. How about you put your Brawl code on your profile so we can play some matches? Currently its the only way to play online right now. My code is right under my avatar.

If you need help finding your friend code and and joining games etc then ill be glad to help out.

I may be in the minority here as usual, but I actually like the idea that they're bucking the trend with brawl. I mean, we can't see into the future; we have on idea whether this might start a new trend. I mean, a lot of people complain that sequels are very similar to their predecessors. This isn't.

You see, in every installment of Smash so faq, the physics engines have always been made from the ground up. True, they do re-use a lot of elements, but they don't port over the engines from the previous game. This ensures that each game is unique, and I really like that. I mean, they've spent two and a bit years on it; it might as well have a new engine

Dogenzaka said:

I still don't understand this.
They take away the chaotic 200MPH gameplay that was Melee.
Add more potential for aerial combat.
Get rid of glitch exploits.

And suddenly people believe this game lacks good enough potential for the competitive scene?
Right. Because without that stuff there won't be competitive playerz lululuolololz

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QFT. You people seem to not get this one thing

As soon as the game hits America, OR SOONER, someone is going to get bored enough to find the equivilent of wavedashing, L-Cancelling, and whatever else have you. So then everyone can just learn a new set of "skills" (I use this word very loosely) and deal with it.

Competitive playing begins with people who have put enough effort into any game to get better at it than the casual gamer. There are things that the casual gamer won't ever do, the least of which are glitches. Casual players in Melee would probably never short hop, or even realize there's such a thing as an up tilt. For that matter, they would probably never even get as far as effective combos, especially aerial. Even if they tested the game to the point that no glitch existed at all, there would still be that separation. If nothing else diferentiates us, everyone that frequents these boards will be the ones that turn off control stick jumping

I think the problem is that everyone is just scared that without wavedashing they can't beat their grandmother. Which would be a problem zomg!

ForteX said:

QFT. You people seem to not get this one thing

As soon as the game hits America, OR SOONER, someone is going to get bored enough to find the equivilent of wavedashing, L-Cancelling, and whatever else have you. So then everyone can just learn a new set of "skills" (I use this word very loosely) and deal with it.

Competitive playing begins with people who have put enough effort into any game to get better at it than the casual gamer. There are things that the casual gamer won't ever do, the least of which are glitches. Casual players in Melee would probably never short hop, or even realize there's such a thing as an up tilt. For that matter, they would probably never even get as far as effective combos, especially aerial. Even if they tested the game to the point that no glitch existed at all, there would still be that separation. If nothing else diferentiates us, everyone that frequents these boards will be the ones that turn off control stick jumping

I think the problem is that everyone is just scared that without wavedashing they can't beat their grandmother. Which would be a problem zomg!

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QF effing T!

This confuses me. What, with out WD you can't tell the nOObs from the pros or something? Are people scared that the gap becomes smaller without glitchs to use? Does these glitchs dictact how well you are?

This game can have only a hand full of glitchs that don't really do anything and there will still be people who can pwn any "nOOb" because of the amount of time and effort they put into become better. Again, I use chess as a example. No glitch there. . .leveled playing ground for everyone and there are always going to be masters of the game who can't be touched by beginners.

Im not against people playing how they want but to say brawl is going to be less compative just cause melee's glitches aint in it (and other things that have changed) just leaves me like "????".

But w/e, this is Sakurai's vision and appearently he wants it this way. I have full trust in him and Im sure I will love brawl.

maelstrom218 said:

That's because in most fighting games, the developer actually keeps and enhances the game engine, trying to build on what existed before to make the game "better."

Look at Guilty Gear--it's wildly popular in Japan, and there's quite a few iterations (GGX, GGX2, GGXX# Reloaded, GGX2 Isuka, GGXX/, GGXX^C), and in each iteration, they usually keep all the important techniques and try to expand on the game engine. They never took out glitches that added to the game (i.e. option selecting). They tried to balance it by taking out excessively broken elements (dust loops that took over half your life bar). They added completely new mechanics while keeping the old ones (like slash back).

In Melee to Brawl, we have Sakurai presenting a completely different philosophy. Instead of doing keeping the basic engine, expanding on it, and trying to balance it, he re-worked the entire thing from the ground up, removing a lot of the technicality that made Smash unique (different falling speeds, CC'ing, L-cancelling, etc.).

Another thing to note is the fact that modern fighting games have shifted towards faster-paced, combo-oriented gameplay (i.e. GGXX, Arcana Heart, Melty Blood, etc.), and away from the slow footsies-type gameplay of older fighters (SFII Turbo). Melee fits into the modern fighter genre trend, but Brawl is taking a regressive step, trend-wise.

In this respect, Sakurai--as a developer--really isn't treating Brawl as a fighter. THAT is why all the competitive Smashers have little faith in Brawl.

And before you get in a hissy fit Dogenzaka, realize that I'm not suggesting that Brawl is going to be awful or it's going to "suck." I'm merely stating that Sakurai has decided to treat Brawl as a party game rather than a fighting game--that's his development philosophy, and we can see that's the case through his numerous decisions. That, compounded with the fact that you're on a competitive fighting game forum, filled with (hopefully) decent competitive players.

You do the math as to why there's so much negativity directed towards Brawl.

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Sad, but true. Sakurai's philosophy is to develop a game that anyone can play and enjoy. As as hardcore gamers, we think that's a horrible idea. As far as marketting goes, its a brilliant concept. There's really no way around it since the game is what it is.

But honestly, who says we can't adapt to the new engine and make it competitive? Competitive fighters have to be fast games? Most are, but Smash isn't exactly your standard competitive fighter last time I checked.

ForteX said:

QFT. You people seem to not get this one thing

As soon as the game hits America, OR SOONER, someone is going to get bored enough to find the equivilent of wavedashing, L-Cancelling, and whatever else have you. So then everyone can just learn a new set of "skills" (I use this word very loosely) and deal with it.

Click to expand...

That's the issue at hand here. Melee was a game whose basic engine allowed for a great amount of depth, even without "glitches" such as wavedashing. Heck, the DI in that game plus the character physics like weight/falling speed alone made it deep. Brawl, on the other hand, seems to be a much more basic game.

What I'm trying to get at is that Melee's depth didn't necessarily rely on glitches because the engine itself provided it. On the other hand, Brawl is going to heavily require glitches in order for the metagame to thrive, because the engine itself isn't providing the same kind of depth.

And by not having the same depth as Melee, I'm referring to auto-sweetspotting (which negates about 50% of everyone's edgeguarding game), everyone having the same falling speed, the lack of L-cancelling, the lack of crouch-cancelling and the absence of combos.

. . .I'm realizing that I'm coming off as negative (I need more sleep), but all I'm trying to do is point out that Brawl essentially cut out a lot of what made Melee a deep, competitive fighter in order to achieve a very basic fighting game that targets casual players instead. Because of this, we'll need glitches in order to achieve the same kind of depth that Melee had.

Sakurai even admitted as much during the Iwata Asks interviews, where he said that he wanted Brawl to appeal to the casual players as opposed to the competitive fighting community.

lawlz, I love the brawl boards. The "casuals" (I use this term loosely) say that without these horribly groundbreaking glitches Brawl will be alot more competitive even though they have never gone to a tourney in their life or actually try to understand Melee's metagame. Not only that, but they never will and yet they still need to defend Brawl's "competitiveness" . Priceless.

Yeah, Brawl is bucking the trend current fighter trends (including its own trend of just adding on), but it may still be something. Street Fighter 2 Turbo had very little combos (the ones that were found were not really intended either) and was mostly about zoning which is pretty similar to Brawl. While not as deep as more modern games, it isn't that bad either (it is still pretty good ). So I wouldn't be too gloomy yet. If not much is discovered, we will at least have something that is not too bad, but I doubt we won't find any more.

I see where everyone's coming from on this thread so far, but let me throw in my two cents. I admittedly am not the greatest wave-dasher in Melee--I get the physics of it, and do it rarely but never really incorporated it into my metagame. And I can't hit the buttons in such a musical fashion that they cause me to simply glide across the length of the stage...I never got there. I'll admit it.

Coming from that standpoint, there's a lot more to this game than just the advanced techs. There's a key factor that really sets players apart from one another, and will allow even Brawl to be as competitive as ever: experience.

Knowing just the right move to use against your enemy, in any given situation on the smallest micro level is just how this game works. Whether you've wave-dashed all the way up to your opponent or ran at him, if try to up smash and it's slower than the attack he's readying for you, it's not going to hit. This basic, basic element of just being able to sense the priorities of the moves and how they match up from character to character is what really makes this game work.

This is a skill that no one, not even Sakurai himself, has developed fully just yet. Let alone those of us who are still just waiting for the game...

Brawl Caters to the casuals:

1) Recovery is as easy as...well, reading the You Must Recover update. Edgehogging and Edgeguarding have practically vanished.

2) The controls were probably made with the Wii Mote in mind <_<

3) Final Smashes were added over another new move to appeal to casuals as they probably like being dazzled by the flashy effects.

4) The SSE was added to advertise that Brawl has a full fledged single player (Kirby) game. Multiplayer is what Smash Bros IS! Competitive players would not care about single player (now that it's their they'll defend it to the death).

5) The game's speed was not altered to improve it like many assume, it was to make it "n00b" friendly. The preview Dojo has two reqeusts asking to make the game slower due to Melee being too fast and having too many complicated techniques. Well, we saw the response to that.

I rarely use Wavedashing, and hardly care about it's exlcusion. However, they took several steps back in terms of gameplay for the hardcore gamer (and it's not like the roster is much better than Melee). I can actually see myself playing a few matches of Brawl then saying to my friends, "Alright, let's go play Melee."

this game must rule then lol
just kidding!

So, when are you going to invite me to play? lol

Common, you know want to, I can even bring Mookie if you do it at a time he can get there.

maelstrom218 said:

That's the issue at hand here. Melee was a game whose basic engine allowed for a great amount of depth, even without "glitches" such as wavedashing. Heck, the DI in that game plus the character physics like weight/falling speed alone made it deep. Brawl, on the other hand, seems to be a much more basic game.

What I'm trying to get at is that Melee's depth didn't necessarily rely on glitches because the engine itself provided it. On the other hand, Brawl is going to heavily require glitches in order for the metagame to thrive, because the engine itself isn't providing the same kind of depth.

And by not having the same depth as Melee, I'm referring to auto-sweetspotting (which negates about 50% of everyone's edgeguarding game), everyone having the same falling speed, the lack of L-cancelling, the lack of crouch-cancelling and the absence of combos.

. . .I'm realizing that I'm coming off as negative (I need more sleep), but all I'm trying to do is point out that Brawl essentially cut out a lot of what made Melee a deep, competitive fighter in order to achieve a very basic fighting game that targets casual players instead. Because of this, we'll need glitches in order to achieve the same kind of depth that Melee had.

Sakurai even admitted as much during the Iwata Asks interviews, where he said that he wanted Brawl to appeal to the casual players as opposed to the competitive fighting community.

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Ugh, CCing is gone too?

Over the past couple months I've somehow been able to force/numb myself to get over the removal of the major ATs, and one of my main reasonings for being able to do that was that I'd still have the seemingly simple and basic techniques to work with like CC and Lightshielding, because even with these plain, age-old techniques, after having used them for so long I've learned that even they have an incredibile amount of versatility...

Now my last hope for playing a game that feels even anything remotely similiar to smash 64 or melee is being able to do things out of shield. coooool. :sigh:

Reserve your judgement Ka, we'll be okay

If nothing else Melee exists, but there have been some interesting developments in brawl - so hold your horses.

i use about every glitch ever invented in melee to utterly be the best in my area and from every video i seen i know this games still going to be fun no matter how many things they took out from melee. And this game not being competitive? I thought trying to be better than your opponent in a game was competitive enough. The point of the game is to beat your opponent, simple enuff. As long as you want to beat your opponent, i say thats competitive enuff.

Help! said:

lol no one uses mario... ever and thats why us mario mains are tight. We just have to wait till we get our hands on the game put actually put good use to mario cause no one else plays him or knows how to play him

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Here's info : Fludd sucks. Happy ?