A Brawl Gameplay Critique: A competitive standpoint
So, Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out tomorrow
and before it does and we get millions of people claiming how great it
is, I’d like to put out my own critique in hopes to quell the hype
enough to get people to take a solid look at the game.
We’ve had reviews from nearly all the gaming sites and magazines by
now, each of them giving high scores to the game. Let’s face it
though, these reviews are not coming from the viewpoint of competitive
players and the competitive tournament scene community that has been
formed through smashboards. I’ve had the game since the
Japanese release and don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game
overall. However, I’m not going to be critiquing the whole game,
simply the gameplay in relation to a competitive environment, the
environment that will in the end, determine the games success outside
of a the financial area.
Before starting, I want to first say that I will be
comparing Brawl to Melee, and before anyone says that Brawl is not
Melee 2.0, well you’re wrong. Games, like everything else in
life, are judged by those around it, even more so games of a
series. Melee was Smash Brothers 2.0, Brawl is Smash 3.0.
It is how judging things work, by comparison.
*Note, everything in here is of my opinion and observations. Don't like it, feel free to disagree, just don't flame.
Movement
Tripping
First and foremost, to get it out of the way, is
tripping. There is no possible way to justify this being
implemented into the game. Your character will randomly fall down
at the start of a run. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, so
that someone may possibly find a use for it. It’s completely
random. There have been countless times where I’ve tried to
position myself for a killing blow only to fail at it because my
character decided he wanted to fall on his butt instead. What’s
worse is when this happens next to the opponent, and then they get to
smash you for free. If Brawl were a RTS, it’d be the equivalent
of one of your units randomly exploding for no reason. I could
rant on how detrimental and stupid tripping is to competitive play for
hours. Tripping in and of itself could completely ruin the
competitive nature of any game. While somewhat ignorable, its
just frustrating.
Dash Dancing
Dash Dancing is out. What this means is that
the ground game has lost a significant portion of its options. No
longer can you slowly approach in various intervals of retreat and
charge. No longer can you fake approaches and suddenly accelerate
from a slow press. The ground game has lost mindgames and options
by the loss of dash dancing. Some people may try to claim that it
is still in the game, but its not. Any form of “dash dancing” in
the game is either 1 of two things. The start of a run (meaning
you can only grab, jump, or running A out of it) or so small you are
basically moving in place.
Directional Influence
This is simply my opinion, but Di has become a
little ridiculous. I no longer feel that I know my moves are
going to kill my opponent. In Melee if you if you forward smashed
someone with fox at 100-110%, you knew you were going to kill them if
it was near the ledge, or at least put them into a position to be
edgehogged, regardless of how they DI’ed. In Brawl, hitting
someone with a move that can kill at 80-90% if they don’t DI, can be
survived up until nearly double that at 160-170% if they DI
correctly. It has that big of an affect. It causes
the game to have the feeling that kills are rarely caused, and more
like accidents. If I die under 125% I know it was my fault for
not simply DI’ing correctly. To see a move kill at 80% when
you’ve also seen it survived at 150%, well it makes you feel that kills
just happen, instead of being caused. It’s not so much you know
which moves kills, you know which moves have the potential to kill and
then you find out if they do when they hit. Also, yes I know
about diminishing returns on hits, but this happens even with zeroed
out moves. Some may like it this way. I personally think it
makes survival to easy and killing to hard.
Fast Falling
Not so much of a complaint here, but an
observation. Fast falling isn’t fast, its only less slow and not
easily noticeable until you get used to looking at it. This goes
with the whole game speed slow down.
Speed, Move Recovery, and Gravity
I group these three things together because they are what contribute to
the entire games flow and feeling of play. Gravity has been
normalized, there are no individual gravities. The speed of jumps
(not the distance), the speed of air movement, and the general feeling
of floatiness are all the same or nearly the same for all
characters. This removes a huge point in how characters differed
in Melee. Falling speed of some characters is still different
though, however the differences are minor because of the new speed of
the game. Its not slow (jigglypuff) versus fast (fox/falcon) its
now slow (jigglypuff) versus slightly less slow (fox/faclon).
As most everyone already knows, the overall game
speed has been slowed down. Don’t let people try to convince you
that they can pull off melee speeds or faster during combat. It’s
simply not true. What you may not know though, is that while the
game has slowed down, move recovery, both from attacking and recovery
from getting hit, has sped up, way way up in the case of hit
recovery. A few things happen because of this. One is that
follow up hits are almost if not completely gone. There are no
more double forward air hits with marth, or falling up-airs to up tilts
with fox, or down tilts to forward airs with sheik. Character
recovery is too fast. The only time you get more than a single
hit off, is from spammed moves (ie. lucario’s forward air,
pits/lucarios up-tilt). Combo’s simply don’t exist, or are
spammed moves (more on this later).
Another problem with the speed decline versus move recovery increase is
in taking advantage of an opponent’s mistakes. In Melee you could
run at a marth, jump and get him to forward smash, jump above it, fast
fall behind him and back air or neutral air. This was a
mindgame that takes advantage of causing your opponent to make a
mistake. Try doing the same in brawl, and by the time you fall
fast enough to be in range to hit, your opponent has shielded or moved,
or decided to hit you with another move. Taking advantage of
people’s mistakes is hard or nearly impossible depending on the move.
Positioning is also a lot harder due to the slow
speed versus move recovery time. Because of the game speed, you cannot
surprise your opponent by rushing in or under or past them.
Anything you do is too slow to come as a surprise. They see it
coming a mile away. Take for instance a player in melee, hopping
up and down while his opponent is recovering from a hit that sent him
up more than off the stage. The player is waiting for the
opponent to get in range, but the opponent is unsure exactly when the
player will attack. Out of the hopping, the player double jumps
to back air. In Melee this will work, because the speed at with
the double jump comes out is enough to catch someone off guard, or
before their character can prevent it. In Brawl the speed of the
jumps are not fast enough to catch your opponent off guard.
Attacks
Mismatched Move Sets
For the most part, Brawl move sets feel as thrown
together and mismatched as they come. It feels as the creators
simply made a move for each input, yet made no attempt to actually link
these moves together to form a cohesive character. Nothing links
anymore. In Melee, character’s had a central theme around which
their moves were built. Take Luigi for example. Most of his
moves would send a character upwards. Down smashes lead into
forward airs or back airs, neutral airs into the same. Throws
lead into smashes, or aerials. A correct up-air could lead to a
forward air. Moves were meant to work together. One move
set up another move, some moves where for damage, some for
killing. They had thought and flow. Think Captain
Falcon spike bouncing people off the stage into a knee. There was
fluidity, there was purpose nearly all of a character’s moves. In
Brawl this fluidity doesn’t exist. Moves either send an opponent
too far so that they can’t be hit, or not far enough so that they in
turn hit you back. Moves don’t lead into one another, not even at
different percents. There is no rhyme or reason to why a
character’s moves do what they do. They all simply hit and
nothing more. These mismatched move sets will be a theme in the
next several points.
Diminishing Returns
You may have heard by now that Brawl implements
diminishing returns on attacks. Yes this existed in Melee, but 2
things were different. The move counter was easily reset and even
reset itself upon doing the same move and the diminishing returns only
affected % damage not knockback. Some try to justify this
by saying that someone can no longer spam a single move to both deal
damage and kill. Frankly I think they are wrong. People
will use the moves that have the greatest affect at hitting without
being hit back, just because it does less % or knockback isn’t going to
remove a good move from being spammed, it just means the matches will
take longer. Why use a move that has a 50% chance of hitting and
a 50% chance of getting you hit when you can use one that has a 100%
chance of hitting and 0% chance of getting you hit. This
feature, while neat in theory, is in my opinion, laziness on the parts
of the developers. If they wanted us to use the full range
of moves they should have made every move useful, not try to force
players to use crappy moves.
Throws
Through Smash Brothers and Smash Brothers Melee we
have seen to ways in which throws can be useful. Killing in
Smash Brothers, and pulling off combos in Melee. In Brawl we have
neither of these. Brawl throws rarely lead into any move, and
very few of them can actually kill at desirable %. Throw simply
do what the name implies now, they throw people, almost always a
useless distance, sometimes even resulting in you getting hit because
you threw someone and they went nowhere.
Combos
As stated before, combos are pretty much
non-existent unless they consist of a single move spammed over and over
again. What I consider a combo: A linked set of moves that cannot
be avoided. Examples: Marth- up throw->up
tilt->neutral air, Fox- running A->up tilt->up air,
Jigglypuff- up throw->up air->back air, Donkey Kong forward grab
up throw-> up air-> B. These things are rare to
non-existent dependant on character in Brawl. Almost if not all
“combos” you see in Brawl or people talk about in Brawl are avoidable
if the person getting hit would simply DI correctly and get out of the
way. This is all chalked up to the mismatched move sets. It
leads to a feeling of never having control of a match, more so that you
are simply, trading hits with the opponent.
Crouch Cancelled Down Smashes and Runs
Gone. While Crouch Cancelled Down
Smashes is mainly something to simply get used to than anything else,
its an unnecessary removal from the game. There’s no point to
have removed it. Cancelling runs by Crouch Cancelling
however, is a major reduction of approach options. In Melee you
could run, press down, and forward smash or down smash. It was
another trick to add to the approaching and movement mind games of
Melee. It’s simply been removed and so have the options.
New Air Dodge System
It has its ups and downs, though more so its down’s
to this player. Before the air dodge was controllable, able to
fake out people ledge guarding you or useful in dodging aerials, now in
Brawl, air dodging has become more of a preemptive dodge. You
can’t control it, it simply dodges while you continue on your
path. IE if you are falling and dodge, you still fall while
dodging. Yes, you can act after its over, but the dodge
lasts fairly long and since its not really controllable, rarely leaves
you in a position to attack back (assuming the other player hasn’t
already recovered from his attack which is normally the case).
I’d say a fair or near fair trade, though its yet to be fully seen.
Killing and Ledge Guarding
Like I said before, killing doesn’t feel like
killing. You know which moves have the potential to kill
(ranging from few with sonic to almost all with Ike) and when you land
them, simply hope it kills because your opponent messed up the
DI. You don’t kill people, they just die.
Ledge Guarding, 90% of the time and for 90% of the
characters is out. Moves almost always send your opponent up and
out, so that they are way way above the stage as they make their
return. Because of the floating nature of the game, your
opponent will rarely be under the actual stage, even when this happens,
most characters have multiple jumps as well as ridiculous recovery
moves. On the occasion that a character does need to up-b
to grab the ledge, its automatic sweet spot meaning you cannot guard
from on top of the stage. Even rolling from grabbing the ledge is
out for the most part. Ledge hog frames are so small, that by the
time your roll is finished, they haven’t fallen far enough not to grab
the ledge (if they fell any at all), and simply grab the ledge.
Guarding an opponent who is off the ledge, is near impossible.
B-Move Sets That Make no Sense
This also goes back to mismatched move sets.
One would think though that since there are only 4 B moves that their
would be some thought put into them. Its often not the
case. Take Pit, his forward-b and down-b both reflect
projectiles. Don’t know why this was necessary, doesn’t make
sense. Metaknight is another example. All 4 of his
b-moves are recoveries, yes all of them. Why a character with
multiple jumps, and flying needs 4 types of recoveries just beats me.
Power Sheilding
It's very easy to power sheild in Brawl. In
fact more often than not you can easily power sheild attacks and then
instantly attack back. This tends to lead to the defensive game
outweighing the offensive game if pulled off right. That's my
opinion anyways. Power sheidling also no longer reflects
projectiles. A good thing since it's so easy to power sheild, a
bad thing because those without projectiles have no hope of interupting
them other than by attacking head on.
Wrap Up
Issues
# Approaching
- Tripping
- No Dash Dancing
- No Crouch Cancled down smash
- No Cancelling Runs with Down
# Movement
- Slower
- Faster hit recovery
- Normalized gravities
# Fighting
- Mismatched move sets
- Lack of acceleration for attacks
- Lack of ledge game
- Power sheilding
- Defensive buff
- Lack of combos
The Big Picture
What all of this means once you combine it
all. Is that what we get in Brawl, is a decline in options.
The ability to approach the player has been vastly reduced.
Because of this, the general speed of the game, and the eaiser power
sheilding, playing a defensive game has gotten a huge boost.
Coupled with the fact that you can't punish a player for mistakes or
build damage or even death through combos. The game boils down to
a bout of trading hits. Playing the defensive end means you force
your opponent to attack, which are all readable, putting yourself in
the advatage. Retreating attacks, such as Ike's foward air, seem
to be the best at keeping yourself free from harm while hurting your
opponent. As much as I want to view otherwise, Brawl looks
like it may evolve into a camping game. The potential for
offensive ability is limited while the potential for defense has
risen. Removing options that were in Melee has done nothing but
limit possibilities. The more you limit possibilities, the less
competive things can get.
What This Means for Balancing
I fully expect all of these issues to lead to a very
skewed character lineup. Someone is going to find an exploit in a
character or two and that will become the staple top end
character. Already we have King Dedede who can chain throw nearly
anyone nearly infinitely, supposedly. When no other character can
cause 60% damage all at once, this will prove extremely
powerful. When better exploits come out, well then we'll
see the game's true colors.
Offensive camping will, in my mind, become
imbalanced. Pit is a perfect example of it. His arrows
shoot extremely fast, travel faster, are controlable, and do decent
knockback. The fact that lag time behind them is almost
nihl, you can attack almost directly behind an arrow. You force
your opponent to approach and then stop them before they get to near,
rinse and repeat.
Character's have distinct advantages over other
characters. Brawl is rock-paper-scissors complex style. I'm
not talking about 60-40 stuff in brawl, more like 80-20. Certain
characters beat others, easily. This means maining a single
character will probably be obsolete in time, and the sets may simply
come down to who gets the better match up first round, because after
that its charactr counter picking.
In my opinion, I see the game boiling down
completely to character matchups and camp tatics. The top end
character(s) will be just that, top end. Unlike Melee where top
characters have ranged through, Jigglypuff, Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik,
Peach, Luigi, Samus, Pikachu (don't believe me go watch Chu Dat versus
Cort), Ice Climbers, Brawl top end will be seeing maybe 4 top
characters.
Will Brawl take over for Melee
Most likely, it really depends on how the community
takes to Brawl. Does it deserve it? Honestly no, Melee is
the better game for competition. Brawl is new though and
that is a big thing. Most likely it will win out as the less
serious crowd of Melee who always had the mindset of "I'll get good
when Brawl comes out" takes over simply because Brawl is an easier game.
Items
Items will once again not be used for competitive
play. With the ease of which they are grabbed, the faster
characters have a huge advantage getting them. Not to mention the
fast characters have a hard time killing due to lack of killing moves,
is now remedied with the use of items. Smash Balls are also
imbalanced ranging from the near useless (kirby) to the instant death
nearly unavoidable (marth).
Wrapping Up
Brawl is a fun game and most people will love the
game, but it does not have the competive edge that Melee had. I
just hope that people will not blind themself by hype and the "noob"
crowd and give the game credit where it is not due. Brawl is not
Melee improved, its not even a new game, it is Melee Devolved,
Melee simplified. I do hope to be proven wrong during the course
of the next few months now that the game is being released in
America. However, for now, Brawl is the game the developers
believed Smash was meant to be, too bad they didn't know what it should
have been.
Because master fighters should trip in battle. >.<
So, Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out tomorrow
and before it does and we get millions of people claiming how great it
is, I’d like to put out my own critique in hopes to quell the hype
enough to get people to take a solid look at the game.
We’ve had reviews from nearly all the gaming sites and magazines by
now, each of them giving high scores to the game. Let’s face it
though, these reviews are not coming from the viewpoint of competitive
players and the competitive tournament scene community that has been
formed through smashboards. I’ve had the game since the
Japanese release and don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game
overall. However, I’m not going to be critiquing the whole game,
simply the gameplay in relation to a competitive environment, the
environment that will in the end, determine the games success outside
of a the financial area.
Before starting, I want to first say that I will be
comparing Brawl to Melee, and before anyone says that Brawl is not
Melee 2.0, well you’re wrong. Games, like everything else in
life, are judged by those around it, even more so games of a
series. Melee was Smash Brothers 2.0, Brawl is Smash 3.0.
It is how judging things work, by comparison.
*Note, everything in here is of my opinion and observations. Don't like it, feel free to disagree, just don't flame.
Movement
Tripping
First and foremost, to get it out of the way, is
tripping. There is no possible way to justify this being
implemented into the game. Your character will randomly fall down
at the start of a run. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, so
that someone may possibly find a use for it. It’s completely
random. There have been countless times where I’ve tried to
position myself for a killing blow only to fail at it because my
character decided he wanted to fall on his butt instead. What’s
worse is when this happens next to the opponent, and then they get to
smash you for free. If Brawl were a RTS, it’d be the equivalent
of one of your units randomly exploding for no reason. I could
rant on how detrimental and stupid tripping is to competitive play for
hours. Tripping in and of itself could completely ruin the
competitive nature of any game. While somewhat ignorable, its
just frustrating.
Dash Dancing
Dash Dancing is out. What this means is that
the ground game has lost a significant portion of its options. No
longer can you slowly approach in various intervals of retreat and
charge. No longer can you fake approaches and suddenly accelerate
from a slow press. The ground game has lost mindgames and options
by the loss of dash dancing. Some people may try to claim that it
is still in the game, but its not. Any form of “dash dancing” in
the game is either 1 of two things. The start of a run (meaning
you can only grab, jump, or running A out of it) or so small you are
basically moving in place.
Directional Influence
This is simply my opinion, but Di has become a
little ridiculous. I no longer feel that I know my moves are
going to kill my opponent. In Melee if you if you forward smashed
someone with fox at 100-110%, you knew you were going to kill them if
it was near the ledge, or at least put them into a position to be
edgehogged, regardless of how they DI’ed. In Brawl, hitting
someone with a move that can kill at 80-90% if they don’t DI, can be
survived up until nearly double that at 160-170% if they DI
correctly. It has that big of an affect. It causes
the game to have the feeling that kills are rarely caused, and more
like accidents. If I die under 125% I know it was my fault for
not simply DI’ing correctly. To see a move kill at 80% when
you’ve also seen it survived at 150%, well it makes you feel that kills
just happen, instead of being caused. It’s not so much you know
which moves kills, you know which moves have the potential to kill and
then you find out if they do when they hit. Also, yes I know
about diminishing returns on hits, but this happens even with zeroed
out moves. Some may like it this way. I personally think it
makes survival to easy and killing to hard.
Fast Falling
Not so much of a complaint here, but an
observation. Fast falling isn’t fast, its only less slow and not
easily noticeable until you get used to looking at it. This goes
with the whole game speed slow down.
Speed, Move Recovery, and Gravity
I group these three things together because they are what contribute to
the entire games flow and feeling of play. Gravity has been
normalized, there are no individual gravities. The speed of jumps
(not the distance), the speed of air movement, and the general feeling
of floatiness are all the same or nearly the same for all
characters. This removes a huge point in how characters differed
in Melee. Falling speed of some characters is still different
though, however the differences are minor because of the new speed of
the game. Its not slow (jigglypuff) versus fast (fox/falcon) its
now slow (jigglypuff) versus slightly less slow (fox/faclon).
As most everyone already knows, the overall game
speed has been slowed down. Don’t let people try to convince you
that they can pull off melee speeds or faster during combat. It’s
simply not true. What you may not know though, is that while the
game has slowed down, move recovery, both from attacking and recovery
from getting hit, has sped up, way way up in the case of hit
recovery. A few things happen because of this. One is that
follow up hits are almost if not completely gone. There are no
more double forward air hits with marth, or falling up-airs to up tilts
with fox, or down tilts to forward airs with sheik. Character
recovery is too fast. The only time you get more than a single
hit off, is from spammed moves (ie. lucario’s forward air,
pits/lucarios up-tilt). Combo’s simply don’t exist, or are
spammed moves (more on this later).
Another problem with the speed decline versus move recovery increase is
in taking advantage of an opponent’s mistakes. In Melee you could
run at a marth, jump and get him to forward smash, jump above it, fast
fall behind him and back air or neutral air. This was a
mindgame that takes advantage of causing your opponent to make a
mistake. Try doing the same in brawl, and by the time you fall
fast enough to be in range to hit, your opponent has shielded or moved,
or decided to hit you with another move. Taking advantage of
people’s mistakes is hard or nearly impossible depending on the move.
Positioning is also a lot harder due to the slow
speed versus move recovery time. Because of the game speed, you cannot
surprise your opponent by rushing in or under or past them.
Anything you do is too slow to come as a surprise. They see it
coming a mile away. Take for instance a player in melee, hopping
up and down while his opponent is recovering from a hit that sent him
up more than off the stage. The player is waiting for the
opponent to get in range, but the opponent is unsure exactly when the
player will attack. Out of the hopping, the player double jumps
to back air. In Melee this will work, because the speed at with
the double jump comes out is enough to catch someone off guard, or
before their character can prevent it. In Brawl the speed of the
jumps are not fast enough to catch your opponent off guard.
Attacks
Mismatched Move Sets
For the most part, Brawl move sets feel as thrown
together and mismatched as they come. It feels as the creators
simply made a move for each input, yet made no attempt to actually link
these moves together to form a cohesive character. Nothing links
anymore. In Melee, character’s had a central theme around which
their moves were built. Take Luigi for example. Most of his
moves would send a character upwards. Down smashes lead into
forward airs or back airs, neutral airs into the same. Throws
lead into smashes, or aerials. A correct up-air could lead to a
forward air. Moves were meant to work together. One move
set up another move, some moves where for damage, some for
killing. They had thought and flow. Think Captain
Falcon spike bouncing people off the stage into a knee. There was
fluidity, there was purpose nearly all of a character’s moves. In
Brawl this fluidity doesn’t exist. Moves either send an opponent
too far so that they can’t be hit, or not far enough so that they in
turn hit you back. Moves don’t lead into one another, not even at
different percents. There is no rhyme or reason to why a
character’s moves do what they do. They all simply hit and
nothing more. These mismatched move sets will be a theme in the
next several points.
Diminishing Returns
You may have heard by now that Brawl implements
diminishing returns on attacks. Yes this existed in Melee, but 2
things were different. The move counter was easily reset and even
reset itself upon doing the same move and the diminishing returns only
affected % damage not knockback. Some try to justify this
by saying that someone can no longer spam a single move to both deal
damage and kill. Frankly I think they are wrong. People
will use the moves that have the greatest affect at hitting without
being hit back, just because it does less % or knockback isn’t going to
remove a good move from being spammed, it just means the matches will
take longer. Why use a move that has a 50% chance of hitting and
a 50% chance of getting you hit when you can use one that has a 100%
chance of hitting and 0% chance of getting you hit. This
feature, while neat in theory, is in my opinion, laziness on the parts
of the developers. If they wanted us to use the full range
of moves they should have made every move useful, not try to force
players to use crappy moves.
Throws
Through Smash Brothers and Smash Brothers Melee we
have seen to ways in which throws can be useful. Killing in
Smash Brothers, and pulling off combos in Melee. In Brawl we have
neither of these. Brawl throws rarely lead into any move, and
very few of them can actually kill at desirable %. Throw simply
do what the name implies now, they throw people, almost always a
useless distance, sometimes even resulting in you getting hit because
you threw someone and they went nowhere.
Combos
As stated before, combos are pretty much
non-existent unless they consist of a single move spammed over and over
again. What I consider a combo: A linked set of moves that cannot
be avoided. Examples: Marth- up throw->up
tilt->neutral air, Fox- running A->up tilt->up air,
Jigglypuff- up throw->up air->back air, Donkey Kong forward grab
up throw-> up air-> B. These things are rare to
non-existent dependant on character in Brawl. Almost if not all
“combos” you see in Brawl or people talk about in Brawl are avoidable
if the person getting hit would simply DI correctly and get out of the
way. This is all chalked up to the mismatched move sets. It
leads to a feeling of never having control of a match, more so that you
are simply, trading hits with the opponent.
Crouch Cancelled Down Smashes and Runs
Gone. While Crouch Cancelled Down
Smashes is mainly something to simply get used to than anything else,
its an unnecessary removal from the game. There’s no point to
have removed it. Cancelling runs by Crouch Cancelling
however, is a major reduction of approach options. In Melee you
could run, press down, and forward smash or down smash. It was
another trick to add to the approaching and movement mind games of
Melee. It’s simply been removed and so have the options.
New Air Dodge System
It has its ups and downs, though more so its down’s
to this player. Before the air dodge was controllable, able to
fake out people ledge guarding you or useful in dodging aerials, now in
Brawl, air dodging has become more of a preemptive dodge. You
can’t control it, it simply dodges while you continue on your
path. IE if you are falling and dodge, you still fall while
dodging. Yes, you can act after its over, but the dodge
lasts fairly long and since its not really controllable, rarely leaves
you in a position to attack back (assuming the other player hasn’t
already recovered from his attack which is normally the case).
I’d say a fair or near fair trade, though its yet to be fully seen.
Killing and Ledge Guarding
Like I said before, killing doesn’t feel like
killing. You know which moves have the potential to kill
(ranging from few with sonic to almost all with Ike) and when you land
them, simply hope it kills because your opponent messed up the
DI. You don’t kill people, they just die.
Ledge Guarding, 90% of the time and for 90% of the
characters is out. Moves almost always send your opponent up and
out, so that they are way way above the stage as they make their
return. Because of the floating nature of the game, your
opponent will rarely be under the actual stage, even when this happens,
most characters have multiple jumps as well as ridiculous recovery
moves. On the occasion that a character does need to up-b
to grab the ledge, its automatic sweet spot meaning you cannot guard
from on top of the stage. Even rolling from grabbing the ledge is
out for the most part. Ledge hog frames are so small, that by the
time your roll is finished, they haven’t fallen far enough not to grab
the ledge (if they fell any at all), and simply grab the ledge.
Guarding an opponent who is off the ledge, is near impossible.
B-Move Sets That Make no Sense
This also goes back to mismatched move sets.
One would think though that since there are only 4 B moves that their
would be some thought put into them. Its often not the
case. Take Pit, his forward-b and down-b both reflect
projectiles. Don’t know why this was necessary, doesn’t make
sense. Metaknight is another example. All 4 of his
b-moves are recoveries, yes all of them. Why a character with
multiple jumps, and flying needs 4 types of recoveries just beats me.
Power Sheilding
It's very easy to power sheild in Brawl. In
fact more often than not you can easily power sheild attacks and then
instantly attack back. This tends to lead to the defensive game
outweighing the offensive game if pulled off right. That's my
opinion anyways. Power sheidling also no longer reflects
projectiles. A good thing since it's so easy to power sheild, a
bad thing because those without projectiles have no hope of interupting
them other than by attacking head on.
Wrap Up
Issues
# Approaching
- Tripping
- No Dash Dancing
- No Crouch Cancled down smash
- No Cancelling Runs with Down
# Movement
- Slower
- Faster hit recovery
- Normalized gravities
# Fighting
- Mismatched move sets
- Lack of acceleration for attacks
- Lack of ledge game
- Power sheilding
- Defensive buff
- Lack of combos
The Big Picture
What all of this means once you combine it
all. Is that what we get in Brawl, is a decline in options.
The ability to approach the player has been vastly reduced.
Because of this, the general speed of the game, and the eaiser power
sheilding, playing a defensive game has gotten a huge boost.
Coupled with the fact that you can't punish a player for mistakes or
build damage or even death through combos. The game boils down to
a bout of trading hits. Playing the defensive end means you force
your opponent to attack, which are all readable, putting yourself in
the advatage. Retreating attacks, such as Ike's foward air, seem
to be the best at keeping yourself free from harm while hurting your
opponent. As much as I want to view otherwise, Brawl looks
like it may evolve into a camping game. The potential for
offensive ability is limited while the potential for defense has
risen. Removing options that were in Melee has done nothing but
limit possibilities. The more you limit possibilities, the less
competive things can get.
What This Means for Balancing
I fully expect all of these issues to lead to a very
skewed character lineup. Someone is going to find an exploit in a
character or two and that will become the staple top end
character. Already we have King Dedede who can chain throw nearly
anyone nearly infinitely, supposedly. When no other character can
cause 60% damage all at once, this will prove extremely
powerful. When better exploits come out, well then we'll
see the game's true colors.
Offensive camping will, in my mind, become
imbalanced. Pit is a perfect example of it. His arrows
shoot extremely fast, travel faster, are controlable, and do decent
knockback. The fact that lag time behind them is almost
nihl, you can attack almost directly behind an arrow. You force
your opponent to approach and then stop them before they get to near,
rinse and repeat.
Character's have distinct advantages over other
characters. Brawl is rock-paper-scissors complex style. I'm
not talking about 60-40 stuff in brawl, more like 80-20. Certain
characters beat others, easily. This means maining a single
character will probably be obsolete in time, and the sets may simply
come down to who gets the better match up first round, because after
that its charactr counter picking.
In my opinion, I see the game boiling down
completely to character matchups and camp tatics. The top end
character(s) will be just that, top end. Unlike Melee where top
characters have ranged through, Jigglypuff, Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik,
Peach, Luigi, Samus, Pikachu (don't believe me go watch Chu Dat versus
Cort), Ice Climbers, Brawl top end will be seeing maybe 4 top
characters.
Will Brawl take over for Melee
Most likely, it really depends on how the community
takes to Brawl. Does it deserve it? Honestly no, Melee is
the better game for competition. Brawl is new though and
that is a big thing. Most likely it will win out as the less
serious crowd of Melee who always had the mindset of "I'll get good
when Brawl comes out" takes over simply because Brawl is an easier game.
Items
Items will once again not be used for competitive
play. With the ease of which they are grabbed, the faster
characters have a huge advantage getting them. Not to mention the
fast characters have a hard time killing due to lack of killing moves,
is now remedied with the use of items. Smash Balls are also
imbalanced ranging from the near useless (kirby) to the instant death
nearly unavoidable (marth).
Wrapping Up
Brawl is a fun game and most people will love the
game, but it does not have the competive edge that Melee had. I
just hope that people will not blind themself by hype and the "noob"
crowd and give the game credit where it is not due. Brawl is not
Melee improved, its not even a new game, it is Melee Devolved,
Melee simplified. I do hope to be proven wrong during the course
of the next few months now that the game is being released in
America. However, for now, Brawl is the game the developers
believed Smash was meant to be, too bad they didn't know what it should
have been.
Because master fighters should trip in battle. >.<
Good luck!
