The Great Debate
By Jamil Ragland
I am attempting to analyze the current Brawl vs. Melee debate in an intellectual manner. I hope that what I write will be useful, and I welcome open and intelligent discussion of the following essay.
Since the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl at E3 2006, the Smash community was eager to get its hands on it. This eagerness was most apparent in the competitive Smash scene, where pros and amateurs alike were anticipating the possibility of dissecting a new game in the same way Melee had been. However, almost immediately that possibility began to fade. Gimpyfish and HugS’ E for All impressions began delivering the bad news. Brawl was slower and floatier than its predecessor. In addition, two of the core techniques that pushed Melee forward competitively had been removed, namely wavedashing and L-cancelling. Despite this, there were those, myself included, that held out hope that new things would be discovered to take their place.
The game hit Japan a month before us, and many American Smashers were able to play pirated copies. The bad news got worse: auto-sweet spotting, lack of combos, no crouch canceling, etc. The community was beginning to split into the pro-Brawl faction and the anti-Brawl faction. Pro-Brawlers, me included once again, argued that it was unfair for a few American Smashers to decide for the many that it was not tournament worthy. Give it time, we said. After all, Melee wasn’t cracked in a month.
Now, the game is available in the States for all to play. I had made the statement previously that we should give Brawl at least six months to prove itself. After having the game for two weeks though, there is but one unavoidable conclusion: Brawl was simply not intended to be a tournament game.
Before I continue, I feel it necessary to establish my Smash credentials, so to speak. I’ve been playing Smash ever since the original in 1999, and I joined the tournament scene backing 2005. I am currently ranked 9th in the state of Connecticut, which are of course Melee rankings. I have worked very hard to improve, but readily admit to being a middle-of-the-pack Smasher when it comes to the competitive tournament scene.
Now that you know a little more about me, I will jump straight into the arguments. What do I mean when I say Brawl was not intended to be played in tournaments? The same thing could be said about Melee, and you’d be right. However, the developers at Nintendo accidentally created one of the most balanced and deep fighting games ever in Melee. It was not their intent to make a tournament fighter, but they did anyway. When it came to Brawl’s development, it seems that the purposefully altered the foundations of Melee to discourage tournament play.
The most obvious example of this is the floatier, slower pace of the game. That fundamental engine change makes many of the techniques perfected in Melee impossible. Chain grabs (in most cases), combos, tech-chasing and many of the technical aspects in Melee are either gone or rendered useless. The knockback and trajectory properties of many moves have been altered to discourage combos. For example, Peach’s dair to nair combo is now impossible, since in Brawl the last hit of her dair has knockback. The Ice Climbers’ down smash now hits up more than sideways, making it easier to recover from. Some might call these changes character balancing, but further analysis reveals that the developers most likely intended these changes to make the game fairer, or in other words, easier.
There are numerous examples of the game becoming easier, and auto-sweet spotting is one. Missing a sweet spot in Melee usually meant death, but now the game removes that vulnerability by doing it for you. This change is compounded by the floaty engine, which allows any character to recover from almost anywhere on any stage. Falco’s poor recovery is a non-factor in Brawl, because he’ll drift far enough towards the stage that it doesn’t matter. Air dodging has been made to be nearly unpunishable, as well as shielding. All these changes make the game extremely forgiving, and easier for the mass market it’s targeted at.
But the most egregious change is easily the tripping mechanic. This happens completely at random, and leaves the player in an extremely vulnerable position. The entire point of tournament play is to remove random elements from gameplay in order to give an accurate depiction of player skill. This is why certain stages are banned, and why each set has more than one match. Repetition controls for random elements such as phantom hits, Peach’s Doom Turnip, G&W’s #9 and other elements. With this in mind, it becomes apparent that Nintendo’s goal was to introduce a random element that cannot be controlled for. You can’t avoid tripping because you have no idea when it’s going to happen. The tripping mechanic is fundamentally anti-tournament, due to its ability to randomize the outcome of a match. While it’s admittedly rare, I have seen players trip into an attack they would have otherwise avoided, and it cost them a stock. This is fine when playing with Mom and your little brother, but it’s unacceptable at the tournament level where money is on the line.
The pro-Brawl camp continues to make the assertion that things will be discovered in Brawl that will make it more technical, and they are right. Some chaingrabs have been discovered, as well as techniques like B-sticking, stutter-stepping, glide-tossing and others. There will undoubtedly be more discoveries in the future. But all the glitches and techniques waiting to be discovered cannot change the fact that Nintendo tried their hardest to make technical skill not matter in this game. That decision on their part makes the game not suitable for tournament play. Tech skill matters in every professional sport, be it Smash or basketball. If they widened the hoop in basketball to five feet, it would be easier for everyone because it requires less skill, but it would obviously rob the sport of competitiveness.
The reason why this argument has become so intractable is because both sides of the debate have been reduced to non-representative caricatures. The anti-Brawl crowd is seen as an elitist group of pros who don’t want a new game to challenge their superiority. Conversely, the pro-Brawl group is seen as a vast coalition of scrubs and noobs who see this new game as their chance to have success. Neither of these characterizations are accurate, yet they have taken root and caused a gulf between the two camps. There needs to be an objective third party observer, and that person is my wife.
My wife has been Smashing since we started dating almost two years ago. She’s been to a few tournaments, and participated in one. She’s not a scrub, and she’s not a pro. She’s just someone who enjoys the tournament style of play (1v1, no items, neutral stages) and the occasional tournament. We’d owned Brawl for about a week, and I asked her for her thoughts on the game. “It’s fun, but you don’t have to think,” she said. She went on to say that she missed L-canceling, that the weight and floatiness of the game felt wrong, and that it was too easy. But she summed up her feeling this way: “Everything about Brawl, the music, the stages, the characters, is fantastic. Everything except the gameplay.” In that conversation, my wife vocalized everything that I’d been trying to avoid admitting to myself. Brawl’s bells and whistles are top notch, but the fighting engine leaves a lot to be desired for the tournament player.
All of the negativity in this essay may lead you to think that I hate Brawl. To the contrary, I love the game. I think it’s fantastic, and I’ve had an incredibly good time playing it. The music alone is worth the price of admission. But I enjoy it in a very superficial way. When I played Melee, I always played tournament style, even with my friends and my wife. That was most enjoyable for us. In Brawl though, I don’t care about stages or counterpicks, I just want three other people to play with to have a great time. That’s what Brawl was designed for, to be a party game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that goal, and it succeeds wonderfully at it. But obviously, that does not work for tournament play.
Brawl is the latest example of Nintendo’s philosophy regarding the Wii. Their oft-stated goal is to expand the videogame market beyond the 18-36 year old male demographic. They have achieved that by creating a simple point-and-click interface for their system. Their goal is also to bring in the casual gamer, and this philosophy is apparent in the Wii’s game selection. 360 and PS3 get Resident Evil 5,Wii gets Umbrella Chronicles. 360/PS3 get Soul Calibur IV, Wii gets Soul Calibur Legends. Nintendo even does it to themselves. The DS gets Dragon Quest IX, the Wii gets Dragon Quest Swords. These are just three examples of the watered down, mass market friendly knockoff games that are becoming more common on the Wii.
Sadly, this trend is also apparent in Nintendo’s first party games. A friend of mine, Modest_Egoist, described it this way: “Mario Galaxy is Mario 64 for the casual gamer. Twilight Princess is Ocarina of Time for the casual gamer, and Brawl is Melee for the casual gamer.” He’s right. To be sure, the better player will win in Brawl, but since all the tech has been stripped out for the mass market, it takes much less to be the better player.
Despite everything I’ve said here, there is an indisputable reality that I’ve ignored until now: Brawl is the new game. As such, the natural momentum of “new and shiny” will probably carry the game forward, despite its lack of depth. Plairrnk summed it up when he said, “Melee is dead, and we have to move forward. Even if moving forward means going back five years.” There may simply be no going back. The closest example I can find of an entire community going back was the Soul Calibur II/III fiasco. However, in that case, Soul Calibur III was literally broken, and therefore unplayable. It seems unlikely that a similar situation will arise in Brawl, so it will become the de facto tournament game by virtue of being new.
In conclusion, I have tried to make two points here. First, Brawl is an amazingly fun and enjoyable game. Second, it is not designed to be a tournament game. The developers tried their hardest to ensure that, and they succeeded. But no argument that I or anyone else makes will likely be successful in stopping Brawl from becoming the tournament standard. That is the conundrum that the Smash community finds itself in today, and there are no easy solutions in sight. Once again, my wife has the best attitude: “This is what we have, and we have to make the best of it.”
By Jamil Ragland
I am attempting to analyze the current Brawl vs. Melee debate in an intellectual manner. I hope that what I write will be useful, and I welcome open and intelligent discussion of the following essay.
Since the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl at E3 2006, the Smash community was eager to get its hands on it. This eagerness was most apparent in the competitive Smash scene, where pros and amateurs alike were anticipating the possibility of dissecting a new game in the same way Melee had been. However, almost immediately that possibility began to fade. Gimpyfish and HugS’ E for All impressions began delivering the bad news. Brawl was slower and floatier than its predecessor. In addition, two of the core techniques that pushed Melee forward competitively had been removed, namely wavedashing and L-cancelling. Despite this, there were those, myself included, that held out hope that new things would be discovered to take their place.
The game hit Japan a month before us, and many American Smashers were able to play pirated copies. The bad news got worse: auto-sweet spotting, lack of combos, no crouch canceling, etc. The community was beginning to split into the pro-Brawl faction and the anti-Brawl faction. Pro-Brawlers, me included once again, argued that it was unfair for a few American Smashers to decide for the many that it was not tournament worthy. Give it time, we said. After all, Melee wasn’t cracked in a month.
Now, the game is available in the States for all to play. I had made the statement previously that we should give Brawl at least six months to prove itself. After having the game for two weeks though, there is but one unavoidable conclusion: Brawl was simply not intended to be a tournament game.
Before I continue, I feel it necessary to establish my Smash credentials, so to speak. I’ve been playing Smash ever since the original in 1999, and I joined the tournament scene backing 2005. I am currently ranked 9th in the state of Connecticut, which are of course Melee rankings. I have worked very hard to improve, but readily admit to being a middle-of-the-pack Smasher when it comes to the competitive tournament scene.
Now that you know a little more about me, I will jump straight into the arguments. What do I mean when I say Brawl was not intended to be played in tournaments? The same thing could be said about Melee, and you’d be right. However, the developers at Nintendo accidentally created one of the most balanced and deep fighting games ever in Melee. It was not their intent to make a tournament fighter, but they did anyway. When it came to Brawl’s development, it seems that the purposefully altered the foundations of Melee to discourage tournament play.
The most obvious example of this is the floatier, slower pace of the game. That fundamental engine change makes many of the techniques perfected in Melee impossible. Chain grabs (in most cases), combos, tech-chasing and many of the technical aspects in Melee are either gone or rendered useless. The knockback and trajectory properties of many moves have been altered to discourage combos. For example, Peach’s dair to nair combo is now impossible, since in Brawl the last hit of her dair has knockback. The Ice Climbers’ down smash now hits up more than sideways, making it easier to recover from. Some might call these changes character balancing, but further analysis reveals that the developers most likely intended these changes to make the game fairer, or in other words, easier.
There are numerous examples of the game becoming easier, and auto-sweet spotting is one. Missing a sweet spot in Melee usually meant death, but now the game removes that vulnerability by doing it for you. This change is compounded by the floaty engine, which allows any character to recover from almost anywhere on any stage. Falco’s poor recovery is a non-factor in Brawl, because he’ll drift far enough towards the stage that it doesn’t matter. Air dodging has been made to be nearly unpunishable, as well as shielding. All these changes make the game extremely forgiving, and easier for the mass market it’s targeted at.
But the most egregious change is easily the tripping mechanic. This happens completely at random, and leaves the player in an extremely vulnerable position. The entire point of tournament play is to remove random elements from gameplay in order to give an accurate depiction of player skill. This is why certain stages are banned, and why each set has more than one match. Repetition controls for random elements such as phantom hits, Peach’s Doom Turnip, G&W’s #9 and other elements. With this in mind, it becomes apparent that Nintendo’s goal was to introduce a random element that cannot be controlled for. You can’t avoid tripping because you have no idea when it’s going to happen. The tripping mechanic is fundamentally anti-tournament, due to its ability to randomize the outcome of a match. While it’s admittedly rare, I have seen players trip into an attack they would have otherwise avoided, and it cost them a stock. This is fine when playing with Mom and your little brother, but it’s unacceptable at the tournament level where money is on the line.
The pro-Brawl camp continues to make the assertion that things will be discovered in Brawl that will make it more technical, and they are right. Some chaingrabs have been discovered, as well as techniques like B-sticking, stutter-stepping, glide-tossing and others. There will undoubtedly be more discoveries in the future. But all the glitches and techniques waiting to be discovered cannot change the fact that Nintendo tried their hardest to make technical skill not matter in this game. That decision on their part makes the game not suitable for tournament play. Tech skill matters in every professional sport, be it Smash or basketball. If they widened the hoop in basketball to five feet, it would be easier for everyone because it requires less skill, but it would obviously rob the sport of competitiveness.
The reason why this argument has become so intractable is because both sides of the debate have been reduced to non-representative caricatures. The anti-Brawl crowd is seen as an elitist group of pros who don’t want a new game to challenge their superiority. Conversely, the pro-Brawl group is seen as a vast coalition of scrubs and noobs who see this new game as their chance to have success. Neither of these characterizations are accurate, yet they have taken root and caused a gulf between the two camps. There needs to be an objective third party observer, and that person is my wife.
My wife has been Smashing since we started dating almost two years ago. She’s been to a few tournaments, and participated in one. She’s not a scrub, and she’s not a pro. She’s just someone who enjoys the tournament style of play (1v1, no items, neutral stages) and the occasional tournament. We’d owned Brawl for about a week, and I asked her for her thoughts on the game. “It’s fun, but you don’t have to think,” she said. She went on to say that she missed L-canceling, that the weight and floatiness of the game felt wrong, and that it was too easy. But she summed up her feeling this way: “Everything about Brawl, the music, the stages, the characters, is fantastic. Everything except the gameplay.” In that conversation, my wife vocalized everything that I’d been trying to avoid admitting to myself. Brawl’s bells and whistles are top notch, but the fighting engine leaves a lot to be desired for the tournament player.
All of the negativity in this essay may lead you to think that I hate Brawl. To the contrary, I love the game. I think it’s fantastic, and I’ve had an incredibly good time playing it. The music alone is worth the price of admission. But I enjoy it in a very superficial way. When I played Melee, I always played tournament style, even with my friends and my wife. That was most enjoyable for us. In Brawl though, I don’t care about stages or counterpicks, I just want three other people to play with to have a great time. That’s what Brawl was designed for, to be a party game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that goal, and it succeeds wonderfully at it. But obviously, that does not work for tournament play.
Brawl is the latest example of Nintendo’s philosophy regarding the Wii. Their oft-stated goal is to expand the videogame market beyond the 18-36 year old male demographic. They have achieved that by creating a simple point-and-click interface for their system. Their goal is also to bring in the casual gamer, and this philosophy is apparent in the Wii’s game selection. 360 and PS3 get Resident Evil 5,Wii gets Umbrella Chronicles. 360/PS3 get Soul Calibur IV, Wii gets Soul Calibur Legends. Nintendo even does it to themselves. The DS gets Dragon Quest IX, the Wii gets Dragon Quest Swords. These are just three examples of the watered down, mass market friendly knockoff games that are becoming more common on the Wii.
Sadly, this trend is also apparent in Nintendo’s first party games. A friend of mine, Modest_Egoist, described it this way: “Mario Galaxy is Mario 64 for the casual gamer. Twilight Princess is Ocarina of Time for the casual gamer, and Brawl is Melee for the casual gamer.” He’s right. To be sure, the better player will win in Brawl, but since all the tech has been stripped out for the mass market, it takes much less to be the better player.
Despite everything I’ve said here, there is an indisputable reality that I’ve ignored until now: Brawl is the new game. As such, the natural momentum of “new and shiny” will probably carry the game forward, despite its lack of depth. Plairrnk summed it up when he said, “Melee is dead, and we have to move forward. Even if moving forward means going back five years.” There may simply be no going back. The closest example I can find of an entire community going back was the Soul Calibur II/III fiasco. However, in that case, Soul Calibur III was literally broken, and therefore unplayable. It seems unlikely that a similar situation will arise in Brawl, so it will become the de facto tournament game by virtue of being new.
In conclusion, I have tried to make two points here. First, Brawl is an amazingly fun and enjoyable game. Second, it is not designed to be a tournament game. The developers tried their hardest to ensure that, and they succeeded. But no argument that I or anyone else makes will likely be successful in stopping Brawl from becoming the tournament standard. That is the conundrum that the Smash community finds itself in today, and there are no easy solutions in sight. Once again, my wife has the best attitude: “This is what we have, and we have to make the best of it.”
